The Father's Day Impostor

"Will you help us acquire four-hundred qualified people in six weeks to assemble an American Legend?

Absolutely.

"Will you help us reduce our six-million-dollar-a-year turnover cost, while restructuring the entire talent acquisition process?

No problem.

"Will you please help lead a national "Repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell" diversity dialogue?"

I'll certainly try.

"Will you create a Human Resources division, while increasing our staff by 200%, while safely guiding us through a labor audit?"

When do we start?

"Will you help us make a baby?"

It's Father's Day. And just like any other day, I wake up with what I now define as my reset question. Small reset. Big reset. Or, just another life pivot. While the question can perhaps be interrupted by others as a not-so-healthy question to start ones' morning, it is the point of my most conscious awareness.

Is this real?

Impostor phenomenon was first described by psychologists Suzanne Imes, PhD, and Pauline Rose Clance, PhD, in the 1970s. The phenomena typically occurs among high-functioning, high-achieving people who are unable to internalize and accept their success, or achievements.

If I could've stopped the question from creeping in I would have. And, I can say with genuine certainty, that I tried. The feeling of anxiety mixed with loss and nausea would begin swirling inside. I would become overwhelmed with heart arrhythmia and sweat. My mind would become wiped of all knowledge and cognitive thought.

It's like an important question on a very important proctored exam. Sure, I can not answer, give up, and storm out of the exam room. I can also try detaching from the question and suffer in my depression and anxiety. By allowing this, I give up on the day, and myself, before ever starting. In either answer-avoiding scenario, I am the quitter. No one else. If I can't answer the question, "Is this real?", then I have quit the exam - the challenge. I have quit, myself.

Embrace what is. The question is right there, and I am powerless from escaping it. I have to answer it, right? How do I answer it? It's like basic-military-training (boot-camp). The easiest and most successful way out is only by embracing your soldier training, and graduating. The quickest and easiest way to pass the exam is only through studying. Study in whatever way, or form, life presents.

Training isn't easy. Studying isn't easy. Perhaps that's the message from, "Study to show thyself approved."

At forty-three, I don't fear my reset question as much, nor as often. I've allowed my heart to shift and take control of the narrative repeated in my head. My head, which if I allow it, can be flooded with a sea of relentlessly hostile, and seemingly sweet, rejections. It's an endless and dramatically-developed barrage of, "You won't. You shouldn't. You can't. You will never be. You are not."

These postulating cascades are now answered with courage and kindness from my affirming lived-experiences. You will. You should. You can. You did. You are.

Is this real? Just like my lived-experiences of rejection, my reset question has a genuine purpose for me. I wake up and take my first inhale from this question. I ground myself by feeling one of my puppies either licking my face, or nestling somewhere between limbs and areas on my side of the bed. I ground myself by feeling the bed under my body, in the home I contributed to acquiring with my husband. I reach for his arm, and exhale.

My husband. There are times I feel like Drew Barrymore in "50 First Dates". Drew's character, Lucy Whitmore, suffers from short-term memory loss after a near-fatal accident. In the movie, playboy and island veterinarian, Henry Roth (Adam Sandler), takes a different approach to being with someone like Lucy. He sees her daily impostor-dom as an opportunity, a challenge, to make her fall in love with him and their kid every day, over and over again.

"Will you help us make a baby?"

I didn't hesitate to answer the question. It was as if all the training and studying from the school of life allowed me to answer the question with only bold confidence. I felt like Arthur being guided by Merlin to take my place, grip the sword, remove it from its resting place, so to speak, and claim my right as the one true king.

Wow! I thought to myself. Is this the power my hetero-brothers feel when wives and partners ask them to make a baby?

"Will you help us make a baby?"

Hell yes! I will!

I felt an intense shock of intoxicating hormone. It was like a sudden jolt of testosterone surged through my body, bringing me full circle and center-stage to my strong and noble being-ness as man! Yes, I realize the irony in my dramatic "center-stage" theater reference.

I can give an endless barrage of my own professional accomplishments and achievements. They are equally mixed with success and failure. They are scaring mementos. Life can never say I didn't have skin in the game. Like Lucy, someone, something, finds me worthy of a purpose beyond my circumstance. The question can simply start with, "Will you?"

Is this real? I can answer my reset question with a conscious awareness of who and what I am. I've allowed myself the patience and understanding of freewill, and the courage to seek where my impostor phenomena began. I can be the impostor that others might see. Or, I can be what I'm always meant to be, settle into it, and accept the next challenge and opportunity in life. Like Arthur, creating another life, is definitely like becoming a king. She is our kid. She is my unyielding reason for being.

Yes. Yes, Clinton Shane. This - is real. Happy Father's Day! We love you endlessly, Cora Jude!