LJ Idol Week 13: Open
This year April had a blizzard
Just to show she did not care
And the new dead leaves
They made the trees
Look like children with grey hair
But I'll push myself up through the dirt
And shake my petals free
I'm resolved to being born
And so resigned to bravery
-- Dar Williams, "Spring Street"
Sometimes the hardest thing to do is just to show up.
The facilitator of my first survivor's group told me that once, when I was about 19 and first coming to grips with the abuse that had happened in my childhood. I told her that I hadn't thought I would be able to even get out of my dorm room that day, let alone walk across the campus and share with my groupmates. She told me that I had done the most difficult thing, which was to get myself to that room. That I should give myself credit for that. That I should recognize it as the radical act of bravery it was. That I hadn't shown up for the other group members, that I hadn't shown up for her, but that I had instead shown up for myself, for my own healing, for my own recovery. I had shown up for myself in a way that the adults in my life had not shown up for me when I was an abused child. And I should thank myself for that. For just showing up.
If you had told 19 year old me, who was barely able to drag herself out of her dorm room (and who would sit largely in silence for the rest of that session) that, 20 years later, I'd regularly show up before a blank page and a group of strangers, and put my most personal, most painful, and most important stories, experiences, and memories onto that page and into their keeping, she'd have laughed at you. That young woman was locked up tight, wrapped around her pain, dedicated to keeping the secrets she'd held for so much of her young life deep inside her. To speak the words would make what had happened real, would mark her out as someone who'd been victimized and violated, would begin to crack the thick protective shell she'd built around herself simply to survive the world she found herself in.
As a farmgirl, however, she should have been smarter about shells.
Because when shells are broken by an outside force, they shatter, and often the vulnerable growing bird inside doesn't survive. It's not yet ready to navigate the world. It's too fragile.
But when that vulnerable creature is allowed to develop inside its shell, to grow strong and resilient, something else entirely happens. The bird begins to strain against the walls of the shell, to stretch and move, to realize that what has protected it for so long has now turned into restriction, restraint, prison. And so the bird begins to peck, to move, to create tiny cracks in the shell.
When a shell is broken from the inside, by the force of will and growth and expansion, it falls away in pieces that pose no danger to the emerging new life.
When she began to show up -- when I began to show up for myself, for the child I had been and the young woman I was and the adult woman I wanted to be -- the tiniest of cracks began to appear in that shell. Subtly, imperceptibly, layer by layer, that shell began to fall away.
I began to be open.
I began to open.
Today, that's probably the word most people would use to describe me -- open. My life is, literally, an open book -- or, perhaps more fitting, an un-friends-locked blog post. What I have learned is that shame is toxic, and that secrets can be poison -- and that we don't have to internalize either. That when we choose to be open about ourselves, about our lives, about even our darkest and most painful moments, we are able to grow beyond that which has constrained us.
When we begin to open, when we begin to stretch and breathe and push against the walls, we grow past what we have been and into what we might be.
We need the time in the shell to grow, the time beneath the earth to germinate. We need to be able to be protected, to be able to put down roots.
But there comes a day when we have to push against the walls of that shell. When we must push ourselves up through the dirt, toward the light. Always toward the light.
Monsters live in the dark.
When we turn on the light, when we open the windows, when we throw open our hearts, the monsters of our secrets cannot live.
Just to show she did not care
And the new dead leaves
They made the trees
Look like children with grey hair
But I'll push myself up through the dirt
And shake my petals free
I'm resolved to being born
And so resigned to bravery
-- Dar Williams, "Spring Street"
Sometimes the hardest thing to do is just to show up.
The facilitator of my first survivor's group told me that once, when I was about 19 and first coming to grips with the abuse that had happened in my childhood. I told her that I hadn't thought I would be able to even get out of my dorm room that day, let alone walk across the campus and share with my groupmates. She told me that I had done the most difficult thing, which was to get myself to that room. That I should give myself credit for that. That I should recognize it as the radical act of bravery it was. That I hadn't shown up for the other group members, that I hadn't shown up for her, but that I had instead shown up for myself, for my own healing, for my own recovery. I had shown up for myself in a way that the adults in my life had not shown up for me when I was an abused child. And I should thank myself for that. For just showing up.
If you had told 19 year old me, who was barely able to drag herself out of her dorm room (and who would sit largely in silence for the rest of that session) that, 20 years later, I'd regularly show up before a blank page and a group of strangers, and put my most personal, most painful, and most important stories, experiences, and memories onto that page and into their keeping, she'd have laughed at you. That young woman was locked up tight, wrapped around her pain, dedicated to keeping the secrets she'd held for so much of her young life deep inside her. To speak the words would make what had happened real, would mark her out as someone who'd been victimized and violated, would begin to crack the thick protective shell she'd built around herself simply to survive the world she found herself in.
As a farmgirl, however, she should have been smarter about shells.
Because when shells are broken by an outside force, they shatter, and often the vulnerable growing bird inside doesn't survive. It's not yet ready to navigate the world. It's too fragile.
But when that vulnerable creature is allowed to develop inside its shell, to grow strong and resilient, something else entirely happens. The bird begins to strain against the walls of the shell, to stretch and move, to realize that what has protected it for so long has now turned into restriction, restraint, prison. And so the bird begins to peck, to move, to create tiny cracks in the shell.
When a shell is broken from the inside, by the force of will and growth and expansion, it falls away in pieces that pose no danger to the emerging new life.
When she began to show up -- when I began to show up for myself, for the child I had been and the young woman I was and the adult woman I wanted to be -- the tiniest of cracks began to appear in that shell. Subtly, imperceptibly, layer by layer, that shell began to fall away.
I began to be open.
I began to open.
Today, that's probably the word most people would use to describe me -- open. My life is, literally, an open book -- or, perhaps more fitting, an un-friends-locked blog post. What I have learned is that shame is toxic, and that secrets can be poison -- and that we don't have to internalize either. That when we choose to be open about ourselves, about our lives, about even our darkest and most painful moments, we are able to grow beyond that which has constrained us.
When we begin to open, when we begin to stretch and breathe and push against the walls, we grow past what we have been and into what we might be.
We need the time in the shell to grow, the time beneath the earth to germinate. We need to be able to be protected, to be able to put down roots.
But there comes a day when we have to push against the walls of that shell. When we must push ourselves up through the dirt, toward the light. Always toward the light.
Monsters live in the dark.
When we turn on the light, when we open the windows, when we throw open our hearts, the monsters of our secrets cannot live.