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Trusting My Voice

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I used to describe myself as a people pleaser the way an interviewee would say their weakness is just being too committed to their work. I didn’t understand how detrimental it was to try to please people. To make people happy. That doesn’t sound bad, right? But what it did was put undue responsibility on myself to regulate other people’s emotions and tempers and views of who I was. Things that I had absolutely no ability to control. Still, I was consumed in wanting people, anyone really, to see me in a positive light, because my whole identity was hanging on that opinion.

In the midst of all this worry and anxiety about what other people thought about me, I lost my own voice. I didn’t set up healthy boundaries. I always had an excuse for others, but never excused myself. I would break down if someone confronted me about how they felt I needed to change or how I disappointed them in some way. Shame became the guide in my life, either by trying to avoid it or just letting it consume me.

Something changed over the last year. Along with learning to trust my own body, I started building space around me. Space to sit in stillness and listen to the Spirit’s whisper reminding me who I was. Reminding me that I had a voice of value. Reminding me that I no longer needed to let shame lead my decisions or overpower my thoughts. And as my voice grew louder, it had some things to say.

  • I have the power to say no. Even if I have said yes in the past. Even if I said yes to begin with. I can still say no. This requires me to slow down and start listening to my body, to God, to my own bandwidth. No longer can I fill up my days with busyness. Busyness was a way I could escape from the shame and the guilt of not measuring up to other people. Saying yes until I was burnt out was how I showed others that I was dependable, to show that I cared. But I could never balance it all, and something else in my life would always be left wanting. So saying no gave me the power to create space.
  • I purposefully create space. Space for body breaks. Space to sit with God and with my breath. Space for days when I do absolutely nothing. For me, one of those days is Monday. I don’t set appointments on Mondays. They are the days I recover from full weekends. I don’t do housework on Mondays. They are unproductive days to the outside eye, but they are so necessary. And if Monday doesn’t work, then it’s a different day. I’m not rigid in the structure, but I make sure that there are at least a couple days like this in my week. They are an important reminder that I have value even when I’m not producing. I get to just be me.
  • I get to define me. When I was a young married, I would scour the internet and books for information on how to be a good whatever. Wife. Christian. Person, in general. I thought I needed some definition to fulfill. And if it wasn’t research, then it was how other people thought I was doing. Did they feel loved by me? Wanted? Respected? I measured my entire life on the opinions of others, whether in person or in word. But now, I have taken back that responsibility and acknowledge that right now, without a single change to who I am, I am a worthy and valuable individual.
  • I stopped trying to constantly improve myself. What I mean by that is instead of feeling like I’m a broken thing that needs to be constantly fixed, I start with the idea that, “I am already good.” Maybe a bedtime routine needs tweaking, or maybe my lack of patience means I need more sleep, or I need to add an extra walk into my day, or maybe I don’t need that extra cup of coffee in the afternoon. But none of this takes away from the fact that I am already good. I don’t have to have it all figured out. Of course there is always something new to learn, something new to try, but I celebrate the things I’ve already learned and what I’ve already let go.
  • I officially retire as a mind reader. For the longest time, I would anticipate other people’s feelings, desires and needs. I would get it right enough to think I was right every time. This doesn’t mean I have completely stopped caring about whether or not my actions or words hurt others. I take responsibility for causing pain or hurt, even unintentionally, to other people. But it is no longer my responsibility to regulate other people by trying to read into their tone or facial expressions or expect any kind of passive aggressive behavior. I want my words to be taken as truth so it’s only fair that I give others the same treatment.

I’m learning and growing every day. I am finally really giving myself grace, and not just one more chance to get it right. I’m not the girl I was yesterday, though I look at her as the beautiful heart that she was, willing to carry shame and blame for the sake of others. But I’m letting go of that shame and moving towards the person I was created to be. What I keep reminding myself is that I’m doing the best I can with every day God gives me on this earth. Letting go and learning to become the person that God created me to be on this lifelong journey.

