Who I've Always Been — Susan Compton

I am a person who carries wasps outside.

I tuck this bear and his moose into bed every night, and then crawl in with them a little later.

I sleep with spinning stars in my room.

My heart about burst with joy the other day at the discovery of $2 bottles of hand soap in the shapes of Santas and penguins and snowmen.

At this moment I’m wearing that $3 bracelet with Christmas lights and ornaments on it, which is bringing me endless joy as jingles and I feel the weight of its plastic and metal charms.

Same goes for my $3 jingle bell earrings.

I take ridiculous numbers of photos of my doggie.

I take ridiculous numbers of photos of my food, usually because I’ve spent a long time creating it and making it beautiful.

For nearly 5 years, I’ve been deeply in love with a man I’m not with. While there are moments my heart drowns in longing, that love is the greatest gift ever to grace my path, and I would not trade a single solitary second of it.

PHOTO BY JEREMY COWART | www.JEREMYCOWART.com

I move my stuffed animals if they look like they’re in uncomfortable positions.

I came out to the living room the other night after I went to bed, because it sounded like my doggie was having a bad dream.

I wonder if he feels at home.

He didn’t eat anything the other day ... I was a little worried but never frantic, knowing that all would be well, no matter what may happen.

Walking through and fully experiencing our pain - rather than trying to “fix” it as so many well-intended but misguided friends tend to do - has miraculous power to bring peace and perspective.

I was stunned when a neighbor came over and went on and on about how sweet my doggie and I are together ... He knows his hard past, and was almost in tears as he talked about how much he needed and deserves someone like me. This is a neighbor I don’t know particularly well and is not on Facebook to see our journey, so his comments about my relationship with this doggie were based purely on seeing us in the yard. It took my breath away to contemplate being seen as a loving mother, because the mother figures in my life were so fucking shattering that I’ve had no concept of what that even is.

What I describe here is always who I’ve been, but it was buried beneath years of devastating wounds I sustained from being raised by women who hated themselves.

Women who understood control to be love.

Voices that criticized and demeaned and told me what I was and was not supposed to love and value.

Voices that taught me in so many words that my heart and love were scary and repulsive.

The loving presence I am becoming always lived in me, but it would never have seen the light of day without these years of healing work.

I have long said that while I love this man I love with everything in me, I would not have been able to be a loving presence for him - and certainly not for his precious little girls - without years of this work.

Conventional wisdom would’ve said had to be “making something happen“ with him or “getting over it“ years ago, but let me promise you my heart has known from the first moment that I needed to be doing neither of those things.

The loving presence I am becoming would never have emerged without surrounding myself with voices that offer 100% cheerleading, support, and grace, and keeping serious boundaries with voices that are advising, directing, or critical.

Including my own.

Those critical and directing voices we have long believed were “helping” us are absolutely not.

They are doing so much more damage than we have any idea about.

So grateful to finally be recovering from those voices, finally able to identify those damaging messages even as they come with the best of intentions, and finally hearing, knowing, and trusting my own voice above all others.

Even as I listen to voices I admire, I pay attention to what resonates with the truth of me, and let everything else go.

If something doesn’t feel right for me, it’s not ... They are not “right” just because they’re a person whose wisdom I admire.

No human knows more than my heart.

I think this is one of the central things that sets safe and healing people apart from those who are wounding.

Those who tend to look outside themselves for wisdom and guidance - believing that wisdom from the outside is more valuable than their own, and/or that the divine is outside and separate from them - tend to be an unsafe and wounding presence.

Those who look inside themselves for that wisdom and guidance - believing that the divine lives in them or is at least accessed by going inside themselves - tend to be a healing presence.

So grateful to have found so many of the latter these past few years ... Voices who honor their own heart above all else.

My heart is grateful for these beautiful scenes from the Storybook Cottage.

I heard Miles Adcox say the other day “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.“

Like so many of his words, they could not have been more perfectly timed, and they brought me to tears.

I am indeed having a happy childhood, raising up and reparenting this precious little girl who was shattered at such a young age.

Surrounding her with kind voices who know what love is, and protecting her from well-intended voices who don’t quite get it.

This is what happy looks like for me, friends.

What does it look like for you?