(Continued from Part I)

6. You’re being interviewed because you write with zeal and authenticity. There’s a note of positivity in your writings. You are the real deal and I can say that because I actually met you during the SOBCon08 conference recently. We bonded like long lost brothers and sisters. The connection was unbelievable. How did you become like this?

Oh…I was warned about you! You ask the GOOD questions, don’t you! That’s part of what makes you so special and unique, and why we bonded so quickly. We like to skip the surface stuff and get right to the heart. I love you for that.

Two reasons. We’re both “real” people who don’t have time to mess around with BS, and we both recognized kindred “disabled” spirits.

First, and probably foremost, is because I was raised by a parent who didn’t quite live in reality. That’s not quite true. She was really real, brutally so, but on the surface, it was always about the illusion of being better off than we were.

My mother came from a very poor background, growing up in a small town as a single child sleeping the kitchen of a two room house. A brilliant intellectual, she was trapped within a family of alcohol and mental illness as well as a struggle to survive. To escape, she married an abusive man, but stayed in the relationship “for the sake of the children” for a long time. Determined that life would be better for her and her children, in spite of the challenges determined to plow her under, she took what classes she could, studied long hours after the kids went to bed, and was one of the first women in the area to get a real estate license, immediately followed by a broker’s license. Determined to succeed, she dressed for success in every way, including in our lives.

As a determined, up-and-coming business woman, whether we could afford it or not, we soon lived in the illusion of the happy American middle-class family. We were not allowed to talk about the fights in the parent’s bedroom late at night. We were happy! When times got tough, it didn’t matter. We had plenty! When the inevitable divorce came, it was on to bigger, younger, and better things, and everything was glorious! At least to the outside world. Soon, the business of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses was a full-time job and I lost track of what was real and what wasn’t.

Along the way, I found myself bragging about my own education and jobs, giving them much more importance than they had. I found myself playing at being someone I wasn’t. But that was what you did. Fake it ’till you make it. My childhood lesson.

Somewhere about age 30, I realized that I had been living lies too long and not living in the truth. I took a self-actualization program and one of the assignments was to dress in a way that exposed yourself to your team partners. I showed up in shorts and a crazy t-shirt and no one got it. After years of living in business suit costumes and playing the business expert, I was exposing skin and my playful self, not the illusion of the busy business professional. They still didn’t get it. That’s when I realized that I didn’t get it. I didn’t know who that person was since I’d been hiding her so long, living under the illusions rather than the realities.

Honestly. At once point in my life things were so bad, I was living in my car on the streets of Seattle, barely able to cope with all that life was throwing at me. Yet, I still found a water hose or public sink to clean up in and wore my best outfits, showing up for meetings like I was the professional I was - not someone caught under the weight of debt from risky business decisions that went awry. Luckily, it was only for a short time and I clawed my way back. This time, I did it my way. Not by illusion.

On the road back to me, I met my husband, Brent VanFossen, who turned my whole think around. I changed my life, but he also helped change my head. Both of us swore we would never get married, and here we were staring at our sole mates. He completed me in ways that I never thought was possible, granting me the most important wish I ever made: Make me be me all the time. With all the success we’ve had apart and together in our careers so far, we keep each other so grounded and real, I’m stronger with him. He’s my best friend and I am his.

I think that is the greatest gift you can give any friendship is truth and reality. Accept the person as they are, warts and all, all the time, and you accept the real person, not the illusion of who they want you to see or who you want to see when you look at them.

Yikes, that’s a lot of stuff, but only part one of the answer.

The second part is that when I was six years old, I was hit by a truck driven by a school teacher late for school. I was crossing the street to get on the school bus and she ran the bus stop sign. My head connected with the headlight and I was dragged about 25 feet before the vehicle stopped. We lived out in the country, in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains of Washington State, a long way from the nearest hospital able to cope with the seriousness of my injuries. The one I ended up in didn’t have the facilities nor technology they have today to deal with Traumatic Brain Injury. A quick X-ray, shave of my head, and 30 plus stitches sewn across my skull, a few bandages here and there, an aspirin, and I was sent home.

I had to relearn a lot of basic skills, but what was lost was more damaging than what was broken. I had been a prodigy child, talking, reading, and writing years ahead of schedule. I was a whiz at math, already digging into advanced math studies though I was in the first grade. Much of this was gone.

I developed a stammer which I struggle with even today, though few know it. I also suffer from memory problems, which I’ve hidden and battled with every day since then. There were no classes, no physical therapy, no names for what was wrong with me in those days.

In our house, “get over it” was the phrase of the day. Angry because things aren’t going your way? Get over it. Emotional? Get over it. Disabled? Get over it.

Fake it ’til you make it took on new meaning with “get over it” in your ear as a mantra. So I did. With no one to talk to, nor the words to even talk about it, I got over it. I learned all kinds of tricks to deal with my inability to remember numbers and short-term memory problems. I became the master of the “to do list” long before they were in fashion. I studied harder and longer, but I hid it by studying on the school bus, in the woods of our farm, and during school recess so it would look like things were “easy” for me. My mother loved bragging again about how brilliant I was and how school came so easy to me. I don’t think she ever knew how many hours I spent locked up in my room re-learning to write and working on my penmanship because it was so hard to hold a pen and make the letters look right. Eventually, this lead to a hobby of calligraphy, but it was all about me learning to hold a pen and make the letters be readable. Even then, I wanted to be read.

