She Is Not The Enemy

A little while back, I saw an old coworker at an exercise class. Back in the day, we worked in separate departments of a large company, and I don’t remember if I ever even knew her name.

It’s been quite a few years, and she didn’t recognize me, which didn’t surprise me. But I knew who she was for one very petty reason. I didn’t really like her.

This, of course, is completely ridiculous, because I didn’t even know her. She was just one of those girls towards whom I always felt a weird competitiveness. It’s so ridiculous, in fact, that it’s hard for me to admit to it now.

I honestly can’t tell you why I felt this adversarial response to her. She seemed like she was good at her job. She was pretty and kind, and I got the impression that she had a good sense of humor. But in spite of these lovely attributes, something just kind of irked me.

And sure enough, when I saw her all these years later, the same petty feelings festered to the surface.

I saw her again at another class a few months later, after my miscarriage. This time she was clearly pregnant, looking to be about as far along as I would have been.

And the first thought that came into my head was, She would be pregnant at a time like this. It’s just like her, to be succeeding at this whole pregnancy thing right when I failed.

It was just like clockwork- same trigger, same negative response.

Only this second time, another thought also occurred to me, miraculously appearing through the fog of my internal dysfunction.

What if she’s not the enemy?

I let this new thought roll around in my head, as I watched her in that class. She was all doe-eyed and smiling, awkwardly waddling around and handling her physical discomforts with aplomb. Her whole demeanor was so endearing that it jolted me out of my fog.

It finally occurred to me that this insidious competitiveness doesn’t fit for me. And it made me wonder- Who or what on earth ever taught me to view someone like her as an enemy? As if there’s some massive competition between us? Some invisible race to consume a scarcity of resources?

In the remaining sweaty moments of class, I felt an enormous sense of relief. An actual physical, palpable sensation of release. I don’t have to do this. I don’t have to fuel my energy into competing with this girl.

We’re on the same team.

So this is something new I’m learning. When I’m out and about, I’m practicing mental kindness. I’m letting go of competition and embracing spiritual advocacy. When I’m in line at the grocery store, I give that pretty girl in front of me a generous smile, and I say to her in my heart, “I’m rooting for you.”

She doesn’t hear me saying the words, but I silently tell her in my head, “I’ve got your back, and I think you’re a rock star. I want you to have every brave and beautiful thing your heart desires.”

I’m not sure if my mental shift makes all that much of a difference in the grand, cosmic scheme of things, but I like to think that it does. I like to think that change can begin with the smallest step. That a tiny seed of kindness can grow into something big.

Today, this is me saying to all you beautiful girls out there-

I’m rooting for you. I think you’re a rock star. So fly girl fly.

The Desire to be Seen

The other morning, I spent some time in the garden with my daughter. After toddling around the vegetables for a few minutes, she took to building little towers of firewood around the fire pit. And as she made each little creation, she would turn to me and say, “Look mama, I’m making castles. Come see.”

It was so darling, watching her tiny hands make the majestic things she saw inside her head, and I wondered what greatness she saw in her mind’s eye.

I related to her so much in that moment- to her imagination, her desire to create, and her industry. But more than all this, I related to her need to be seen. It wasn’t enough for her to create in a vacuum. The act somehow needed to be witnessed to be made real.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, living in our world so dominated by social media. It’s an interesting time for my daughter to be growing up in, when fame and significance are quantified in such an unprecedented manner. Social media has a way of bringing people together and creating remarkable connections, but it can also leave a person feeling painfully, inconsequentially small.

The propensity towards significance is timeless. The desire to be known is innately human, and I think everyone has the question deep in their heart- Am I seen? And if I am not, do I still matter?

Like my daughter who says, “Mama, come see,” we each want to say to the world, “Look at what I have done. Please bear witness to my offering of greatness.”

I want to believe that each one of us matters, regardless of how many views or likes or shares we receive in the virtual universe. We matter in the same way that hummingbirds matter and fuzzy bees and fluffy dandelions. Our value and worth are innate and immutable because we’re here, because we exist, because God saw fit to bring us into being.

But there is something beautiful and honorable and kind about bearing witness to one another’s greatness, however big or small. We all need to be seen, to have ourselves born witness to. Especially in the moments of deliberation, in those great expanses of loneliness and doubt. And it doesn’t take much for me to say to my daughter, “Yes baby, I see you, and your castles are beautiful.”

The other day, I saw a quote by Buddha that said, “The trouble is, you think you have time.” It really struck me, and it makes me wonder, in the precious time we have, if we could turn to one another and say, “I see you building your castles, and they are beautiful.”

This act feels small, but the truth is that we are sharing our lives together. We are each other’s witnesses, and when we bear witness to one another in an honorable way, the act becomes nothing short of revolutionary.

Here’s to bearing witness to one another’s greatness today.

Cheers!

Cyber Bullies

This morning I woke up excited. Feeling good. And like many mornings, in the quiet moment before my little one woke up, I looked at my Facebook.

And got a nasty surprise. A nasty comment, to be exact. One in which a family member of mine found a picture of my newborn daughter from a few years ago and called me a bitch.

Bummer, right? What a great way to start the day.

I’ve shared in previous posts that I came from a dysfunctional home. It’s a story that feels too sad to relive right now, but one that involves a lot of substance abuse, relational abuse, and just plain bad behavior.

And if you’ve come from a similar home, then you know what I’m talking about. It’s a hard story to have, and I’ve spent much of my life wishing it wasn’t my story. Wishing I had family members who were stable enough to love me and be kind to me.

But we don’t always get what we want in life. Sometimes you have to survive and find a way to do better with your own life when you get the chance.

But here’s perhaps the hardest part of the story. Sometimes, the more healthy you strive to become, the more vicious the abusive people can become. It’s an awful sort of yin yang in family life. And that’s when the rubber really meets the road.

When you’re a person who’s been abused, the meanness of others can infiltrate your mind. It can knit itself into the fabric of your brain. Until their hateful, screeching voices start to sound like your own inside your head.

Then it becomes a lifelong journey to dissect the fibers, remove the illness, and plant something pure in its place.

In all honesty, this is the journey of my life. Unlearning abuse and learning love.

But the cyber bullying is something new to my experience. Maybe I was too old when the internet came out to have had the experience of people trolling my content to find inlets of hate. It sucks, and it’s not okay.

Unfortunately, to a large degree, we have created an online society and a social framework for abusive people to run free. And if grown-ups are doing this despicable behavior, then I can only imagine what kids are doing in all the nooks and crannies their parent can’t detect.

Part of living a free, whole, healthy life is standing up to abuse. It is naming it and reclaiming its real estate and learning to say no. And the internet is part of that real estate.

I have lived long enough to know that there are people in the world who are mean. Who don’t care about the destructive force of their words and spend their precious moments on this earth causing hurt and pain to the people around them. It’s just the way it is.

But I think we have more power that we think. Power to say, Not here. Not in this space. Not on my lawn, not in my home, and not in my head.

Together we can take back that real estate. We can get the deed to the building and unlock the gates corroded shut with hate and fear. We can let the ground breathe and plant something beautiful.

And hang a sign over the door that says, “Abuse doesn’t live anymore. But love does.”