I knew Butler by another name in my childhood in Tennessee, she was in my brother’s class, three years older than me. Three years is a chasm in age when you are young.

I recall so clearly how I just instinctively knew that she was the most genuine person I had ever met. Kind. Sweet. Loving. She was what I imagined my mother must have been like at 15, 16, 17, 18. It made sense that my mother was so loving to, and even a little protective of, her when she would hang out at our house after Friday night football games. Butler was beautiful, popular, and part of the gang but she seemed to me to be just a little more evolved, a bit more real. I wanted to be just like her when I grew up! She was so willing to be herself. Authentic. Unwavering to the party crowd. You felt she always had more to say than she was saying, as if she had a story but maybe too shy to tell it? Not the right audience?

I remember being nervous to ask for advice. But I had to. I had to know her secret for being cool but not too cool. I was popular, too, but I wanted to have permission to not be a follower. She was not a follower. She had her own place in the world. I wanted my own place. I knew at 9 years old I wanted to work in Hollywood. I was always looking ahead. I wanted to be something more than a kid. It took a lot of nerve for my 13 or 14-year old self to ask. But I did. I had to. I asked, “I don’t want to always do what everyone else is doing, how do I just be me? How do I not give into all the pressure to party and to fit in?”

She looked me straight in the eye – oh, no, what’s the answer going to be? Did I just make a fool of myself? Should I be embarrassed?

She answered in her typically calming tone that always made me feel like everything would be okay, that I would survive being a teen, “You don’t need to worry about what others want you to do. You can just be yourself”.

Oh my God, she gave me permission to be me. To be awkward. To be quirky. To be the kid who wanted everyone to be happy and laugh at her silly stories. And truthfully, as the high school fun house, I didn’t want to be the kid who threw up in the backyard. Sure my mom always said this, she loved me unconditionally… but this was someone THREE whole years older. She had 36 months of wisdom that I did not. 36 months in teen years is as if she had climbed a mountain to meet the Dalai Lama, she had walked alongside of Moses, her comment had the weight of the world on it. I mean, really, this was monumental.

Let’s stop for a moment. How wonderfully rare is that gift?

I have kept her humble advice in my head for the past four decades. Through the college years, through those early hardship years when I moved to Hollywood, through the relationships, the breakups, the good times, the bad times, the loving times, the learning times, the passionate times, the spiritual quests I have taken and even in the most critical of times – the deaths of my brother and mother. Debbie/Butler Steltemeier’s permission was enough to bring solace.

In her acknowledgment of me in that one answer, she was a defining brick in the foundation that became me – a woman who does not follow the pack, who seeks to help others, to laugh, to love, to create, to honor, to be me. I am in my 50s and I think of all the times that I have given the same advice. All because I had permission from my mother – and from a teenager who probably gave the answer to get rid of me so she could hang with her friends. My life has been defined by not being like everyone else.

And she never knew.

But I did.

I recently purchased “Bashful” from the L.Ross Gallery in Memphis – this is not one of her larger-scaled whimsical, vibrant works, but the simplest of any work of hers that I had ever seen. The gallery owner asked me about the purchase. She noted that it was not typical of her work. And I replied, “that is why”. I told her that I felt a sincere connection between the artist and the animal, as if she had captured a split-second in time when they were speaking without speaking.

When I now look at this charming work on my dining room wall, I believe I am privy to a moment when the artist felt something more than whimsy. She was being true to the subject as well as to herself. Or maybe she painted it in a hurry so she could go hang out with her friends. But this time, I don’t think so. The  intricacy in the lines, the honesty in the eyes, and the bashfulness of the face confirm that this artist is the girl I knew so long ago. This is the story she wanted to tell.

“Bashful” by Butler Steltemeier