Pioneering Courage
Dare Everything
I am consistently wrestling with old family wounds. They’re mine but they’ve also been passed down through generations.
I imagine myself physically wrestling them to the ground, hairpins flying, gnashing of teeth, breathless and loud squealing.
Then I chuckle at my own sense of the dramatic. And I know there will never be a victor, as some of the wounds heal and some come back up again. I also know that embracing them with love is the best option.
I have a vivid imagination.
When I’m triggered, when I’m angry, when I feel like I’m being ignored, I’ve recently been daring myself to ask, what’s underneath?
It’s difficult in the moment to think of these often painful situations as opportunities, in fact, my desire to numb in those particular times, is almost insatiable. I have spent many years numbing the difficult feelings, but also, the beautiful ones. I missed a lot.
Last week I did something brave. I facilitated a conversation, a circle, about the experiences of racialized folks in rural Ontario at a local university. I knew only one of the participants beforehand, but also asked the others to meet on a Zoom call ahead of time, for a bit of a test run and to build trust with one another. As a white woman, with all the privilege that affords me, I felt that my place was to encourage, empower and amplify and was conscious of how my approach could shift power.
Driving there, I wasn’t nervous. I listened to poetry (an audiobook from David Whyte that I borrowed with my library card with Hoopla), took deep breaths and admired the lovely weather and the landscape on the way.
I am aware that I have a gift for this, for leaning into vulnerability and being authentic. I ask to be a vessel for the words and to heal my fear-based thoughts so I may receive and be a vessel for the healing.
And there have been times when I’ve been embarrassed, did and/or said the wrong thing, been closed to other folks’ ideas/comments sensing, somehow, that I knew what was ‘right’.
I have fallen flat on my face.
But after licking my wounds a bit, allowing myself to feel through it, giving myself some grace to be a healing human, I dare again, I keep daring to be seen.
The space between my courageous steps have been wide. On more than one occasion, I have sunk into a self-created flailing chaos, linked to my fixation on failing, miserably, what I often consider in those moments, most of my life.
Funny how the inventory of missteps and hurts we may have caused is the most easily and readily accessible. And the things we have done gracefully, the folks we reach, assist, sit beside or somehow lovingly touch, are harder to remember.
But this time I felt confident, more confident than I have felt since I was a child.
I was elated how the circle was received and I truly felt like the words moved through me, simply because I got out of my own way. Two young Black woman asked me for a hug and said how refreshing the conversation was in a university setting. I was humbled.
My husband was away at the time and when I texted him that things had gone exceptionally well, he texted back, “I’m proud of you,”. I received that. And I believed it, which I haven’t done in a long time either.
I grew up in a family that celebrated. Birthdays, holidays, being with each other, a day at the beach, all cause for a celebration. But in my family, that included booze and/or food.
When I arrived home to our rescue puppy, my husband away for the night, I wanted to celebrate. Out came the wine, the chocolate, the chips. I sat in front of the TV and gorged myself. And felt awful about it later.
What was underneath?
It took me awhile of thinking about it, half a week, to figure out that numbing with food and booze, in this case, was my way of pushing down my discomfort with my unconscious need for external validation. Intellectually, I know seeking accolades outside myself is a voracious, cavernous, bottomless hole that is never filled, but my autopilot has always been to get that validation from outside myself (never really feeling like it was ‘enough’). And I learned from my family that numbing that feeling with ‘celebration’ was perfectly okay.
But what was underneath, THAT?! What is the real source of the discomfort? There had to be more, more excavating to be done.
Then it hit me.
It felt scary TO BE SEEN. It felt uncomfortable to be seen as my highest self, my true self, because in the past, I’d been discouraged from shining too brightly, being too ‘proud’ of myself, being too full of myself.
Full of myself, exactly what is perhaps required to feel fulfilled and therefore not feel the need to seek validation outside myself, because I am already full.
This was a big breakthrough for me, one I talked about with my husband on our conservation area walks with our puppy.
That doesn’t mean I won’t ever have chocolate or wine again, nor celebrate myself but I am conscious now, of how I was using it to fill a void, in that moment. Filling myself up with food and booze because I was uncomfortable to be full of myself.
My intuition, my highest self, my soul self always tells me when there is more to a story (the stories I make up and/or want to leave buried). I’m finally listening now.
And this epiphany led to me writing a poem called The One Who is Aware, which I posted here.
All of this is pioneering courage.
You and I, we are changing our ancestral line, we are disrupting the patterns we’ve carried for eons. This is no small feat!
THAT is cause for celebration!