How do we become who we are?

Is it inspiration?
Nature?
Nurture?
Internal discipline?
External circumstances?

So much of who I am is a result of the women who have templated for me.

Often, these may be women that I have never met. But the way they lived their lives spoke volumes.

Sometimes there is a density of creative power that is so potent, so vivid, so inspiring, that it perfumes the air, the age, the time, the space – seemingly unaware of its own impact.

 

Maggie Smith was that to me, and to so many others

In 1998, as a young mom, inspired by the calling I had to educate, liberate, and empower women, I knew I had to start a school. In NYC. In my living room.

But I had no knowledge of how exactly to accomplish this.
I was shy. Introverted. Determined.
I knew I needed help to find my pathway.

Who did I need to be to set this dream on its feet?

I had a vague memory of Maggie Smith in the movie, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, teaching at a very posh, very traditional school for girls in Scotland.

In one of her opening scenes, she bikes into the frame, flirts with not one, but two men, floats through the crowd of students into her classroom and declares, “I do not intend to devote myself to petrification.” as a way of distinguishing her teaching style, and her persona, from the constraints of the culture.

And right then and there, I knew she could be my muse and inspiration.

 

She believed in goodness, truth, and beauty. I could get onboard with that.

She was wildly sexy in a conservative way. She rocked the repression of the culture like a stick of dynamite in a perfectly tailored three piece suit.

You could find no flaw with her appearance, but she created ripples of sexual aliveness wherever she went. She was charismatic. Disruptive yet impeccable. Rebellious. Determined to do things her way and devote herself utterly and completely to her vision and her students.

Most importantly: she had a killer sense of humor. And a deep trust in her own vision, despite the prevailing winds of the time in which she found herself.

Was this the character she played or the nature of the woman, herself?

 

Perhaps, a bit of both.

I watched her career over my lifetime, as she became even more famous for her role in the Harry Potter films and the TV series, Downton Abbey – choosing to embrace the aging process by rocking its advantages for her own opportunity.

She took risks.
She celebrated her uniqueness.
She laughed at herself.

Making it more possible for me, and for so many others, to do the same.

Thank you, Maggie Smith, for every choice you made that allowed you to become the woman that you became.

May we all come to be women who set others free, just by our very existence.

With so much love and pleasure,
Regena