When I discovered her old Olivetti manual typewriter and a scratchy old record album teaching typing, I discovered a more powerful and easy-to-read method of writing. Through that typewriter, I found my first truly best friend: Words. Typing was faster than handwriting for me, and through my typing, I could share my thoughts and feelings on paper. I could tell my story. I could find a way of expressing everything I couldn’t say to anyone. I found a way of releasing all those pend up thoughts and emotions through the words.

Today, words are still my best friends, and I love and abuse them daily. And everything and anything I can do to help the abled and disabled to communicate, through any medium, I’m there.

I don’t share these things publicly, Stephen, but you asked me to. Honestly, it’s just another box people can put me into. The TBI box. The mental case box. The disabled box.

Breaking out of the disabled box was critical for me with “get over it” pounding in your head as a child. While some of the things my mother taught us kids was unintentionally ego-shattering, there is a lot of power in the “get over it” thinking. Now, I see the deeper meaning, which you confirm every day with the Adversity University. Get over it means get on with it. Get past it. Sure, bring it with you if you must, but let it make you stronger, not hold you back. Get one with it. Life’s a-waiting out there. Don’t let it make you stumble or sit before the obstacle. Get over it!

Stephen’s Response:  Wow, that was an incredible story!  Your life as you just described it, is definitely ready-made for a major motion picture.  It had all the elements for a hit.  I totally get the phrase “get over it!”  Ultimately, it’s up to each of us to do just that or wallow in the mud for a little too long of a time, making it progressively more difficult to move forward.  You certainly have been on one heck of a journey but it’s made you who you are today.  WOW.

7. The reason “Lorelle on WordPress” is so successful is because there’s a real human being behind it. If I were to ask you to dig a little further, how would you define who you really are?

A “get over it” person.

I think of myself as a teacher, though I would never presume that label since I honor the teachers of the world on the highest pedestal. I teach by example. If one person follows, I’m happy.

Does that tell you a little bit more than all the personal I’ve just revealed and agonized over sharing?

You certainly have the magic of bringing out the real. I love you for that!

As for the rest, I’m perfectly happy in the miscellaneous box.

Stephen’s Response:  Oh I wouldn’t argue with the fact that you’re a teacher, not for one minute.  You were born to be a teacher, with a big heart.  Even though you can come across as a “hey, get over it,” kind of gal, there’s that heart in there that tells me you really do care.  I got that when I met you at SOBCON08 and in subsequent telephone conversations I’ve had with you since.  I’m grateful that I seem to draw out the “realness” in people but then when you really think about it, it’s not me that’s drawing anything out of you.  It’s you.

Why?

Because you’re authentic.  Remember, one of the criteria for getting an interview here is that the person has to have demonstrated some degree of authenticity.  I seem to be able to pick that out in people pretty accurately.  I have this “sixth sense” about people.  Those who have been interviewed here have proven, time and time again, that my sixth sense has been right on target.

8. I’ve been dying to ask you this question and I think anyone else who knows you would probably be just as curious. You are famous for shelling out advice on everything having to do with WordPress. Because of your authority on the subject matter, I would have thought your blog would be self hosted on a WordPress.org platform. Yet you’re using the free WordPress.com program - how come? (Disclaimer: There’s no judgment whatsoever on this - I am looking to satisfy my curiosity and those of my readers/visitors).

I have self-hosted WordPress blogs, quite a few of them, and a couple of WordPress.com blogs. I told you why I started using WordPress.com, as one of the testers. Why do I stay with WordPress.com?

Why not?

Honestly! Indirectly, the blog makes me more money with the reputation that it has created for me - which was not part of the plan - than any ads I could ever put upon it. With the Sandbox WordPress Theme, I can make it look like anything I want.

I use many WordPress Plugins on my other sites, and continue to be a WordPress Plugin crash-test dummy (I was the FIRST!), though I can’t keep up with all the new Plugins coming out, so I’m more selective when I put on my helmet these days.

But with WordPress.com, none of that matters. It’s not about the pretty. It’s not about the tweaks. It’s not about the gadgets and gizmos and the toys and clutter, though that hasn’t stopped WordPress.com bloggers from cluttering up their blogs fast.

It’s about content.

When I start my WordPress.com blog, it works. I don’t have to worry if this or that Plugin is conflicting with another. I don’t have to worry about upgrades, security vulnerabilities, pushing and pulling this and that. It just works. And I can just write.

What more could a writer want?

The geek in me loves playing with the flexibility and power of WordPress, so I have my self-hosted blogs and consult for those using WordPress to satisfy the geek in me. I can pick it apart and put it back together all I want. But blogging with WordPress.com has given me a freedom I hadn’t realized I was missing.

Before WordPress, my blog was static HTML. Wasn’t everyone’s? It was a LOT of work uploading a new page and making sure all the template files were updated accordingly. I had over 2,000 physical web pages - which was huge in those days - to manage. It was a nightmare.

