Today, I turn 39. As I round this last base toward 40, I'm thinking about where I am now verses where I was just a few short years ago. For those of you that need the Readers Digest version of events, I've spent the last 4 years finding my own bliss and inside of that I have rediscovered my own marriage, embraced my own worthiness, let go of shame, stress and perfectionism, become a far better parent, lost 114 pounds, and become a happier, healthier and more well rounded version of myself..
Easy, right!?!
I could likely spend hours and hours talking about how I got here and the benefits of what I've done. But, instead, I'm going to touch on 5 changes I've made, and 5 rewards that I've experienced as a result of those changes.
Change #1: Embracing Vulnerability
It started with a TED talk. Well, really it started with a several month long nervous breakdown and me searching for something that would help... then a TED talk. The speaker was Brene Brown, and if I could tell Dr. Brown how much she has changed my life, I would. Her insight made more sense to me and my struggles than anything else I have seen. And I started where she starts: Vulnerability.
I, like most people, saw vulnerability as weakness. The idea of admitting when I was struggling would fill me with panic. I existed in a world where my self-worth was bound and tied (like a hostage victim) to the perception that I was doing everything perfectly and that nobody would see the cracks in my armor. I was convinced that if anyone saw me struggling they would determine me fundamentally unlovable. I could go on and on about my "unlovability" issues, but unpacking that box is a bit much for a random blog post. The point here is that I started with embracing vulnerability- admitting when I struggled. I started small... in fact, I can tell you the very first time I did it ( a Facebook post admitting to the world that I felt like a bad mommy because I forgot my daughters Jeans Day at school). This was toe-in-the-water stuff, but I did it. At first, it had to be an act of will... I had to decide to do this thing that was incredibly uncomfortable to me. But, not even slowly, I went from toe to foot to leg to dipping myself fully into the warm water of vulnerability. And this amazing thing happened...
It didn't kill me.
Not only did it not kill me, but I found it completely satisfying. When I said I was struggling, I didn't get back 'OMG- I can't believe you struggle with that! You must be a completely unlovable moron'. Instead, I got a line of people who echoed my struggle with 'Oh, I've been there!', 'I know exactly how you feel', and 'That thing doesn't make you horrible at all!'. The more vulnerable I was, the more people embraced me. My relationships got stronger as a result of me allowing others to see me... really see me- warts and all. If I had to pick just one thing that changed me, it would be embracing vulnerability, and in fact, the rest of my changes list are really just variations of embracing vulnerability. It was a game changer.
Reward #1- I am Flawed and Amazing
It's difficult for me to pick just one reward to attribute to embracing vulnerability, but if my hand is forced, I would say it's this:
The more I admitted I struggled, the more worthy I felt.-
This felt, at first, to be an inverse correlation. How would it be that exposing my flaws ( and there are many) would make me feel like a better person? I can't entirely explain in, but as I peeled away each layer of 'weakness', I was casting aside the shame that protected it for so long. Each failure and struggle stopped being a representation of *who I was*. Guilt is 'I did something wrong'... Shame is "I AM wrong". And when you start to exercise vulnerability and shed the trappings of failure and struggling being the whole of who you are ( and find that people not only don't reject you, but actually embrace you more!), your sense of self-worth begins to skyrocket. I felt like a superhero who was hiding away her cape for so long for fear that someone would judge me for it.
The take away: If you want to feel awesome and be awesome, start by admitting all the ways that you aren't awesome.
Change #2- Authenticity
Like I said, I could likely place everything under the umbrella of vulnerability, but identifying what authenticity looks like and what that means does deserve it's own recognition.
Authenticity is about truth: the truth of what happens, the truth of who we are, the truth of how we feel. The best way to understand authenticity is to understand what it's not.
Authenticity is not avoiding a hard conversation. Authenticity is not pretending that everything is fine because confronting that it's not fine is difficult or uncomfortable. Authenticity is not burying our heads in the sand and hoping that everything will get better with time. And, most importantly, authenticity is not pretending to be the person that we think others want us to be so they will love us.
Reward #2 You Get to Love the REAL Me
When you live authentically- tell the truth, even the ones that don't make you look or feel so great, you are allowing others to make a choice, and it's a really important choice: love the real me... or don't. But, I'm not going to proceed in a relationship with you where I am not me, because that is a relationship based on a lie.
Looking back on my life, I can see now that I have had a lot of relationships like this. Relationships where I twisted myself into being a person I thought others wanted me to be. Looking at it now, I realize that it's sort of like someone falling in love with an actor who they expect to be a character from one of their roles. John Cusack is not Lloyd Dobler. Kate Winslet was not on the Titanic. Any relationship where the expectation that they are those people is a relationship doomed for failure. It's silly to think to yourself "I don't understand why this person doesn't love me wholly and completely when I've completely hidden away everything that I think and feel that they wouldn't like." I mean, really... that's insanity.
