layers

i love nail polish. i have a whole bag of it. my aunt C taught me how to put on nail polish. she would paint my nails, put on music, and then we would dance around the living room shaking our hands to help the polish dry. for years, i had no idea that it would just dry on its own. i thought you had to do the nail polish dance, or at least shake your hands around and blow on your nails. 

i have a problem with nail polish though ... i can't seem to keep it on. i do my nails and within a few hours they are chipped ... within a day they are chipped badly and i have to take the polish off, or touch up the corners and tips of my nails. 

my toes, on the other hand ... well they get chipped or the polish rubs off, but i am too lazy to get out the nail polish remover and scrub my toe nails clean. so i paint another layer on top. and when that one starts to peel off, i paint another layer on top of that. 

layers. 

i think we paint layers on ourselves when we start to peel or chip. when we start to show our true selves, we panic and cover it up. just like when my nails start to show through the shiny enamel colour, i repaint to hide my nail. in the same way, we hide our true selves for fear of being vulnerable. 

“If we’re wrapping ourselves up to conceal any vulnerability, whatever happens to us has to go through all those extra layers. Sometimes love doesn’t even reach where we truly live.” ― Alexandra Katehakis

being known, truly known, is the scariest most beautiful feeling in the world. peeling back layers of colour, layers of protection, layers of identities, to reveal the truth underneath ... letting yourself be seen for who you truly are with all your "perfect imperfections" ... this is what it means to be vulnerable. this is what it means to be authentic. this is what it means to be loved. 

not all layers are there for protection from the outside world. some of our layers are simply experiences that make us who we are. each experience adds another layer to our life story. 

A grownup is a child with layers on.

Woody Harrelson

growing up is like learning that you don't need to do the nail polish dance to dry the colourful polish. each experience adds a layer of truth to ourselves. each event adds a layer to our life. 

will you peel your layers? remove them? paint over them? how will you expose yourself past your layers to let the world in and to let yourSELF out?

be kind to yourself, 

It's our challenges and obstacles that give us layers of depth and make us interesting. Are they fun when they happen? No. But they are what make us unique. And that's what I know for sure... I think.Ellen DeGeneres

xoxo

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betrayal and marbles

i remember my first ever betrayal by a friend. i was in kindergarten. we were sitting in circle and the teacher was talking. i whispered to my friend that the doctor said i didn't have to wear glasses anymore ... the teacher yelled at us for talking and asked if we were talking on topic. my friend could have lied and said yes. she lied all the time. but she didn't. she said "no" so i got yelled at some more. 

i remember that feeling of my heart sinking. of knowing that my best friend didn't have my back. 

so what do we do with these feelings of betrayal? i want to share with you a really important part of Brene Brown's Daring Greatly. she wrote about trust as a jar of marbles. 

when someone does something trusting, we add marbles to their jar, and when we are betrayed we take marbles out. she wrote:

When we think about betrayal in terms of the marble jar metaphor, most of us think of someone we trust doing something so terrible that it forces us to grab the jar and dump out every single marble. What’s the worst betrayal of trust? He sleeps with my best friends. She lies about where the money went. He/she chooses someone over me. Someone uses my vulnerability against me (an act of emotional treason that causes most of us to slam the entire jar to the ground rather than just dumping out the marbles.)

All terrible betrayals, definitely, but there is a particular sort of betrayal that is more insidious and equally corrosive to trust. In fact, this betrayal usually happens long before the other ones. I’m talking about the  betrayal of disengagement. Of not caring. Of letting the connection go. Of not being willing to devote time and effort to the relationship. The word betrayal evokes experiences of cheating, lying, breaking a confidence, failing to defend us to someone else who’s gossiping about us, and not choosing us over other people.

These behaviors are certainly betrayals, but they’re not the only form of betrayal. If I had to choose the form of betrayal that emerged most frequently from my research and that was the most dangerous in terms of corroding the trust connection, I would would say disengagement. When the people we love or with whom we have a deep connection stop caring, stop paying attention, stop investing and fighting for the relationship, trust begins to slip away and hurt starts seeping in.

Disengagement triggers shame and our greatest fears - the fears of being abandoned, unworthy, and unlovable. What can make this covert betrayal so much more dangerous than something like a lie or an affair is that we can’t point to the source of our pain - there’s no event, no obvious evidence of brokenness. It can feel crazy-making.

so what do we DO? how do we recover when we notice the marble jar is empty?

we trust ourselves in asking for what we need. we notice the people whose jars are over-flowing and we focus on those relationships. we let go of our fear of being abandoned and alone and we turn to our full-jarred relationships. because those are the people who will fill your life with more than simply marbles. 

as well as remembering my first betrayal, i also remember the first time someone had my back. it was my cousin D. i was the youngest kid on the street and all the older kids used to tease me and bully me. i had these shoes ... these really cool red plastic sandals. and the boys on the street would tease me by calling them orange. i know how dumb that sounds. i really do. but i was only 7 years old and it was one of the many things the boys did to make me cry. they seemed to take pleasure in my tears. tying me up to the tree with skipping ropes, trying to get me to eat poison berries ... anyway ... my cousin D was visiting. he is 3 years older than me, so he seemed like a big grown-up teenager to me though he was only 10. and he stood up to those boys and told them that the shoes were, in fact, red. RED. 

such a small thing. but it has stayed with me for 30 years. D remembers it too. his jar is over-flowing with marbles. 

who are your full-jar people? how do they add marbles to the jar? what will you do to add marbles to theirs?

be kind to yourself,

xoxo

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Personal Truth and being a fraud

wise woman wrote to me yesterday and said ...

