The gift in waiting for my book to come back from the editor

I seem to have made myself sick with worry: sore throat, a sinus infection, two earaches and an abscessed tooth. And yes, I know that, sometimes, you just get sick: Sometimes a cold is a cold and not a metaphor for some other kind of 'congestion.' But this is not one of those times. This is severe throat chakra inflammation: it's about my voice and my editor's silence. My editor has been working on my book proposal for a long time. And yes, a book proposal is a big project: 25 pages of positioning, branding, projection and platform. But four months is too long."Why do we need this?" I argue. "Why can't we just send the book?""This is how it's done," she says, soothing me off the ceiling.Writing the book was glorious, soul-drenching: It was sitting at the center of the flow of the Universe and letting it wash through me, wave after wave after wave.But now that it's done, there's this.... waiting.Patience, Proposing and Selling: The three subjects which, on the report card of my life,  will be marked with the same grade: A big fat D for Don't like it. I feel as if I am standing on a turntable, spinning for inspection. I mean, couldn't we just slip quietly into the agent's office and slide the manuscript under the office door?  Shouldn't the work speak for itself?Every day, I'm thinking: Maybe this is the wrong editor. Maybe she's mistaken. Maybe I should self-publish. Which (probably) means that this is exactly the right editor, exactly the right timing. That this is exactly where I need to be right now: sitting in the silence and facing some things.I am facing my fear

• Of the family curse:The inventions my husband cannot seem to get to market, the stories that crowd my father's head as he sits, unable to use his hands, watching the Hudson River slide past his window, the years of unfinished work that clogs my mother's office.
• Of my own imperfection:What? You mean you are not the guru, goddess, Queen of the Universe you pretended to be? I hate you and your stupid book. Oh, the ego drama this has caused, including the tendency of my work to spiralin on itself, as I revise and revise and revise it to shreds.
• Of my own tendency to quit (aka enduring another creative abortion):Like the novel that I sent, ten years ago, to an agent, that was accepted. The one with the word Luminous, scrawled, by my editor, across the cover page - the one that is sitting, a stack of bent pages, in the someday box beneath this  desk.

I am facing my dread (aka advanced fear)

• That this book will not be published.
• That this book will be published,and I will have to stand on the stage of my own life and defend itas if it were true.As if it (and I) really were made of magic.

Fear that if I don't do this, it will become a burden for the people I love:As when I woke in the middle of the night thinking: If I die, Katie will find my book on my laptop, in the folder marked, Everything, and then, she will take care of it. Flooded with relief, I leaned back into my pillows. A moment later, Dear God, I gasped. Don't let me do that to her - or to anyone else.Which is when I woke up to what the waiting and the branding and the $%&^* book proposal are teaching me:This project is mine.No one else can (or should) carry it.I must carry it in light- not slide it under the door and flee, as if I were doing something shameful.I must let myself become visible.I must realize this was never about me.It's not about applause, attention, approval or cash. (Well, it is a little bit about cash - I should be paid for my hard work. But it's not about that.)I must give this gift to myself and through myself to the world.None of this awareness would have risen without the journey of writing this book.Now, bearing it forth, across the edge of fear, as if I love it. As if I honor it. As if I am proud of it, is the final step.Writing this book set into motion a healing that has vibrated up and down the generations of our family.Water into wine level healing.And more miracles than I will ever be able to keep track of.And at the heart of the healing is this writing. And at the heart of this writing, this silence.This silence.I've been waiting for this silence.Waiting to open to it.Waiting to fill it or not fill it.Waiting to reveal the gift on the other side - the secret, the prize, the pearl.It's this:Here I am. Here you are. This is my book.There is nothing to do, nothing to say, no right or wrong way to position myself.This isn't about branding.it's about being - nothing more and nothing less than what I am.In the precious peace of this moment: This sunlight, this pen with its purple ink - this hand moving it across the crisp white page.Publish or not publish. Arrive or never arrive. Strive, push, fret, worry myself sick. It makes no difference at all. I have already received the gift.