The takeaway here: A relationship that is based in truth will always be more rewarding, even if he truths are uncomfortable in a moment.
Change #3 Re-Framing Toxic Relationships
This is hard, because each of these really do relate to one another, so this is a branch to authenticity... but it's an important one.
It is perfectly okay to have expectations from others in your relationships...sorta.
Allow me to explain. It is okay to be authentic with others. It is okay to expect authenticity from others. In fact, these things aren't just okay- they are vital. What is not okay is expecting that others will simply bend to your way. They won't. But, it's important that you set the standard, so long as you understand that the standard will lead to either an authentic relationship or parting ways with someone who either isn't real with you or isn't okay with the real you.
In this it's really important to understand your role in toxic relationships. You need to move beyond the idea of being the victim of someone else's toxicity and look at the role you play there. Very often you will find that you contributed to a toxic environment, either because you were unwilling to be authentic with them or because you are tied to some idea that you had to have a relationship with them that was framed by something other than your actually feelings about them.
This is especially true with family.
I'm not sure if this dates back to a tribal society, where our family became the cornerstone of our survival, but the more I talk to people, the more I find that there are people who feel tied to family members regardless of their actually feelings about those family members. While we can maintain good, positive relationships with people that we pick, we can also have these incredibly toxic, inauthentic relationships that bare little resemblance to actual relationships under the auspices that we 'have to'. This is crap... we don't have to. We are not required to have have a relationship with those people...or, should I say, I are not require to change the standard of relationships with those people.
This is not the same as 'cutting out the cancer'. You shouldn't suddenly start a pink-slip line to every relative you don't have an authentic relationship with, because there is value in family relationships. It means you have to work even harder to FIND an authentic relationship there. You have to start an authentic relationships with them, and ask them to do the same. You have to, in your own way, say "I'm in if you are in, but it's going to be real and I'm going to hold you to the same standard as someone who isn't family". DNA does not bind you to someone and does not bind you to a toxic relationship, and it does not remove the need for authenticity. However, if you can find an authentic relationship there, it has the potential to be one of the greatest relationships you can have.
Reward #3 Quality, Not Quantity
The reward here is simple to understand: you might not have as many relationships, but the ones you have will be worth a great deal more. This is the difference between having 3,000 Twitter followers who scroll right past what you say and having 10 Twitter followers who are engaged, replying and retweeting. The truth is that Twitter ( like life) isn't interesting without engagement and connection, and Twitter doesn't give you any personal satisfaction without notifications of engagement from others.
There is a temptation to revert when the re-framing of relationships goes sour... and it can. People you thought you knew may not like the new 'authentic' you. That has to be okay, and you have to allow them that, because a relationship with the fake you won't give you much anyway... just like John Cusack can't possibly pursue a fulfilling relationship with someone who wants him to stand outside their window blasting Peter Gabriel.
Change #4 Parenting without Perfection
The hardest part of my nervous breakdown was seeing what my behavior was doing to my child. I was setting her up for an impossible standard. Children see all and mimic all. When I was on a path of hiding everything- burying my struggles, hiding behind perfectionism, pursuing inauthentic relationships- I was setting the stage for a child who existed within the same vacuum of shame that I existed in for so long ( if not worse!).
If you think about it, childhood is the perfect space in which to breed shame. In childhood, you are pretty much a prime target for having blame and shame hoisted upon you, while those who put it on you never have to do the same. Being is kid is all about what you do wrong. Your room isn't clean enough... your homework isn't right... don't use those words... bad bad bad bad. But, kids never get to be authentic back. They don't get to say " Hey, mom, I noticed you haven't folded the laundry in three days'. In fact, one of the major perks of being a grownup is that we can be imperfect under someone else's standard and not be called out on it.... while childhood is pretty much constantly being called out on it. And one of the perks of parenthood ( a really flawed perk, in my opinion) is that we hide away our own imperfections and struggles in order to maintain a false sense of authority, demanding "respect" because of our title as mom or dad... even if we don't deserve it.
This is the perfect stage for another inauthentic, toxic relationship. And, if you ask grown children about their parents, it's not difficult to see this.
So, I changed my own behavior and I started owning my flaws to my kid. I stopped hiding my imperfections and struggles and started sharing them with her. In fact, in our family, we have a time at dinner when we share our struggles for the day. We started embracing being honest over being proper. We let go of the idea of respect-for-respects-sake, and started working toward the idea that if we wanted to have a positive impact on our child's life, we had to earn it authentically. We want her to love the real us... not the perfect image we 'allowed' her to see.
And most importantly, we wanted her to know that she was worthy of love, even when ( or especially when) she wasn't perfect.
Reward #4 My Kid Screws Up... and That's Okay
I would love to tell you that I've embraced all of this and I suddenly have a child who does no wrong... but that's not true. My kid messes up and I still get irritated by it. But, we talk about it... really talk about it. And when she messes up, she owns it. She doesn't hide from it. She takes it on, and her ability to embrace the bad feelings makes it that she's not afraid.
