edit - Dedicated to Kelly-Ann Maddox whose powerful voice helps women like myself walk through the shadows of self healing.
I confess, I do not know how to love myself, but I am learning.
Sometimes it seems an inevitable consequence of the world that we live in, that teaches women that they are not enough and worse; that “enough” is a moving goal post that is designed to suck the power from their bones and leave them isolated, having spent years of their time dedicated to a fruitless pursuit. When the women who feel their power are relegated to the waste basket of “too much” because they are too loud, too crass, too opinionated, too liberated…
They say the truth is simple; you were always enough, and yet if you embrace that then you become too much.
I confess, I do not know how to love myself, but I am learning.
I have their voices in my head, the ones that birthed and reared me but never wanted me, not as a daughter should be and only in the ways that would break my little soul into a thousand scattered pieces. I would spend years learning to pick them up and hold them, or sing on the wind to call pieces back, and reminded those fragile little wings that they could fly, and were not defined by the lessons that left scars you cannot see.
I confess, I do not know how to love myself, but I am learning.
My body became the enemy somewhere along the line, being told from birth that I was too fat, and when I slimmed down coming under vengeful attack for defying the label of ugliness that had been placed on me. Memories of hourglass being described as unwanted in todays stick thin world, breasts too big, body too provocative, at least to all the leering old men who thought a pre-teen was fair game to be cat-called and embarrassed. Eating to comfort and becoming too curvy. Feeling unwanted and left out in the cold. Loneliness incarnate.
I confess, I do not know how to love myself, but I am learning.
The ways in which my shadow wounds dodge arguments and I had stopped asking for what it was that I need in relationships, Virgos are the servitors they smile, you’re predestined to bow and people-please, except all around me people were not pleased whenever I stepped out and spoke and let a little light shine through the cracks… the insults came and I was always the unlikeable girl with my mothers title of “the bitch” ringing in my ears whilst my sisters were “the pretty one” and “the likeable one.”
I confess, I do not know how to love myself, but I am learning.
Even in the face of nightmares that still haunt me as age ticks by and still people call me difficult, difficult to know, difficult to love, complicated in a way that doesn’t befit a woman. And I wonder if this great big heart that hides underneath everything will ever feel safe in the hands of another… but at least I have learnt to trust a handful of sisters who have shown me the folly of my mothers words (that I couldn’t.)
I confess, I do not know how to love myself, but I am learning.
It began with defiance, as I had always been that, an ember within my being that could never be snuffed out, no matter how hard any of them tried. And so that voice, that warrior girl, who believed in fairness and justice for all, who wanted to protect the rainforests aged four and tried to volunteer for animal shelters aged ten, grew bold again… and said, and whispered, and resisted… You are worth more than this, you say that to your sisters and believe it, well what about you? Stand and be listed, amongst the women who have grown dear and the men that lead by example and show that toxicity is not predetermined…
Resist it.
I confess, I do not know how to love myself, but I am learning.
And so when they come for me now, which I guess is inevitable somehow, I have found the way that says, not today, you can’t have a piece of my wellness, my soul, you don’t know a thing, you haven’t been where I’ve been, you haven’t walked an inch in my shoes and you think you can determine the worth of my soul? My beliefs? My ethics? My morality? Do you honestly think you get to rate what you see? The blindness inherent in refusing empathy, to mock and regrade without sympathy?
I confess, I do not know how to love myself, but I am learning. And anger comes in, a little, a touch, to set fire to the ember and thus, my heart began firing on all cylinders again, and I wondered perhaps could I be my own friend? It’s scary alone but on myself I depend… and so I gather my strength, and yes sometimes I cry, and sometimes I feel the pain wounding inside, to pretend that I did not would be such a lie and honestly it would feel like a crime… to showcase my journey the ache and the fall, is to love myself humbly, flaws and all, and that has to be the way to accept the self, not to the exclusion of trying to improve myself, to be in progress and to celebrate, is a far better medicine, a much clearer fate.
I confess, I do not know how to love myself, but I am learning.
Many blessings, Starlets, Joey Morris 2018 All rights reserved