I have a bit of a girl crush on Dawn French these days. She's absolutely (and justifiably) unapologetic about her waist size, and funny as a stitch to boot. You can't beat that in a lady.
My Beloved and I devoured The Vicar of Dibley after Thomas died, watching back-to-back episodes day after day to soothe our wounded souls. Britcoms have proven to be an excellent salve, we've discovered. The British (and undeniably better) version of The Office had similar healing properties.
But Dawn is my girl.
I've been reading her autobiography, "Dear Fatty", for the last couple of weeks. Beyond her obvious comedic prowess and success in her field, I didn't know anything about her, so Dear Fatty has been an interesting read. And a funny one, of course. Written in letter form to friends, family and, on occasion, to Madonna and 1960s teen idols, it's a fascinating way to learn more about her.
Of course, I should have known that no life passes without sorrow. No soul makes it through life unscathed. And she is no exception. Her father committed suicide when she was 19. Many of the letters are addressed to him, posthumous ramblings about things in her life that he has missed since he left. Very touching and bittersweet.
One passage struck me so much that I dog-eared the page on which I found it - something I almost never do, along with cracking the spines of my books.
It was this:
"My theory was that if I behaved like a confident, cheerful person, eventually I would buy it myself, and become that...It's a process of having faith in the self you don't quite know you are yet, if you see what I mean. Believing that you will find the strength, the means somehow, and trusting in that, although your legs are like jelly. You can still walk on them and you will find the bones as you walk. Yes, that's it. The further I walk, the stronger I become."
And isn't this what we all do, we babyloss survivors? We just keep walking. We walk until we've figured out who we are now. We walk until believe we are as strong as they tell us we are. We walk until we find our way. We just keep walking.
God, I love Dawn French.
3 comments:
Yup. She is awesome, no doubt about it :)
Beautiful quote.
One of my favourite French moments was when she was on a Parkinson interview with Tom Jones.
Hang on, I'll see if I can youtube it as me no funny in writing.
Here is the first bit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01nDA-YwwiE&feature=related
and let's see if I can find the second. ......Sadly I can't which is a shame, because you see how she is wearing trousers with a long shirt over it? Well over the trousers and under the long shirt she has on many many pairs of large cotton tails and when Tom starts singing she wiggles out of them, one at a time, swings them round and flings them on him.
They billow! And he doesn't know what to do!
That was a lovely passage, now I'm off to figure out who she is...
Glad to see you writing again and your kitties are gorgeous!
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