I gotta come clean with you. I keep hearing the phrase “badass” bandied about and applied to me. I am not a badass. I play one on TV.
We are shooting a television show and I need to have certain abilities that do not come naturally to me, so I am working and pretending with guns and violence. One of my trainers, a man whose radiant power is eclipsed only by his radiant kindness, began teaching us disarming techniques. He held a toy rubber gun, the color of a bath ducky. It was the most cheerful decoy weapon on the planet. The moment he pointed it at me, I burst into tears.
On set, the first scene I had to employ a firearm at an oncoming threat, my body froze and I couldn’t pull the trigger. I screwed the shot because I was shaking. (It did turn out that the gun was wonky as well, but I knew I had been unable to do it.) It was pretend, but my body didn’t know that. I didn’t react from my mind. I reacted like me.
The first time the monsters rushed out of the haze into my eyeline, I scampered like a bunny. “Cut! Kim, you have to take the shot before you run!” Right. Right. Sure. I knew that. The sweet human inside of the costume would check in with me between every take. He knew I was terrified and was taking care of me. I needed reassurance it was fake and I was safe. I needed reminding that he wasn’t really a monster. Every. Five. Minutes.
I am not a badass. I’m coming clean with you so you know that if, on your off days or in your daily life you are scared and might look to some of us for inspiration, I am just like you. I whither under scorn, I struggle to make myself understood, and I nearly piss myself facing shit that can’t possibly hurt me. That’s just how I’m made. And that’s okay.
When I went out to my first weapons-training date a couple of months ago, I had a mini panic attack in the car. I called Matt Cohen. He is a personal muse of mine. Kind and wise, with a current of rage running under his being that he suppresses on a daily basis. I relate so deeply to this. I knew he would help me.
“What’s up?”
“Matt, I’m going to train with guns and I’m scared.”
He knows my story. He knows why. “Yeah,” he answered. “Guns are scary. But here’s the thing… you have a job to do and you don’t have the information you need to do the job. Go let knowledge take the place of fear.”
I have a job to do that is my life. We all do. I look at people who seem fearless and I envy them. But I look at myself, my tiny little mountains I climb, and I am proud of my tiny little wins. I am proud when I can choose to let knowledge take the place of terror.
I offer you this: I am not fearless. But I can be brave. So can you.
And then I flipped off everybody in the room because my heart couldn’t take any more love pouring in.
That’s the end of the story. Now I shall go back to the beginning. Which is never exactly where you think it’s going to be.
I sang like a lark as a child. You couldn’t shut me up. My mother attempted to save my immortal and possibly irreparably singed soul by putting me in choir because that was guaranteed to get me to church. I devoured any amount of homework inflicted upon me so I could earn the right to travel with my school chorus. I was a one-woman juggernaut of persistence that “By My Side” from GODSPELL had to be performed at my high school graduation. By me.
In college, I warbled cheerfully through, “If I Were a Bell” in my first vocal training class. My unamused professor gestured gracefully with one hand as he commented, “Well, you can tell she’s an actress. She LOOKED like she sounded great!”
I’m sorry, what?
So the seeds were planted that mayyyyyyybe I wasn’t the actual shit I thought I was. You know what? Humility is good. It opens the door for willingness to learn. I probably did need to be taken down a peg. But fear gets into the strangest of places, and once my voice was questioned, it started to shake.
By grad school, my body would crumple in on itself when I was asked to sing. Through a grand total of maybe thirty percent of my lung capacity, I wheezed my way through “Starting Here, Starting Now”. I so wanted to be good. I so wasn’t.
My voice teacher thought maybe a couple of dudes pulling on my arms would help open my chest. When that failed to produce the desired support, she had me lie down and have a couple other dudes, all of whom I have known for maybe two weeks at this point, pull on my legs.
Okay. Here’s the thing. It takes some very special circumstances to turn something scary into a fear that sucks the soul from you. It takes loops and links and attachments that thread back to the real beginning.
It’s probably never ever ever a good idea to force a woman on her back and have a man force her legs open.
It may not be the first time in her life that’s happened.
I vomited violently and couldn’t sing in front of people again without shaking with vicious flashbacks. I wasn’t just “scared” to sing in front of people. It had become adhered to one of the deepest traumas of my life.
Now I’m a grownup with a lot of therapy under my belt. But some shadows don’t lift and you find out they are stains. I thought that was the case with singing until you fuckers. All of you fuckers. Louden Swain who made it look like such fun. Rob who invited me to play when he saw the longing in my eyes. Briana who conjured up so much joy it was infectious. Osric who mentored my soul and Ruth who showed me what fearlessness looked like as she launched herself into my arms.
How is it possible that something like a fandom, friends, family, strangers, wayward every one of us… how is that strong enough to heal something like me?
So I put out my arms, I wore my heart, I dropped, and you fucking dressed me in the sun.
And then I flipped off everybody in the room because my heart couldn’t take any more love pouring in.
Were you guys super pumped about the idea of Jody and Donna starting up a home for wayward girls (a la Sonny’s Home for Boys)?
WELL, @zoewillowsmama, bettydays, Kim Rhodes, Briana Buckmaster and myself (and hopefully Robbie and bobberens) were too, and I know most of us are 100% on-board for a spinoff. Kim Rhodes thinks we need strength in numbers, so I’m bringing this to you guys. Reach out to the producers, guys!
In the mean time, I’m makin’ shirts. Who wants one?
GIMME.
PS Initiate signal boost, frands.
I love this idea! I also think this is the one instance where letters/postcards and other stuff sent to the studio and network might actually make a difference, or at least make people consider the idea. So…let’s make that happen.
In my eleven years as a professional stagehand and twenty years as a participant in fandom, I have never been treated with this much respect and dignity by a performing member of the entertainment industry. Kim Rhodes (Jody Mills on Supernatural) made me cry today, in the best of ways.
This is how you ally. Thank you, Kim, you made me feel like a human being. I can’t imagine a better mother for your daughter; she’s in great hands.
And my esteem of Kim Rhodes has gone up by a million. I thought she was pretty cool before, but this makes her amazing. I have immense respect for someone who is willing to listen to someone’s opinion and actually let it change their own.
This is fantastic and might have made my whole day.
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