Hey, y’all!

I did something way out of my comfort zone a couple of weeks ago. I went to NYC and auditioned for the Listen To Your Mother show there. I carefully re-worked a piece from the blog, made sure it was under 5 minutes, printed out copies, and then went to NYC with J to audition. I won’t lie and say it was easy. My voice shook the entire time with emotion (it’s a powerful piece) and I was in awe that I was in NYC auditioning, something I never thought I’d ever do.

Why did I go?

Because a few months ago, J bought me a magnet I saw at the local art museum. It looks like this:

It’s so true. Life DOES begin at the end of your comfort zone. Reading things out loud, particularly things I’ve written, is WAY the heck out of my comfort zone. I don’t even read what I write here out loud before I hit publish. The voice in my head reads it for me.

I didn’t make the cut for the show, and I’m okay with that because what’s important is that I still stepped out of my comfort zone.

Now, I want to challenge you to do the same here.

I challenge you to write a piece, maybe 2-4 minutes or so in length about your postpartum experience. Any aspect of it – your choice. No censor either, just raw, honest, and beautiful true stories. Then here’s the even bigger challenge – I want you to record yourself reading it. Video or audio. Whatever you’re comfortable with the most – totally up to you. You can either identify yourself or not, again, up to you. But what is required is the title of the piece at the beginning.

Email it to me at mypostpartumvoice(@)gmail(dot)com. Call for pieces is open until May 7th. I will then get everything gathered together to post at some point on Mother’s Day Weekend. This is a new thing for me and again, is me stepping outside my comfort zone because I’ve never done video before. I’ll be reading the piece I prepped for LTYM on video. (EEEK). They’ll be uploaded to my YouTube channel for the blog (yes, I have one but I haven’t used it… I’m changing that this year) and tagged with Voices of #PPDChat. (If you’re not comfortable appearing on video and would prefer to just submit Audio, that’s fine – that will probably just be hosted here at the blog).

Are you in? You know you’re in. Ready? Set. WRITE.RECORD.SUBMIT.

Let’s bust stigma together.