And I was raising a child who was afraid of bad feelings.
The differences are something that you would have to be a parent to understand. My daughter tried out for a school play... a child who a few years ago would have been so terrified of failure that she wouldn't even try. Tests don't give her anxiety anymore. Last summer she rode on rollercoasters... because she decided that she wasn't afraid of being afraid. Just last week, at her school's Holiday Show, my daughter was one of about 7 kids from a class of 80 who was up front and performing a choreographed dance to a song. She told us after the fact that the way she was picked to be in that group of dancers was that simply asked who wanted to be brave enough to do it. If you have a child who has been afraid to take risks, you will understand why this filled me with more pride than if she had been told to be one of the dancers because she knew it better than other kids or because she was a better dancer. Think about that for a second- less than 10% of those kids were brave enough to get up there and dance in front of their families.
Telling, right?
So, my child lives in a world where making a mistake is just that. It's not tied to her self-worth. It's not about how lovable she is. Her parents actively work to earn her love and respect. We want our kid to like who we are, and we don't demand love from her based on our position or fear. When we talk to her, she really listens... she doesn't just listen because she's afraid of the consequences for not listening. And, most importantly, she has a mom who is willing to admit when she is wrong, and isn't afraid of the risk of that. She is braver because I am braver.
Change #5 Stop Towing Someone Else's Line
I think that if there is one thing that has changed fundamentally about it, it's that I don't hold on to other people's ideas about rightness or wrongness like I use to. This is a big one, so bear with me for a minute.
I use to carry around this idea that good and bad were binary. Either you are A, B, C, and D and you were good or your were X, Y and Z and your were bad. You fell into a certain camp, and if you thought A and B, you couldn't also think Y and Z without being rejected.
What is funny about this is that is that my perception isn't wrong... this is how people operate. People do operate under the idea that this *IS* the party line, and if you don't agree with each and every point in the party line, you are not a part of the party and will be rejected.
The difference now? I don't care.
I can agree with A, B, and C, but not agree with D, and not be afraid of the consequences of not agreeing with D. Also, I can agree with X and Y... or even points of X and points of Y. I can work to understand the position of others without diminishing them or reducing their ideas to soundbites. I can look at facts objectively and form my own opinions and not be afraid of rejection by my peers.
I am done being shamed from having thoughts and feelings that you don't agree with. And I am done shaming others for doing the same.
Result #5 I Am Enough, and So Are You
This is all about embracing vulnerability, authenticity and the letting go of shame, and speaks far more about my relationship to others than it does about me. Because, for the first time, I'm willing to listen to what people have to say without my own filter. When I stopped towing other people's lines, I was able to finally form opinions of my own... and find common ground where I didn't before. I have a desire to be really seen by other, but even more intensely, I have a desire to see who others really are. In my asking of others to stop assigning values to me, I have stopped assigning values to others. Now, I will hear your opinion and thoughts and try to understand your position, instead of just chalking up your ideas as stupid, uneducated or worthless. I will practice active empathy, instead of just asking others to have empathy for me.
I have stopped simply waiting for my turn to talk.
The take-away from this one is simple: in my own journey toward worthiness, I have discovered the worthiness of others. I work to see them in the way I now desire to be seen. I lived my life for so long in fear of being reduced by others, only to realize that I was reducing others, and when I stopped allowing that fear to control me I was finally able to stop letting my ideas control others.
This feels like a good place to end, but like all great lists, there has to be a bonus. So...
Bonus: I Am Worthy Because I Am Worthy
Dr. Brown says it best: The people who have real connect with others have that because they believe they are worthy of connect. It is that simple and that complicated.
My connections are stronger and I am stronger because I believe I am worthy of that much. I am vulnerable because my flaws are not tied to my worthiness. I am authentic because I believe that the real honest me is worthy of being real and honest. I am in real, non-toxic relationships because I believe I am worthy of real relationships. I parent with imperfection because I believe that myself and my child have worth regardless of everything being perfect. I have expanded by universe of understanding that even a differing opinion has worth, whether it's my opinion or yours.
A few years ago, I might have looked at my life and said I was lucky. That's not how I feel today. My life and my happiness is not happenstance or randomness. I decided to have this life. I made a decision to have enough compassion for myself to knock down those walls and rebuild them into something better, and I am continuing to do that everyday. Year 38 was way better than year 37, and I am walking into year 39 confident that it will be even better than year 38. This year has been a full of ups and downs, but it has been the perfect backdrop to discover how these things have changed me, and to challenge this new way of thinking and find out exactly how far it can go... and apparently it can go much further than even I anticipated.
I kicked 2016's ass... I plan on kicking 2017's ass. But, for now, I'm going to go and enjoy some Melting Pot with my sweet husband and enjoy being me.
