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| Me at the bus stop |
"She's so nice; such a sweet quiet girl," they would say about me. They were saying it because, well, I was being nice and, also, quiet.
I don't know when I started being nice, sweet, and quiet because they said I was, and I liked that they said I was, but I did. I remember seeking that input, wanting to know they were still thinking of me as nice, sweet, and quiet. Wanting them to validate that I was still the me they had said I was.
I was a child. I was newer to the world than the adults. I was someone, born as someone, but I was also a small someone. I looked up at the grown-ups and was told what to do by them and grew in the direction of attention. I grew out of a seed that was me, but my growth was encouraged and influenced and fed by those I listened to and learned from.
It was not their fault, the adults, when my attempts at being nice, sweet, and quiet became unhealthy for me. It was me, trying to have people think of me as nice, sweet, and quiet that was dangerous. Rather than explore what it really means for me to be nice, to be quiet, to be sweet, I chose - for several years - to try and elicit a response from people that proved they thought I was nice, sweet, and quiet.
During those years I failed to learn that it is nice to say no to what I don't want or what I don't believe in, it is sweet to believe in someone so much that you push them to try harder (my brothers too often bore the brunt of my attempts at sweetness while I talked condescendingly to them and let them give up) and being quiet because I was afraid to say the wrong thing was not something to be proud of; being quiet because I want to learn what others have to say and give them space to say it, that was my best kind of quiet.
I pondered much of this often when I became a mother. How to encourage healthy growth in the direction of who my sons are. How to tell them who I see when I see them without taking away any potential for all the other thems they might be, and without pushing them to fit into any expectations. Man, it's not so simple!
It's such a common suggestion: Be yourself. Discover yourself. Don't be who you think others want you to be. etc.
And it's good stuff. Yet, we are always ourselves, aren't we? I go back to the time I was trying to fit into a description of me and when I listen to my thoughts from that time, they were me. They were me trying to be a me that is complimented, or noticed, or impressive, or whatever it was I hoped for at the time. But, I was me.
As a parent, I try to leave room for who my children choose to be. But I also tell them who I see. I can't help it. I love who I see.
When our loved ones have certain types of disabilities or disorders I think it can be even harder to get this right. The challenges of communication, the uncommon behaviors, can challenge us in ways we are unprepared for. We start seeing what we don't like, what we are dealing with, what we think we are supposed to be looking for, what is clashing with the environment, and even when we put a positive spin on what we're seeing we're still seeing from a place of behaviors, where things are often lost in translation. Behaviors are communication, but we are often unequipped to understand them in any useful or real way.
As we help them discover who they are, help them grow in the direction of attention, we may make the mistake of giving the wrong attention in the wrong places.
And as our children grow they will always be themselves, but with too much pollution in their environment they will be unable to grow into their best selves. (I hope you'll visit the All Brains Grow website to learn how to help our special needs children grow in healthy powerful wonderful ways.)
It think it's true, you should be true to who you are. I think being yourself, discovering who you are and what you really believe, is a valuable pursuit.
This does not mean we should ignore who the world says they see when they see us. It is feedback. It is worth incorporating in our own estimation of who we are.
I am nice, but not everyone would think so. Because being nice, I now know, is not the same in everyone's opinion. But in mine, I am nice.
So, know who you are. Be you.
Be you, in this world with others.
"The world will ask you who you are, and if you do not know, it will tell you." ~Carl Jung
