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By Root 778 0

challenge. It had nothing to do with money. It was not about a relationship. Thank goodness, those two areas of my life are finally in order. This was about me. Me, the big-time, bestselling author. I was ashamed that I had come so far only to get stuck on something so small, so trivial. But was it trivial? You cannot trivialize the need to do, for your own well-being, something that you know will upset someone you care about. It is not easy or trivial to say to someone, I love you, but I must leave you. It is no small feat to try to wipe running mascara from your cheeks after you have put on your foundation and powder. Talk about PMS! The Poor-Me-Syndrome was making it impossible for me to get my face together, and the film crew had just entered my half-empty house.

Combination tears are the worst tears of all. They are filled with anger and sadness, with fear and shame. They have a devastating effect on the body, bringing the stiffness of anger, the drooping of sadness, the trembling of fear, and the bending of shame. They make you cold when you are hot. They make you tremble when you are trying to keep still. Most of all, they make you nauseated.

Suppose I threw up in the middle of the interview? Oh great! My imagination had taken a turn for the worse. I was standing in front of the mirror, terrorizing myself. Feeling unworthy. Feeling afraid, and being mad at myself for all that I was feeling. I would have slapped myself, but that would have made my eyes run again. Instead, my angel showed up at the bathroom door. My husband, Adeyemi, had come to tell me that the film crew was waiting for me. As soon as he saw the redness in my eyes, he stretched his long arms out toward me so that I could fall into them. I did. And I cried all over his clean white shirt.

“Come on, now. Don’t be nervous. This is no different from anything else you’ve done. You can do this with your eyes closed.” Closed, yes. Smeared with mascara, no. I would have to start all over again. That is exactly how I felt about my life. It seemed to me that, on what should have been one of the happiest days I had ever known, I kept arriving at the place where I would have to start all over, and it pissed me off!

The interview went smoothly. I did not shed a single tear. Terrence Wood, the CBS correspondent and interviewer, along with the camera-person and the producer, commented on my home. It was, they said, beautiful and peaceful. No one believed we had just moved in. No one seemed to notice, or care, that we did not have what I thought was the appropriate amount of furniture, in the appropriate rooms. Why do we subject ourselves to the hysteria of expecting the worst? I guess it is part of our nature as human beings. I also believe it is the natural outgrowth of postponing the inevitable. You can put off what you need to do, but the longer you put it off, the more hysteria and conflict you will experience. The more tears you will shed. The more anger, sadness, and fear you will create in your own mind. I had something unpleasant to do that I had resisted doing. I had put it off long enough. Now it, and I, were about to show up on national television. I knew that the moment the show was over, I would have to go upstairs and cry in my favorite place. The Jacuzzi.

Of all things to master, why did I have to pick tears? I’ve learned about tears and through tears. I haven’t figured out whether it’s a blessing or a curse that I can assess the tearful experience of a person. With a breath, I can feel in my own body what the person is going through. I can process others through their tears, with words and thoughts and images. I had come to the place and point in my life where I now had to do the same for myself. I had to get beyond my own tears to the core of the issue. I knew it was my core issue, my subconscious pattern, that was making it so difficult for me to fire my manager.

After all I had experienced and learned, I had to revisit my own past, which was filled with bitter tears, in order to move into the future. I would have to live through the present,