When my mother died in April of 2025, it was hard, partly because she was my last parent. Both of mine are gone now, and my sense of mortality grew more intense. But Mama was thirty years older than me, so the finish line still felt far away. Then Dolly Parton died in August, at the top of her game, with a Broadway show, a hotel, and new recordings still in the works. Dolly was only fourteen years older than I am. And without realizing it, I went into a full-fledged panic.
When my mother died in April of 2025, it was hard, partly because she was my last parent. Both of mine are gone now, and my sense of mortality grew more intense. But Mama was thirty years older than me, so the finish line still felt far away. Then Dolly Parton died in August, at the top of her game, with a Broadway show, a hotel, and new recordings still in the works. Dolly was only fourteen years older than I am. And without realizing it, I went into a full-fledged panic.
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Welcome to No Time to Be Timid, where we help artists and entrepreneurs find the courage to make their mark now. You know all the voices in your head that tell you that you can't? We're the voice that tells you that you can. Slow down, spend some time with us, and ignite your creative courage.
When my mother died back in April of 2025, it was hard. And one of the reasons why it was hard is she was my last parent. Both of my parents are gone now. And so mortality, the idea of mortality really kicked in. The buffer was gone. I am the next in line. But Mama was thirty years older than I was, and so the finish line seemed pretty far away. But when Dolly Parton died back in August, it really rattled my cage. She was at the top of her game. I mean, she's got a Broadway show coming out in December. She was opening a hotel. She was still recording. And suddenly she's gone. And as it turns out, Dolly was only fourteen years older than I am. Fourteen years is a lot fewer years than thirty. And without realizing it, I began to go into a full-fledged panic. Now, I didn't realize that I was in a panic. But what I did realize is that two really important relationships to me were very strained. And I have been told that if you're having problems with one person, you know that that can happen. If you're having problems with two people, things are starting to get suspicious. And if you're having problems with three people, then you're basically a jerk. So I had to figure out what was going on. And I do have enough self-awareness to realize that I needed to see what I was bringing to the table. And here's what I figured out: in my mind, I was going to die in fourteen years. And so that meant everything had to be fixed and perfect. There was no room for error. I'm — fourteen years, I'm going in fourteen years. So how that played out with my husband was complete impatience.
I didn't have time to wait around for all the bumps in our marriage to get, you know, leveled out. I needed things to be, you know, on track right now. And because, of course, I was going to die in fourteen years. And so there was this incredible pressure to make sure everything was good. How that played out with my producer was there was no time to make any mistakes. Everything had to work the first time around. No experimenting, only results. And that's the complete opposite of the creative process. In the creative process, you play, you give yourself room to screw up. Some of the best results happen because you made some mistakes along the way. Needless to say, I was not that pleasant to be around. But I had a come-to-Jesus moment, almost, really, and things now seem to be back on track. You know, I'm not as urgent as I was, which is good, because this month I'm actually celebrating a birthday. And quite frankly, I don't care how old I am, because creatively I'm not winding down a bit. And there's some real pluses to being older. Some of us actually start to find our stride. The writer David Brooks wrote an article in The Atlantic, which was entitled "You Might Be a Late Bloomer."And he starts out — I mean, he's revealing sort of the life secrets of people who flailed around when they were young but succeeded by old age. And he starts out talking about Cézanne. No slacker there. And then there's also this book by Rod Judkins that's called The Art of Creative Thinking: 89 Ways to See Things Differently. And in that book, he talks about Georgia O'Keeffe. And he says, O'Keeffe was already in her fifties when she started to gain significant attention. And throughout her sixties and seventies, her fame grew gradually. Her most important exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art did not come until 1970, when she was in her eighties. She didn't grow old and mine, because her enthusiasm never waned. At the age of eighty-four, when she was famous, O'Keeffe was rejuvenated by a twenty-six-year-old potter, Juan Hamilton. Again, she is eighty-four, this guy's twenty-six. The two scandalized their neighbors with their liaison. They ignored their notoriety, traveled the world together, and invigorated each other. They were together until O'Keeffe died at the age of ninety-eight. And then he ends his chapter with this, quote from Edvard Munch: "My breakthrough came very late in life, really only starting when I was fifty years old. But at that time I felt as though I had the strength for new deeds and ideas."
Every day it's somebody's birthday, so happy birthday to us. And every day we wake up and we're upright, it's a win. It's a new chance to make something. So gather your strength and explore your ideas, find your voice, and do the work that only you can do.
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No Time to Be Timid is written and produced by me, Tricia Rose Burt. Our episodes are produced and scored by Adam Arnone of Echo Finch. And our executive producers are Amy Grant, Nancy Perot, and Sage Wheeler. I'd also like to thank contributors to my Fractured Atlas fiscal sponsorship, which helps make this podcast happen. No Time to Be Timid is a presentation of No Time to Be Timid Productions.