It’s Christmas. Lights, decorations, home, family, tiny baby Jesus in the Nativity, tree, gifts. Under the tree there is a beautifully wrapped gift with your name on it. You check the tag. It’s from a friend you love and trust. How did they get that under the tree without me knowing? Christmas morning arrives and you’re exhausted from all the preparing and wrapping and wildly excited kids rising at 3am. Finally it’s your turn to open your unexpected gift. Your children are playing with their new toys so you take a moment to guess what this might be. A flutter of excitement flits through your belly as if you are five again while you undo the red bow. You gasp as the open box reveals a stunning necklace. You call to your husband, look, look what I got, help me put it on. You reach into the packaging to pull it out and it’s incomplete. There is only the decorative half in the box. No clasps or enough chain to make it all the way around your neck. The two of you are confused and befuddled and you begin to feel a little upset. Why would a dear friend only give you half a necklace rendering it useless? You can’t do anything with it, it’s not practical and therefore looses all of it’s beauty. You put it back in the box and head towards the kitchen to baste the turkey with a lot less love than you were feeling 5 minutes ago. I really hope you have never experienced a gift like that, but every single one of us has experienced people like that. A beautifully presented person with only half their heart available. Of course that doesn’t render the person useless, but it does make, at some point or another, for strained relationships.
For approximately 80% of my life I kept 65% of me hidden and unavailable. I like math. I’m good at it. I like science and art and sports and every possible expression of creativity. I’m good at them too. I’m an attractive woman. I present extremely well. But give all of me to anyone? Not a chance. Too risky, too dangerous. I had a strong shield of you-can’t-come-in around my heart wrapped in a sweet smile of a bow. People thought they did have all of me, they thought they fully knew me. They didn’t know that there was hurt and anger simmering right under that smile. I thought it was necessary to hide the pieces of me that would make others uncomfortable, that people wouldn’t like me if they knew the real me. I assumed that I didn’t need to do the work of uncovering my hiddenness, that the right people would know what I was thinking without me having to actually say anything. My husband, close friends, family members and random others would know if they just waited and watched long enough they would see my smile slipping and figure out that I needed rescuing. When that didn’t happen I began to resent my husband, close friends, family members and random others for making me feel exhausted all the time at the half me they seemed happy to experience. How dare they?
Oh, Jessy! How long will you be willing to hide yourself when you’re the only person in your game of hide and seek? How long will you wait for someone else to do the impossible of making you whole? That is not someone else’s job. The decision to come out of hiding is yours and yours alone.
We went on vacation to Costa Rica this summer. It was amazing. Absolutely stunning, warm, welcoming, relaxing, natural beauty beyond compare and hermit crabs. Thousands upon thousands of hermit crabs. I could watch them for ages scurrying sideways along their agreed upon beach freeways. Chaos ensued, however, when they would happen upon an empty shell. These sweet little crabs would turn into monsters as they fought each other over who would get the upgrade and therefore the room to grow. Hermit crabs discard their covering once they become too big for it and find a bigger, more roomy shell to live in until they outgrow that one upon which time they look for an even bigger one. There are lots of little hermit crabs and very few big ones. The risk they take in shedding one shell for another is the seconds between their house move. Their plump posterior is exposed and every predator imaginable is waiting for them to leap from their shell and become a tasty snack. Our family would watch for the poor little hermit crabs rushing around trying to find another shell before their untimely death so we could protect them and help them into their new home, but who will do that for us? The inherent danger in exposing the most vulnerable parts of your heart for the purpose of growth and healing is further damage from simple things smashing you when you are utterly fragile. But what if we redirected our energy into living vulnerably and being fully ourselves rather than rushing around looking for a fresh covering, protection, hiding place?
I had hit a brick wall. I was literally pulling my own hair out during certain misunderstandings and mundane conversations that looked like nothing much, but sent searing hot pokers of pain through my heart at still feeling unloved and undervalued. I went for prayer. Two beautiful humans took a long time to listen to my complaints and angry retellings of difficult moments. It felt so good to get some of this stuff off my chest and into the ears of kind, loving people who would finally validate me and tell me how to let everyone around me know how wrong they really were.
“You need to repent.”
Umm, excuse me? I need to repent?
“You’re allowing bitterness and resentment to build in your heart and it’s already hurting you and will eventually ruin all of your relationships.”
How very dare they?!
I collected my mouth from the floor and took a deep breath. “Help me understand. This is hard to hear.”
“You are amazing, you are loved, you are precious, but you don’t know it because you view your value through filters of not-enough, unloved, and disposable. I’m sorry for whatever you have experienced that would make you feel that way, but all of that is a lie you have believed and need to repent of to get rid of. You need to get comfortable with the truth of who you really are, how valuable you really are, how important you really are.”
OK, so they didn’t say that word for word. It was more like, take responsibility for yourself, because at this point it’s your choice to be bitter and it’s ruining your life, but I figured you needed to hear the expanded hard fought for version from me.
That day changed the course of my life. I cried and humbled my heart enough to break through the shield of fear and repented for being unforgiving, dishonest with myself and others and decided to take my shell off and not find another one, but give myself over to the process of exponential growth with the one shield I actually needed. I needed perfect love as my shield and defense. It’s so broad, wide, high and deep that I would have all the room I needed to grow and become, well, become me.
So who am I? I’m exactly myself. A fireball of passion and ADHD and creativity who is finally able to reintegrate my fragmented parts and sit still in a room and feel completely at ease. I am no longer defined by what I’m capable of, or by relationships that could change, I am myself. I am loved and I am really really important, even if my importance is just to my family and my dogs. I breathe deeply now having taken shallow breaths my whole life. I sing. I’ve been singing since the moment I was born, but somewhere along the way I stopped singing for others and kept my voice to myself. I don’t do that anymore. I love to sing to people, to make them happy, to learn and grow together as we sit in a difficult lyric like, Who Am I?
My friend Andrea and I wrote some songs together during covid and I recorded them all as a story book album called (M)OTHER. It’s my absolute joy to share it with all those who need to hear this story, this specific and yet universal adventure through the trials and tribulations of motherhood and other-hood. It’s not for every mother, but for those who have found it and loved it, it has had a profound effect on them as they reach for their own wholeness and identity in the melodies of our lives. I didn’t half do it. I whole did it. I’m so proud of this album, this unprotected piece of my heart that I’m asking you to discover for yourself. Listen to the 12 songs and see if they ignite a fire in you to find out exactly who you are, because you, every single little wonderful piece of you, are a gift to the world. Not everyone will appreciate that gift, but trust and believe, your children will thank you for doing the hard work of overcoming and not passing your fears on to them. Your husband or partner will relish the woman they love clearly stating what she wants and not being afraid to go out and get it. Your friends who truly love you will receive permission from your life to go to those hard places too.
And you will be a gift to yourself.
No longer silenced or second guessing yourself, but free and available to speak, play, sing, write, dance wildly, give, work, and be. You are the ultimate gift. X
This article was originally published in the December 2023 edition of Mothering Journal.