Oversharing

I have been on a bit of a journey lately. (In full disclosure, this will be long and probably way too much info. So, if anyone keeps reading, don’t say I didn’t warn ya.)

I started my new job on Monday. Life has largely quieted down. Through a weird combination of circumstances, I ended up with a week off between jobs. I used last week to work though a whole mountain of emotional garbage. The kids were all in school all week and I ended up with eight blissful hours of silence each day. I was really intentional in how I spent my time. And it worked… I ended the week refreshed and rested and in a whole new headspace. I’ve known for a long time that I needed to attack some of the core beliefs I have about myself. For me, that means prayerfully questioning why I believe what I do. It leads to a whole lot of thinking, which for me means journaling through the thought process. Writing has always been a therapy for me.

I’ve spent a lot of time considering what, if any of this, I should share. But I think most of the things we struggle with are universal. Who doesn’t struggle with feeling unlovely or unloveable in one way or another? The things I’ve come to realize have really changed the way I look at myself. I’ve learned how to give myself grace. And you probably need to give yourself some, too. So that leads me here, writing this.

Here’s the thing I’ve come to understand: all of the things I believe about myself have causation. There is a reason those beliefs exist, but that doesn’t make them factual. I know why I despise my height, but why is height something to be despised in the first place? I sat down and wrote a list of the things I most dislike about myself, then I sat with them and examined them individually. Why did I believe that? What happened to cause that belief? I picture it like a big ball of yarn, all tangled and knotted. I wrote and I meditated and I kept asking myself why until I got to the end of the string. It was uncomfortable and more than once I got so mad I had to put it all away for a while and watch mindless TV. But I went back to it every day. And, at the end of it, understood who I was in an entirely new way.

My entire life, the message I heard was simple: be less. Less loud, less talkative, less tall, less intimidating, less opinionated. Be you, just less. This was the message at school (I even had a teacher tell my parents I was lucky to have been born when I was, lest I be burned at the stake) at home, at church. It was seared into my soul: I was too much. I was hard to love. I was too emotional. I was something of which to be quietly embarrassed.

In picking this all apart, I saw that changing a core belief means redirecting your own thoughts mid-stream. It means wading into the water and kicking down the dam. It’s creating a new path for that stream. And that water will rush and trickle into places it’s never been, creating an entirely new landscape. An entirely new me.

And now I’m on a thought reprogramming campaign. I broke all of those beliefs down and I’m challenging them – and changing them – when they influence my emotions and my choices. I’m slowing down, thinking before I react. I’m making choices to honor the things that uplift and sustain me. My time and my energy is entirely invested solely based on what my family and I need, not what anyone has said. I refuse to feel ashamed of who I am. I refuse to pass that kind of trauma to my daughters. I will not be held captive by the opinions of others. I will listen to my own voice and trust my own judgement. And I trust that, if I persist in reminding myself of my own worth and value, it’ll eventually sink into my subconscious and redirect the current at its source.

I feel…. Mighty.