Trusting My Body

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In the first year of my kid’s life, I was desperate to find a schedule that solved every issue we faced. But even to this day, not one of the many schedule suggestions online worked for us. Namely because this kid wakes up between 6 and 6:30 almost every single morning, and apparently, the majority of the schedules out there cannot fathom a child getting up that early. The best piece of advice for us was “feed the baby when they are hungry and sleep when they sleep,” but it required me to slow down, tune into my kid’s body, and look and listen for cues.

That was extremely hard for me. And one of the reasons it was so difficult was because I wasn’t doing it with my own body. I hadn’t for a long time. I didn’t realize that this was a major barrier at the time, but looking back, and after an extremely good amount of therapy this last year, I discovered that somewhere along the way, I stopped trusting myself.

I stopped trusting my body. Instead, I let society, community, and culture dictate how I should take care of this body, what it should look like, what it should be able to do. I chased one diet after another, one schedule after another, researched every culturally successful person’s morning and evening routine, trying to glean some wisdom that would make me feel happy, healthy, put together, organized, and whole. Even church culture promoted a certain standard to chase, from the clothes I wore to how I should act in every relationship I had, even how to grieve.

But this spring, I started listening to my body. At first, it was chaotic because it had so much to say, but once I stilled, once I allowed it to speak, it reminded me of the truths that God had woven into my heart from a very small age. I am loved. I am beautiful. I am strong. I cannot be defined by the ideas around me because I will never completely fit. I was not made to completely fit. I was made to stand on my own, to shine, to sing, to dance, to smile and laugh, to be in relationship with the one true Creator of the universe.

Now, that sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? But I am still in the early stages of this realization. I still struggle with the beauty of my body. Something that I’ve seen work for other women who have had children and are trying accept their body after it goes through so many changes in pregnancy is the fact that their body carried those babies and brought them into the world. But that doesn’t completely work for me. My body has a 25% success rate so far in that area. And before I had my kid, I was carrying the weight of failed pregnancies. So, how do I find beauty in a body I thought betrayed me?

It’s not easy. Surprisingly, or maybe not so, when I recently started doing 20-30 minutes of yoga a day, I started to feel more in tune with my body. I’ve been doing yoga for about 20 years now, off and on, but I don’t think there is something mystical or magical about yoga. It’s about breathing, listening to the basic breath coming into your body and releasing out of it. It’s about being aware when your muscles stretch and your bones creak or pop. It’s not about the positions or getting to the next level for me, it’s about the slowing down.

When I slow down, I see my body in action. It actually tells me much earlier than I realized exactly what it needs. There are the big signals, like the extreme pain of a kidney stone, but it also tells me in the small nudges towards hunger, loneliness, thirst. I also recognize that this isn’t new. We learn this in science class, but it’s drowned out by words like food addiction and laziness. These kinds of words have convinced me not to trust my body, that it is too broken to communicate. When in reality, it’s been communicating just fine, it’s just that how my body works doesn’t seem to match how my culture says it’s supposed to work. And that is what I have to unlearn and let go.

It’s a work in progress. For the longest time, being busy was considered the highest achievement, but I realize now that it was keeping me from listening to the body God created, to allow it to work the way it was made to, instead having to turn to other sources who could never know my body the way I do. Right now, I have a slight headache, and I realized I hadn’t had much water this morning. Now, I wouldn’t have realized that before, I would have taken a pain pill or tried to find some quick fix, or I would have tried to muscle through it, ending up more sick, usually with something sinus related. But I stopped, listened, and I’m sipping on water between sentences. Slowly, my headache is disappearing. Of course, if it didn’t, I would try other things, but I’m not chasing the quick fixes as much anymore.

And learning to embrace my body, to listen to its cues, will not be quickly fixed either. There are days I’m frustrated that I don’t look like I did when I was 20, or fit into clothes and styles I have loved in the past. But now, I have an opportunity to really find what I love, really know who I am, and build a confidence that will see me through this life with grace, compassion and love.