WordPress made it easier to manage content with the dynamic page generation. I thought I’d died and gone to www heaven! But still, it was about tweaking and fixing, and I spent a lot of time just messing with it - because I could.

As frustrating as it was to have the initial restrictions of WordPress.com, which is what drove away a lot of the early testers and adopters since they were used to having total control, I saw the beauty in focusing on just the content. When the closed invitations ended, I wrote the following in Get Your Free WordPress.com Blog Now:

A WordPress.com blog is all about blogging. It is not about designing, tweaking, adding, customizing, advertising, or personalization. It is about the words. It is about the content. Just blog to your heart’s content, as often as you want, and tell the world what you think, what your opinion is, and help us to learn more about your life and the world around you. Just blog.

I went on to give all the reasons why you should use a WordPress.com blog, but the core was just blog.

Stephen’s Response:  Well, there you go.  Thanks for enlightening us - if anyone ever asks you the same question, simply point them here!

9. What is the best advice you’ve ever received? Given?

Honestly, it’s “get over it.” As much as I struggled with stuffing down emotion and expression as a child, there is something to be said about the power to just “get over it” in your life.

I think about mountain climbers. You are hanging upside down on a rock face and a carbineer breaks. You are still secured to the rock, but you’ve just lost one of your key supports. Do you just cry and whine and fret about what you’ve lost? Do you beg for help? No, you get over it and deal with the reality of what you have to work with. Fretting over what you’ve lost isn’t going to get you off that damn rock.

Only you can get yourself out of that situation. And when we are in that moment, when our life is dependent upon our next choices, it’s amazing how focused and creative you can become.

Stephen’s Response:  AH, there you go again, “get over it.”  Boy, that must have really been drilled in your head over the years!  It’s true - when you truly understand and incorporate that philosophy in your life, it’s very much freeing.  A sense of burden is lifted off your shoulders when you carry it out.  It’s pretty amazing.  All that needs to be done is a mental mind shift and suddenly you feel lighter all around.   It’s another way of taking total responsibility for whatever’s happened and going forward.  It’s one of the most powerful things we can do for ourselves.  Awesome!

10. What was the most embarrassing moment of your life that you can look back at and laugh about now?

When I was a new and early blossoming teenager, some twit boy grabbed me from behind and yelled to all in the school hallway that I stuffed my bra, then ran off. Gathering up my books and papers that had skittered across the hallway at the shock of the assault, I was late for my next class. The teacher demanded a reason for my lateness.

What should I say. One of the problems with my brain injury is that as a child, too much input combined with emotional upheaval could crash my mental hard drive. After the public sexual assault and now the accusations of the teacher, not to mention standing before 30 of my peers who had just witnessed my shame outside, as well as stepping over me crawling on the floor picking things up, my brain locked up. I couldn’t think nor move. He kept insisting, getting rather abusive. I just stood there, frozen with my mussed self and books all askew, listening to the kids snicker.

In retrospect, there were a lot of things I could have said and done, like, “Sorry, I’m late, but I was having my tits massaged.” or “Excuse me but one of your students just got his first feel and I’d like to honor the moment.” Or maybe the truth, “I was just sexually molested and now you are verbally abusing me. I need help.” Unfortunately, my brain was frozen on overload. Even when he told me to sit down, I couldn’t move. I don’t know how long I stood there. It felt like forever. I can’t tell you which was more humiliating, being frozen in place in front of the class with the teacher yelling at me or being molested. Some how I made it to a chair.

Can I look back on it and laugh? Actually, I can, but it changed something else in me. I’ve never been truly humiliated or embarrassed again. I’ve had the worst of the worst. I learned how to retrain my brain so I could compartmentalize conflict, dealing with things one at a time, and I was stronger for the experience. However, a side effect is that I’m no fun in a practical joke, either. You can’t get me and I won’t participate. I’ve had the worst, and I’ve moved on. I got over it. I want to celebrate the joy, not the humiliations, in life.

Stephen’s Response: Oh good Lord, what a most embarrassing day that was for you.  I can remember certain instances in my life when I had a mental freeze.  It used to happen when I found myself in an argument with another individual.  Like what happened to you, my emotions would shoot sky high to the point where my brain didn’t want to cooperate.  Wow, what an experience.  You definitely learned how to retool since then - BRAVO!

(Turning to the audience:  It keeps getting more and more interesting, doesn’t it?  This one here, Lorelle, certainly knows how to keep things moving along, doesn’t she?  At every twist and turn, she has something surprising to share with us.  There was never a dull moment today, was there?)

Turning to Lorelle again:  Thanks for coming to the university and sharing your very interesting background with us.  I know for a fact that several people in this community will have something they can identify with.  It goes to show that all of us have had, to one degree or another, experienced similar situations.  This proves that we’re never really alone throughout our respective journeys.

I truly believe that all of us are spiritual beings having a human experience.  Lorelle, it was great having you here with us - we’ll see you next week!

Until then, enjoy…….(Continue to Part III)

If you liked this post and you want to be notified of the next one, subscribe via Email or Full Text RSS Feed. I would love to have you as part of the community!

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite