I Just Learned to Stand In My Truth

It only took 39 years.

I find joy in my loved one’s happiness, so putting myself last doesn’t feel like self-sabotage.

I’ve continuously put my best into mothering but as I enter a new phase of parenting and womanhood, I’m realizing it's largely determined by my internal landscape.

Internally I’m in near-constant conflict.

I’ve improved myself in many ways for my children and myself. I have hobbies, and interests and know what I want outside of my children. I pride myself on being flexible and I know I’m leading by example.

But an elusive characteristic I didn’t realize I was missing finally hit me.

For most of my life, I’ve been explaining, expanding, extracting, filtering, and changing my truths to accommodate not just my children, but nearly everyone around me.

Somewhere on my path, I stopped trusting myself.

One of the first existential crises I ever had marks what is still a major fear of mine. I was in elementary school when I came to the conclusion that no one could or would understand me. This still triggers me. I’m not what people expect, and they don’t hear me because of their expectations.

As a child, I’d try to explain my passionate philosophies, spiritual experiences, and nerdy interests to friends and family. In return, I’d get blank stares or a response like “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Surface-level socializing was fine, but I’ve been hiding my depth for too long.

I remember turning my head towards the glaring sun out the car window, crying in the passenger seat of my mom’s car leaving school. She was dismissive of a spiritual experience I’d tried to express, and I’d had too many similar disappointments. Shortly afterward, I started craving isolation and angry, brooding rock music.

Since then, I’ve never stopped trying to get better at communicating; better at explaining. Perfect at it actually and describing and relating and understanding others. Then one day I realized, I don’t have to do that.

That day was today.

I just learned that I can simply say — this is how I feel, this is what it is, this is what I learned — and no one has to understand it. They can react or not, agree or not, but I don’t have to make people understand. And I’m not less than or negligent for not being understood.

And maybe there’s a level of understanding, but it’s not shared with me, and that’s okay too. Devaluing my authority over my life caused me to stop trusting my instincts, intuition, and insight. This is the opposite of what Mantra did for me a decade ago, but life is a seesaw.

I’m now more intentional about detaching from the urge to be understood and validated. I don’t need to extract or transpose profound realizations with every interaction. I’m showing more compassion to myself (lessening unnecessary letdowns) and the person(s) I seek validation from.

Now, if I want validation, I’ll ask for it.

If it's a no, I won’t take it as a personal assault on my character. Instead, I’ll decide if their lack of validation is something vital to the relationship or if I just need validation of the situation. Which, I hope, is available within myself or elsewhere.

For years I was shielding myself from people as much as possible. I didn’t let anyone get too close. But I’m a people person, my relationships just lack a healthy foundation. I’m finally embracing resolution rather than retreat (my normal) because I crave stability, support, and structure now.

Good Things Can Come From Discomfort

This year, as my body malfunctioned, my mortality was forced down my throat and changed my perspective. I often don’t feel physically safe in public places. I’ve become more sensitive to this over the past couple years but I haven’t adjusted my life to address my fears.

Meanwhile, American culture includes normalcies with serious risks as if they’re totally benign. You’re supposed to send children to school, trust police, doctors, and professors.

It’s unseemly to question these things. I’ve deluded myself enough to fit in and eventually forgot my emotional security along with the physical.

I agreed to participate in this culture by turning off the following valid anxieties about life and death:

• We move around in large weapons (cars) on a daily basis, on roads full of people who were usually not tested before entering these vehicles to see if they are too drunk, high, sleepy, or mentally unstable to operate them. But it’s okay, it’s just life, move on.
• We send our children to schools, where if targeted, someone could easily attack, hurt, and kill a large number of innocent people. But we send them to school anyway, trust the staff we barely know, and put them at the mercy of that random person who might be mad or unstable. And it’s just life.
• We eat foods that were created in labs and we have no clue what kind of effect it will have on our bodies, but it tastes good. Eat it anyway.
• We consume targeted media full of messages that play on our emotions, and we encourage the same cycle to children. Sit down and watch TV!

Yes, I understand that there are risks in life.

But ignoring the feelings related to those risks can become a bad habit. And for me, that leads to ignoring things integral to my contentment.

Standing in truth means not backing down or backing away from your beliefs, and what’s integral to you. It means standing for what you know is right, appropriate, just, or correct. This gets easier with age because you know who you are and what you want.

Less striving makes space for more authenticity.

In order to stop ignoring the things that bother me, I have to be really intentional about expressing and addressing what I want, what I believe, and how I feel. That means I need to examine my beliefs, thoughts, and actions daily or I slip into losing myself again. Not all of me, but the most integral parts.

This is the me that shows up every morning but gets shushed all day to meet standards I’ve felt coerced into embracing. My strategy to examine myself is consistent, daily journaling. This habit is what made me confident in myself in the midst of trauma from childhood and beyond.

I’m ready to reclaim my sense of self.

I’m ready to become confident in what I want and stop living for everyone else. Lately, my internal dialogue spouts off against my automatic self-sacrificing.

In the middle of repeating the familiar, I’ll stop and think, “I actually don’t care anymore.” If this is what aging is…if this is the notgivingash*t I’ve heard “old people” brag about for the past couple of decades, I’m happy to finally be amongst the old folks.

That is my truth.

Bear with me while I learn to stop putting myself last.

I’m Mera, a mom, writer, and educator. If you’d like to talk more about raising a family as a sensitive artsy, crunchy mom and writing to heal, find me here!