Authenticity is a Virtue, Too.
I’m sitting here, an hour away from New Years Eve, contemplating the holiday season that’s just past.
That time when the year comes to a close amongst a flurry of family, friends and festivities. An overabundance of exchange and energy, wrapped up in obligatory cheer- some false, and some genuine.
For many, the year’s end brings about a tendency for self-reflection in addition to the seemingly endless bustle of activity. Currently, I’m in rumination overdrive.
In the past week, I sat by the side of my laboring younger sister, as she prepared to welcome her first child into the world on Christmas eve.
I spent Christmas Day with my spouse, for the first time ever, though we’ve been a couple for several years.
I prepared for my 40th birthday, a New Year’s Eve celebration that seems especially significant this year, as the world prepares to usher in a new decade.
Needless to say, themes of family & growth have been central to my thoughts as of late.
I’ve thought about the ways I’ve come to relate with my family as I’ve adjusted into adulthood, and the patterns that I’ve grown accustomed to during the last three decades of my life.
In part, some of my most recent processing was tied to my own birth experiences, and the way they shaped the ways through which I coped with pain.
In the weeks leading up to the birth of my second child, I recall being keenly aware of the ways in which I cope with stress and discomfort. I came to realize that my ability to concentrate and tune out external distractions served me well during childbirth. So, I began to intentionally practice mind-over-matter techniques. Breathing, focal points, and music-induced trance had helped guide me through my first birth.
I was hoping they’d come to my aide in the same way during my second.
On birth day number two, I felt calm and in control until the moment I was admitted into the hospital, when (internally, anyway) all hell broke loose. Looking back, I know that this was the beginning of the most intense part of labor: transition.
In that moment, I felt that I was ready to give up completely. It was during this acute distress that a nurse approached me for triage. She presented me with a pain scale. A pain scale is a simple way of quantifying a patient’s pain. There are many different kinds of pain scales, but the most common is a numerical scale from 0 to 10 (0 means you have no pain; eight and above is severe pain). For all intents and purposes, I can say that when the scale was presented to me, I was most definitely at a pain level 8.
But when asked, I gritted my teeth and muttered “two.”
The nurse- clearly able to see the intensity of my contractions- questioned me. “Two? Are you sure you’re a two?”
“TWO!!!” I yelped, clutching the sheets beneath me. Instinctively I knew that the moment I admitted that the pain I was feeling was indeed, much more severe than a two, I’d lose control.
The defensiveness with which I downplayed my pain was instrumental to my survival in that moment.
Fast-forward 15 years:
When I first met my husband, I presented him with a neatly packaged, feel-good story of my family. I over-emphasized the sweetness, and downplayed fragilities. If my wistful accounts were measured on the pain scale, they’d be no more than a level two.
At the time, it was a narrative necessary for my survival.
For many years, my commitment to positivity culture was a method of coping that provided layers of protection and armor. A method I’ve comfortably relied on since my late teens.
One that I’d perfected.
In the later stages of our dating, I began to share a more detailed picture of my familial dynamics, and how they still affected me in the present. On occasion, the vulnerability in our talks would allow for introspection that challenged my surface-level thinking on the matter.
Surface level felt safe. Surface level provided constant access to air and light, a luxury not afforded once I began to delve a little deeper below the surface.
Many of the themes that I found myself turning over in my mind after our discussions materialized from my own understanding of the stories and dynamics he himself had shared about his own family structure.
It’s as if the act of hearing someone openly sharing their own multifaceted family experience was the conduit for me to begin opening up to my own. Our conversations prompted me to reexamine not only my perception of my family relationships, but my relations with friends, and ultimately, with myself.
At first, this shift in my view felt disconcerting. Growth often does. But with the discomfort of recognizing a new reality, came a certain kind of clarity.
Slowly, I began to toy with the concept of authenticity as I’d never understood it before.
What does vulnerability look like? Why was I scared of rawness…of truth? What was the source of my need to appease myself and others with neatly polished reminicings of my own childhood and upbringing, co-parenting and the raising of my own children?
Was there harm in disclosing shades of gray as well?
Why did I not feel okay telling stories of unconditional love AND heartache, trust AND mistrust, good character AND poor actions/decision making, warm traditions and memories coupled WITH the realities of growing up with a parent who struggled with addiction?
What do we risk losing when we seek to embrace our most authentic stories; non-filtered and nuanced as they are?
But more importantly, what might we gain?
As I dove deeper into my own understanding of what it meant to speak my truth, both publicly and internally, my husband and I were simultaneously peeling back the layers of our own relationship in an effort to decipher whether or not we were compatible in the long term sense.
And let me tell you, it was not an easy process.
There’s a quote I kept seeing making the rounds in my feed over the past two years,and it sums up the end of the decade for me completely:
“Universe really be like, yo I heard you like growth, so I put some challenges on top of your challenges so you can grow from your challenges while you grow from your growth”
Growth is messy. It’s angry and grief-filled, gut-wrenching and tear stained.
The idea of growth SOUNDS so graceful. But anyone who has come out of the other side of the process with any type of meaningful learning will tell you that the journey itself is ragged as hell.
My journey was like that.
Is currently like that.
But my belief is that honesty, authenticity, and the peeling back of layers can be so incredibly healing, not only to our own personal path, but for those who bear witness to is as well.
I suppose the feeling I’m trying to convey is this:
If growth brings grace, but the process of growth is convoluted & mucky, perhaps part of being graceful is carrying that mess with as much pride and courage and openness as we are able to muster. Perhaps grace itself, is grimy in it’s own precious way.
I’m abandoning my pain-scale coping mechanisms. And sometimes it’s scary.
If something hurts, I’m making and effort to name it. Not numb it. Not deny it. But acknowledge it and move through it. If something isn’t sitting right, I’m asking myself why it is so, and what I can do to change it.
I’m not glossing over familiar relationship dynamics in an effort to hold peace, because in the present moment, I’m more committed to my own internal peace than I am to appeasing patterns that no longer serve me.
And I’m not going to lie. This shit is hard.
It means that sometimes I piss people off, and sometimes I appear ungracious or closed off or uncooperative.
But I am grace, and grace is growth, and growth is boundaries and beauty and unapologetically bold. And the relationships that remain with me from this point on will undoubtedly benefit from my ripening.
