The stinky pile of poo

This is a tale of two radio broadcasts.  And a stinky pile of poo.

I’ve been doing a lot of radio appearances recently talking about The Miracle Journal.

One way that I find appropriate shows to pitch is through an email service that lists radio shows seeking guests (it’s called radioguestlist.com and I highly recommend it if you’re looking for radio bookings).

Recently, I saw a show that listed “spiritual” amongst its many desired topics.  It was immediately obvious that it was a show by and for men, but I’ve made a specific effort to NOT make this a females-only space.  If I can tell on myself, the truth is that I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder about it.  Something like, “Dammit, I’m going to make sure men hear me too!!!!”

So they booked me for Saturday night.

And thus started an outrageously excruciating 45 minutes.  The hosts (who didn’t sound anything like the people I’d heard in their archived show) started making fun of me almost immediately.  They intentionally mispronounced every word they said to me for a couple minutes.  They asked me bizarre and inappropriate questions.  At one point one of them called me a bitch (for what reason I still don’t know).  It was like being grilled by some frat boys.

At some point I realized that what I was experiencing was old-fashioned bullying.

Why they chose to have me on their show, I have absolutely no idea.

But the bigger question is this: why did I feel compelled to be on that show?  My response to it should have raised a HUGE red flag.

The gender of the audience is NOT my business.  My job is to show up each day and do what I do to the best of my ability.  Men who are interested will find me.  But I can’t (and shouldn’t!) go chasing them.  It’s no good for anyone, especially me!

Fast forward to this afternoon, when I did another radio interview with John Fortuna at “That’s What He Said.”  Also with a man, but this time in the right space – he already runs a spiritually-based show. And I had a GREAT time doing it.  (You can hear audio here – my portion starts at the one-hour mark.)

One really funny thing came out of the interview today – the image of a stinky pile of poo.  For some reason I said it once and then I kept referring back to it over and over and over.  🙂

So here’s the concept – imagine you have a stinky pile of poo sitting in the middle of your living room floor.  You have a few options.

You can pretend that it’s not there – cover it with a layer of icing and call it a cake.  But it’s still a stinky pile of poo covered with a layer of icing.  It hasn’t really gone away, you’re just in denial.

You can worry about it – perhaps while you worry, you pace and start spreading the stinky pile of poo around the rest of the room.

You can be afraid of the stinky pile of poo – stare at it, paralyzed from cleaning it up or doing anything else productive with it.

You can play in it – ewww.

Or…you can clean it up.  And realize that although there was a stinky pile of poo in the middle of your living room floor, it didn’t get smeared on your walls or your couch or your television screen.  The stinky pile of poo was just in one spot on the floor…and once you remove it, nothing else has been marred.

Today’s miracle: This weekend I had a stinky pile of poo.  Today I got to talk about a stinky pile of poo.  I survived the first and enjoyed the second.  All is well.