Guest Post: Coming Out Of The Impostor Closet

by: Lynette Louise aka THE BRAIN BROAD

I’ve always written, ever since I can remember. Perhaps that’s because I don’t remember anything from before I could write.

As a child writing was a guilty pleasure committed in my closet late at night when I was supposed to be sleeping. My flashlight mesmerized me and put prose within a notebook that was supposed to be allocated for math. I swear that it's true, it's all the flashlights fault.

Poems gave me a release for my childhood angst, songs expressed my joy, true life stories my intention to improve the world while fiction gave me the opportunity to live in realities beyond my reach.

Yes, I always wrote, I just didn’t know it was a good thing.

Initially I would share my scribblings with anyone willing to lend an ear. But my words were too raw, too intimate, too unfettered, too revealing, and most of my audience victims either blushed or cried. Some even turned up their nose at the words I had poured onto paper. My mother burned them, time and time again.

So there it was, my addiction, my guilty pleasure, my shame, destined to be buried in the closet of my childhood.

I wanted to be a writer but wasn’t, I was a writing impostor simply vomiting on paper thoughts that no one felt comfortable enough to read. And so I hid, until my eight grade English teacher saved my life.

“Writers write.” He said, “All the rest is just their story.”

And that was that. I knew who I was, I wrote therefore I was a writer, albeit an unappreciated one.

I never had to find my voice. It has always resonated a similar tune and musical style. But I did have to find my medium. At first I wrote unsolicited scripts that nobody read. Then poems that won contests but never grew a network. Then I tried writing a book but I was afraid to finish--in fact, all five hundred type written pages are yellowing under my desk to this day. But writers write and I just never stopped, though I did continue to feel like an impostor.

Then one day I found it, my medium. I was hired to share with parents (I have eight children, six of whom are adopted with five of those having cognitive challenges, so I certainly had the experience) on the subject of raising the disabled in my own monthly column. Finally, I felt less like an impostor and more like a professional with a place to work.

Since that time the internet has made writing easier, more accessible, quicker to distribute. I have three published books and countless articles, blog posts, songs, plays, scripts etc. Today I am a writer without apology, who found not her voice but her self worth in the value of being printed.

Being published brings opportunities that wouldn’t otherwise find their way to me, but being published isn't what makes life so grand. Really, it’s what my teacher gave me so many years ago. “Writers write. The rest is just their story.”

I am blessed because I learned that lesson and expanded on it. Writers write, singers sing, speakers speak, actors act, teachers teach, parents parent, producers produce, directors direct, and healers heal. I am all of these things (I use play and neurofeedback to help brain disorders internationally). 

I am all of these things and more. I am a student and students learn. My life is big, because once a long time ago someone helped me step out of the darkness in my closet and into the light of valuing what I do.

Lynette Louise aka The Brain Broad is an international mental health and parenting expert, specializing in autism. She is a speaker, author, performer, popular podcast host, neurofeedback & autism expert, and creator/host/therapist for the international reality series FIX IT IN FIVE with LYNETTE LOUISE aka THE BRAIN BROAD, now showing on The Autism Channel. She is also the single mother of eight now grown children; Six were adopted and four were on the autism spectrum. Only one of her sons retains his label and remains dependent. 

Contact Lynette Louise aka THE BRAIN BROAD: Doubly Board Certified in Neurofeedback and is working on her PhD in Psychology with a specialty in Psychophysiology at Saybrook University   www.lynettelouise.com www.brainbody.net

Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer, Media Connect, the nation’s largest book promoter. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2014