By Guest Blogger Margaret Rutherford, Ph.D., of NestAche.com (Member of the 2013 NWA LTYM Cast)

Maya Angelou spoke at Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993 as Poet Laureate.  I had just finished graduate school in Clinical Psychology, completing my dissertation,  and was about as interested in reading a poem or much less a book as I was in throwing myself in front of a truck.  But there was just something about this softspoken woman that riveted me to the TV screen.  I  knew her voice was going to be important for me.

I went several weeks later to Barnes & Noble to find one of her books to read.  I picked the very smallest one, 139 pages: Wouldn’t Take Nothing For My Journey Now.  I didn’t know if she even considered it one of her best.  It’s not lauded anywhere as that.  I didn’t care, it was short.  After reading it, I have never been able to forget it.  This simple collection of essays turned on lights for me.

I was 38 at the time.  Married, living in Fayetteville, Arkansas.  Had been reared to be a Southern belle in South Arkansas, taking three years of etiquette lessons, accomplishing such tasks at ten years old as walking with a book on my head up and down a flight of stairs, reciting Shakespeare, learning how to set a table and greeting people politely in a receiving line.  All from a lady named Mrs. Vashti Triplett, who actually lived in the house where my dad had been born.  If I recall, the house had a hole in it from a Civil War cannonball as well.  Patched up, obviously.  I was handed a girdle when I was twelve (TWELVE!!!), and I guess that was the last straw.  I refused to be a debutante–to “come out” to society.  I jokingly told my mom I was already out.  It was the early 70’s, and off I went to a fairly liberal college.

The next twenty years, in a nutshell, was a journey of finding out who I could be outside of that very strong cultural pull.  I made some good choices.  I made lots of mistakes.  And then found my path.  Which gets me back to Maya Angelou’s book.

The many essays were beautifully written, brief, to the point.  Elegant.  One on curtailing your own style if it embarrasses your emerging teenage child, just out of love for him or her.   One on stopping someone before they said something to you that, “might hurt your feelings” or “make you mad”.  “Well, then, don’t say it,” would be Maya Angelou’s point, although she described it far more eloquently than I just did.

The essay I found most profound was one where she told the story of herself at a nightclub.  She was alone, and lonely, but had just won “Person of the Week” from the New York Post and was being congratulated from those all around.  She had too much to drink and, in her own words, “… I began a performance which now, more than twenty years later, can still cause me to seriously consider changing my name and my country of residence”.  What followed in the story, although fascinating, was not as important as those words to me.  Here was this amazing woman from Stamps, Arkansas, baring her heart and soul to a nation.  Allowing herself to be seen as who she really was.  Both wise guide and, at times, confused seeker.

Why is this important?  How many people have I talked to in twenty five years now that feel like someone, one of these days, is going to find them out, that they are not really who they are chalked up to be or that they shouldn’t really be in the position they have, something like that.  That’s because they are not doing what Maya Angelou is showing us–to accept that we are both our successes and our mistakes.   The power of her voice at that moment for me was her display of self-acceptance, although still tinged with whimsical regret.

I knew exactly what she meant when she said those words about wanting to disappear from existence because of her performance.  I had had many of those moments.  Like the time I fell off the five-foot-tall high school graduation platform and splayed onto the football field in my cap and gown because I was laughing about something so hard, my eyes were closed.  My brother claimed in the stands that he didn’t know me.  Or the time that my two-year-old sobbing kid was in the back of the car, very sick, strapped in his carseat  and had thrown up in some cup I had found in the car.  It was very, very full of you-know-what, and I couldn’t think of what to do with it.  So in my utter confusion, I stopped, handed it to a lady in her front yard and asked her to throw it away.  I think about that and think, Why did I do that?  I don’t want that lady to know who I am.  She probably developed a phobia about going into her front yard.

But those are funny ones.  The ones you can tell in public.  There are some that are not funny.  That you don’t want anyone to know.  And Maya Angelou put a non-funny one down in a book.  That is what struck me as awesome that day.  I realize lots of folks do it, but her doing it that day struck me.  Her voice led me.

Her voice led me to bloom into someone who could laugh at herself more, who could accept herself more.  Who could talk about and hopefully help others talk about shame and then let that shame go.  If she could do it, I could do it.

Hence the next twenty years!  A private practice in psychology, raising a son, finally having a happy marriage, and now blogging about it all!  In the first essay “In All Ways A Woman”, Ms. Angelou writes, “… [women] must be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible, and live long lives.  The struggle for equality continues unabated, and the woman warrior who is armed with wit and courage will be among the first to celebrate victory”.  These qualities, when coupled with self-acceptance and value, are ones I strive for and are where I want my mind, heart and soul to live.

So thank you, Maya Angelou.  I wouldn’t take nothing for the journey.

About Margaret Rutherford, Ph.D.
Jingle and jazz singer, clinical psychologist, community volunteer, actor, children’s choir director and recent writer/blogger–all of these are passions that have been part of Margaret Rutherford’s life.  Add Mom, Wife, Daughter, Sister and Friend to the list, and you understand what is important to her.  She coined the term “NestAche” when her only son left for college in fall 2012, and she began writing about her experiences at http://www.nestache.com. Now living in Fayetteville, Arkansas, she continues with her private practice, works in community theater and is learning more and more about the world of blogging! Connect with her at http://facebook.com/NestAcheBlog or http://twitter.com/NestAche.