When I watched Mary Poppins Returns around Christmas last year, I ugly cried. UG-LEE.
I wasn’t expecting to get hit with a ton of emotional bricks and have an illuminating transformative moment in a dark theater.
And I certainly wasn’t expecting to be brought to my proverbial knees by the realization that one of the proudest seasons of my life was also the scariest, hurt-filled, and path-determining seasons of my life.
In third grade, I became Mary Poppins.
(This was before the days of MTI and Disney Jr. and I still have the highly illegal typewriter-typed transcription of the movie script in my hope chest. Oh yes, it is literally word for word the 1964 Julie Andrews film, typed up into a script.)
I was memorized even before auditions because I knew the whole movie by heart by age 6 anyway. Every word, lyric, vocal turn, dance move, line reading.
And this is where the bricks come. In that theater, I realized that way down deep, even in third grade, I knew that I must be Mary Poppins. And it wasn’t about wanting to do a show or loving to sing, or having fun. It wasn’t optional.
Being Mary Poppins was imperative.
Becoming Mary Poppins protected me.
See, in elementary school, I was the girl that everyone picked on. The dopey nerdy girl. The fat girl. The girl who talked to herself in the corner of the playground because she was acting out scenes from Annie and Adam West Batman series reruns she saw on the UHF channels.
Hair pulled, prank called (back when you could do that on a landline), backpacked ripped, lunch thrown in the mud, called names, and lies spread about me ~ I guess one could say I was bullied.
Mary Poppins, however, was none of those things. She was magic. She was respected, loved, and didn’t care when she wasn’t. She had her mission, her vision, and knew better than everyone else what she was on this planet to do.
Mary Poppins didn’t need permission to play because she made the rules about playing.
She thrived on serving the underdog and exposing the top-dog.
And, when people did try to bully her? She had no time for that nonsense. She simply shut them down with magic and back door truth.
For me to become Mary Poppins was for me to set myself free from the taunting, bullying, and harassment of my peers. I could not control them. But I could 100% control how I responded to them. With my own version of magic.
Becoming Mary Poppins saved my third-grade life. And it defined who I chose to be in the world from that season forth.
Now, back to the ugly crying and what the heck this has to do with you:
I DID NOT CONSCIOUSLY KNOW ANY OF THIS UNTIL MY 41st CYCLE AROUND THE SUN.
Which means that there is probably something about you, too, that is waiting to be discovered that shaped your vision and mission for your life.
Some season to be remembered that brings clarity to your calling as a voice-y business person.
You have a Mary Poppins Moment somewhere in your past ~ one that has defined and determined your course of action even though you had no idea it was there.
You have moments of becoming. Of already and not yet existing concurrently.
This email may not be for everyone, today, but if you’re in a place of:
- Confusion about where to go forward
- Indecision about the next step
- Distraction by all the possibilities
- Hopelessness because the magic is gone
I want you to go on a Mary Poppins style journey. Jump into the chalk drawings of your past and find three moments that deeply impacted you.
What are the overall emotional outcomes of those three moments?
What ties those moments together?
Who are you and how do you walk in the world because of these things?
Trust me, it’s there. Just as sure as the Admiral Boom’s cannon. And when you find it, I want to know about it.
Because I’m committed to my Mary Poppins Moment. It’s my calling to cultivate your magic, too.
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