Permission to Dream
I had a revelation today about the vast difference between the way I see myself in my work life - capable, knowledgeable, smart, a joy to engage with, and frankly beautiful when I walk by the mirror in that space - and the way I see myself in relation to people who matter deeply to me - pathetic, nothing, and begging at their feet.
The contrast is stark, and it’s astonishing that I feel so fully like two completely different humans.
I disappear in the shadow of people who matter deeply to me.
My heart believes at a fundamental level that the fact that someone matters deeply to me renders me worthless and terrifying to them.
I don’t just believe I’m worthless and terrifying to them ... I believe I’m worthless and terrifying because they matter deeply to me.
I believe that my love renders me “less than.”
This life-shattering belief was planted in my precious little girl heart by the twin assaults of my mother’s inability to receive my love - she not only rejected my affection, but criticized and punished it as manipulation - and my dad speaking into me, in so many words, that I was going to “scare boys off.“
They were also both very much overachievers, conveying an image of academic perfection and having a complete inability to even conceive of scholastic struggles or less than stellar performance.
All of these things led me to understand that my love was a burden and a curse, and that I was profoundly and fundamentally “less than” my parents.
When my dad died when I was 20, someone who had no business saying such a thing told me that his dying thought of me was that he wished I were more mature.
I don’t care if that was true.
That is not something a loving human says to a child who has just lost her father.
For decades I believed he went to his grave embarrassed and ashamed that I was his daughter, and that I didn’t deserve to grieve his death because I wasn’t good enough for him.
I have no words for the depth of these wounds.
To this day there’s a powerful relationship between the depth to which someone matters to me, and the value I believe it’s possible for me to have to them.
In my work life, where my calm demeanor, 15 years of experience, and attention to detail have brought me a widespread reputation for knowing my stuff and being a pleasure to work with, I can clearly see the value I bring when all manner of things land on my desk and I handle them with wisdom and joy.
In relation to people who matter deeply to me, however, many of whom are not in my everyday life so I tend to fill silence with what I experienced from the people who mattered in my young life, my value is much less clear.
As it was with my parents, I imagine that these people are infinitely “better“ than I am, and that my absence is infinitely more valuable to them than my presence.
That is what I understood for the entirety of my young life.
My absence was more valuable than my presence.
This was clearly a family pathology; my mother’s suicide was the latest in a line of them down through the generations in her family.
A few years ago, I happened to have a photo pulled up on my computer screen for most of a workday. It was a photo of the man I’ve long loved from afar, and it struck me because it was one where he was looking right into the camera.
I could physically feel him looking at me, and as I happened to leave it on my screen and caught sight of it in various moments as I went about my workday, it felt every bit like he was watching me.
As I walked through that day, something miraculous happened.
I felt him standing in awe of the way I expertly handled all of the varied craziness that crosses my desk.
“You know what to do with all of this?!” I could almost audibly hear him say.
As I saw myself through his eyes - some of the first I’ve encountered that truly see with kindness, as opposed to seeing with a critical spirit and filtering your words - I stood in awe of the way I carried myself and went about my work.
There really is something to the experiential model of healing work Miles Adcox is such a part of bringing to the world, and to the fact that reconciling our stories and healing our wounds absolutely does not require the traditional routes of therapy.
Healing can happen in countless ways ... All that’s required is a space that feels safe for us.
As I went about my work that day catching sight of what simply felt like my beloved’s watchful eye, seeing clearly the way I deftly handled tasks and relationships with colleagues, it was life-altering just to imagine that someone who matters so deeply could see that kind of worth and value in me.
It was a completely new experience.
There is no question that the people who mattered in my young life loved me to the ends of the earth and to the best of their ability.
They absolutely stood in awe of my intelligence and talent and capability.
I have not a shred of doubt about this.
What they conveyed to me, however, was that I was so smart and talented, “If only you would ...”
They lauded my potential ... Relentlessly screaming that I was never living up to it as they drove home the excellence of their own school careers.
Do you know what the message “You have so much potential” says, in giant screaming flashing letters?
YOU. ARE. NOT. ENOUGH.
All of those messages that put our worth and value up ahead somewhere - “You would be so amazing if …” - teach us that we are not enough.
In telling us that we are not enough right now, they are teaching us that we are Fundamentally. Not. Enough.
We learn that our worth and value have to be earned.
That LOVE has to be earned.
Hear me on that.
Performance-based value teaches us that we have to earn love.
I grew up understanding to my core that love had to be earned.
I cannot tell you how deeply that hurts, nor what a vicious lie it is.
So, this song.
Jonathan and Richard Lee Jackson were the first rays of the light of love that were ever bright enough to shine through my shattered filters.
This song took my breath away the first time I heard it, and when I saw this video, I was struck by the same thing that struck me in the photo of my beloved.
He is speaking these words into the depths of us.
I was awestruck when this song came to mind after my revelation this morning, when I discovered the way I have always felt in the shadow of people who matter deeply to me.
It’s miraculous to watch this soul who has been such a part of my healing journey speak the truth that I. Am. Worthy. of those I love.
That my dreams are allowed.
That my LOVE is allowed.
These things are completely new to my life,
I never, ever felt anything like them from the people who mattered in my young life.
Healing is a long, slow process.
It requires endless time with my heart, unfailingly kind and loving voices around me, serious boundaries with voices who are advising or directing, and constant reminders of what’s true.
So grateful to finally be choosing voices who heal my heart, rather than those I’ve chosen in the past, who only deepen ancient and familiar wounds.
It matters, the voices we surround ourselves with, the way we spend our time and energy, and the story we’re telling.
I am grateful to finally be telling the one I want to live.