Where did that sparkle go?

Last night we were watching the show, Rita Rocks. If you are not familiar with it, it's a comedy about a wife and mom that lives a typical suburban life but on Friday evenings, she gets together with a group of various people(her mail carrier, an unemployed neighbor, and her teenage daughter's boyfriend) and plays in a garage band (literally in her garage). I had never seen the initial episode before and it happened to be the one that was on last night. Anyway, there was this great scene where Rita is sitting on the floor of her closet at 3AM looking through old photo albums. Her husband wakes up and finds her in there and asks her what she is doing. Now I don't remember the dialogue exactly but basically she said, "Nobody knows me as Rita anymore, I am your wife, the girls' mom, the teenage daughter's probation officer, I don't know who I am anymore". When he asked her what she was looking for in the photo albums, she said, "I am looking for my sparkle, you know that sparkle I had in my eye when I was in my Bengals Tribute Band."

Anyway, she ends up getting her old guitar out of the garage and she and her friends play an old Otis Redding song, "Try a Little Tenderness". When she first starts, she is very hesitant and tentative but as the song goes on, she loosens up, lets go and really gets into it and is having a blast, then realizes that her husband has been standing there watching. She stops and becomes very self conscious. He tells her that she has her sparkle back...

Now, I have just done a hurendous job of describing the show, and have totally made it sound corny and you will probably just be better off watching it yourself(you can probably find it on hulu, or on demand, or on a re-run---it's on Lifetime network at 8PM)

So to bottom line all of this and get to the point, I totally identify with this character. She is a woman, who has lost herself, not by any tragic event, but just by living life, and a basically happy life at that. She has everything she could ask for, a great husband, 2 daughters, a home, and friends. What more could she ask for? She realizes though, that in being everything to everyone else, she has become nothing to herself. She wants her own identity, her own voice, her sparkle back....

We all get that special sparkle in our eye from something, Rita's is music, mine comes when I am writing or sketching. What about you? Have you lost your sparkle? If so, consider spending some time reflecting on what is missing... Did you use to write? Sketch? Paint? Sculpt? Sing or play an instrument? Can you make some small changes to allow time for these activities once again?