Getting to know our personal truth can be extremely challenging ... We lie to ourselves as often, if not more, than we lie to others. And sharing your personal truth can be even more of a challenge. 

But without it, where would we be?!

so what is truth? truth is the real facts, the quality or state of being true. truth is the feeling in your gut that tells you the difference between right and wrong. truth is the little voice in your head that screams (sometimes silent muffled screams) when something is disingenuous. 

personal truth is the story inside of you that you try to protect others from knowing, because you are afraid if they really knew you, they would leave. personal truth are the thoughts in your head about yourself that are valid (not the voice of the inner critic click here and here for my posts about the inner critic ...). denial is very powerful, and sometimes our personal narratives are disingenuous. or as wise woman said, "I think we're good at self deception though ... our 'wishful personal truth' narrative might not always be accurate." 

telling the difference is the biggest challenge of our lives. 

so how do we tell the difference? how do we combat the feeling of being a fraud?

i usually feel like i am faking my way through the things that i need to do. faking being competent at my job. faking knowing how to sing. faking knowing anything at all. sometimes i feel like a fraud because i borrow ideas from other people. 

other times, being a fraud means not being truthful to myself. when i am trying to be something that someone else wants me to be. and that is a scary place to be. 

wise woman said "part of being fraudulent is difficulty owning how brilliant we are." ... this rings so true for me. 

part of being fraudulent is difficulty owning how worthy we are ...

difficulty owning how deserving we are ...

difficulty owning that we are enough ...

i am often terrified to speak my truth for fear of being misunderstood, for fear of being judged, for fear of being vulnerable. or for fear of being found out that i am really a fraud. 

however, lately i have been letting myself be seen from the inside out, and surprisingly, no ceilings have fallen on my head, no lightening has struck me down, and more importantly, no one has left me after i have shared (bared) my personal truth - after finding out who i truly am. 

our truth makes us whole. our truth makes us authentic. when we begin to embody our truths, we can move through the world with more confidence and ease. our truth is our personal narrative. it is how we recall our lives. it is subjective and purely, solely, ours. 

as mark twain said, "a lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes [...] if you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."

be truthfully kind to yourself,

xoxo

...

the number yellow ...

sometimes trying to explain what is happening to me these days is like trying to spell the number yellow. 

there isn't really a why. 

there is a just an is. 

why don't i want to go to work? why don't i want to do anything when i am at work? why don't i enjoy singing anymore? why don't i want to get out from under my blanket cocoon? why don't i want to get off the couch? or leave the house? 

there is no one answer for anything of these things. 

nothing "happened" to set this in motion. nothing changed. 

except me. and my willingness to be vulnerable and to "lean into" the darkness. 

i was reading some poetry that i wrote when i was a teenager. in my memory, it was angst. but reading it now, all i can say is ... HOLY CRAP I WAS SAD !!! i was so, so, so sad. my poems are dark, and lonely, and sad, and longing for something. longing to be heard, to feel loved, to feel understood. 

looking back, i can see that i have suffered from depression my entire life. it just wasn't identified as depression. and i found ways to self-medicate and to repress my feelings, and to stuff them down with food. 

there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and not just because butterflies don't get to choose to morph from their caterpillar state and leave their cocoon ... there is a light at the end of the tunnel because i am not going through this alone. i am getting the help and the support that i need. 

finally. 

i am finally DEALING with the things that i have never dealt with. dealing with the things that i just ignored. 

and it's challenging. 

and i am doing it anyway. 

but it will take patience. from myself and from the people around me. people who have gotten used to me picking up my pieces and just dealing. 

right now, i am still trying to find all my pieces. and some of them are lost. and i will find them. and it is going to take time. 

oh, and one more thing that brings the light ... 

there is a way to spell the number yellow. 

it actually CAN be done. 

the number yellow is actually spelled F-I-V-E. i learned my numbers as colours and still think in colours when i add and subtract. 

i guess that means that even the most complicated situation has an explanation, even if it is tricky to understand. and even if it only makes sense in my own head. 

to me, 

5 + 5 = orange. 

and 

brown - red = 6. 

maybe things aren't nearly as complicated as they first appear. maybe i need to be patient with myself, and listen ...

                                                                  cuisenaire rods link

xoxo

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