Me Too

The other day a friend was commenting on a funny post I made on Facebook, and he made the observation that most of what we see on Facebook is not true life. I mean, sure, I shared a candid moment, but it was mostly for laughs. It was not a “real” bad day. He said he wished he could design something where people would just share their truth, instead of the highlight reel we typically show on Instagram and Facebook. I realized he was probably onto something there. We all know this is true, most of us don’t post make up free selfies (except on R+F Go Naked day – and I can’t lie. Mine was all filtered up). We don’t post about the mornings we lose our shit and scream at our kids. We never tell about when we forget to show up to be class reader for our 2^nd grader, or when we don’t speak to our families, or deal with an addiction, or mental health, or have a falling out with a friend or are just really, really in the ditch of depression. I’ve been in that ditch, more than once, and I’ve never told my story. I’m not saying we should share every single moment of our lives. Have you seen the movie The Circle? No thank you Emma Watson. There is such a thing as over-sharing (you all know someone who does it). But Brene Brown has a really good theory about when it’s ok to share the gritty things with the world at large. The litmus test is that if you are looking for your healing from the act of sharing – it’s not time. If it infringes on someone else’s privacy, even your child’s, and you don’t have their permission – it’s not time. If you’re seeking validation of who you are or how you feel – it’s not time. But if you can pass this test, and still have that quiet voice inside that says “it’s time to share”, then you can and should do it. It’s a voice I’ve been ignoring for a long time.

                I have a t-shirt that simply says “We Can Do Hard Things”. It’s my quiet reminder that I don’t give myself enough credit. And I find lately that most of my Sheroes are women who do hard things. They say hard things. They speak truth and they tell people as much as they can wisely share. Because it matters that we tell our stories. I’ve needed to hear theirs. I’ve needed to know what they learned. They made me think. They challenged me. They showed me a bigger world and a better way. Their passions ignited something in me. Glennon Melton, AbbyWambach, Anne Voskamp, Beth Moore, Luvvie Ajayi,  Ellen Degeneres, Patty Griffin, Indigo Girls,Danielle Walker, Melissa Hartwig, and my imaginary best friend of course, JenHatmaker. They have suffered some for their honesty, but they do it anyway. In these years of my life where I have felt down, when I didn’t write, when I didn’t take care of myself, their words in blogs, books, twitter, poetry, song, whatever medium God gifted them with….they used them to lift me up. They sent them out into the world, knowing they weren’t alone in what they struggled with or were passionate about and that someone, somewhere, might need to hear them. That someone was me.

The lyrics of Patty Griffin to this day are a hug from an old friend. She’s sat on many back porches with me and held my heart so gently in her songs. Glennon Melton makes me proud to be 40. She makes me excited to have reached this age where I can just be me, and not need permission for being honest. She gives me an avenue to be a real, tangible help through Together Rising. Luvvie Ajayi challenges me and opens my mind and makes me laugh because even though she’s slinging some hard truth, she’s awesome and hilarious. Melissa Hartwig makes me believe I can consciously craft my own health and wellness and be a badass at it. And Jen Hatmaker and Beth Moore, well, they saved my faith when it was almost gone. They all taught me to love bigger, see broader, be braver, try harder, and listen to my own voice. If they had never shared their words, I wouldn’t have been able to learn those things. Words are important. Being brave enough to share them is a gift they gave to me and many others.

                Last weekend, my brother was here. We discussed what my next 40 years might look like. He said, “Don’t discount using your experience to help someone else who might be just starting the road you’ve been walking.” He’s right. I don’t know what that looks like yet, or how I want to start. But if we have knowledge or experience, or even most importantly – Empathy – we are remiss to keep that to ourselves. While he was touching on a health and spiritual journey I’ve been on, one that is still developing, these two separate conversations sparked in me a desire to share some writing that I penned a long time ago. When I was just healing and finally doing some really hard work in counseling about my own #metoo story. While those close to me have read some of it, I’ve never shared it with the world at large. It felt too personal, too raw, and too open. But the conversation on social media, the power I’ve seen from many of my Sheroes, the ones who don’t want to be silenced, have made me want to be a part of this very necessary dialogue. I think the most powerful words in the English language are “Me, too”. Especially for women, we are so mean to ourselves inside. We think we are the only ones that deal with shame, with feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, the demon of comparison. When Tarana Burke chose those words as her hash tag, I think she must have known that. There is power in not being alone. There is power in sisterhood. There is power in our voices raised together. And so, while I’m not going to tell the details of my story, and I probably never will, I can share some of the poetry it gave birth to. I don’t need to tell my intricacies to heal. I healed as much as possible a long time ago. But you’re never the same after a #metoo experience; it’s something you always carry. If I can share my most raw poems and someone reads them, maybe they’ll know that somewhere in Texas, I know just how you feel. That I am with you, I pray for you, and you are not alone. None of us are. It gets better. But we should never be silent about it. Let’s keep the truth telling going. It’s the most powerful thing we have.

As Margaret Thatcher said, “It took me quite a long time to develop a voice. Now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.”

#metoo

Tears From the Past

I know now why so many times

I cried for no reason

Something would just set it off

Like a fire without a spark

Or a waterfall with no river to feed it

I know now why the drive

Home seemed so long

And the job was never enough

Or the story of the victim

Struck a chord so deep inside my old soul

 I know now why the tears that

Came for the self-ruined relationships

Were not for the man I

Had just broken or failed somehow

They were for the shame hidden inside me 

The knowledge comes to me like

A beast in the closet that

I've never acknowledged but

When you shine the light on it

It's not a beast at all but a memory never dealt with

 It's the mountain I never climbed

And the task I couldn't accomplish

The rage I never screamed

The prayer I never prayed and the contest

I couldn't win because I had to admit what I lost first

It's the tears of my past that I couldn't cry

That I wouldn't recognize

That held me back all along

From becoming the person I was always meant to be

Because I never cried for the little girl inside

I never told her I was sorry

And that it wasn't her fault

It's her tears that have crept out

From time to time

Like the slow leak of a dam that's trying to break through

 It's her tears that I will cry now

And acknowledge at last the damage done

So together we can reshape the soul

That makes the beautiful victory

Of me and that little girl going forward to conquer the world.



Puzzle Pieces


All of us are puzzles

Shaped together by different pieces

Unique, different from your neighbor’s

Or your sister’s or father’s

Sometimes things happen to our puzzles

When they are young and still fitting together

Or old and fit, yet brittle or fragile

And yours falls apart

A little like humpty dumpty

All the king’s horses and your will

Or heart or broken soul

Can’t put the pieces together again

So you walk along with this broken puzzle

All your life, struggling to carry

Your burdens and keep track

Of the pieces

You saved to fit together again someday

But they never will

Until suddenly you realize

You have to let God reshape them

With hammering and biting and

Incredible heat and screaming and

Fisted hands with careful attention

And it burns and binds and breaks your insides

You feel as though your guts are

On fire and some days you can’t take the pain

But like precious metal or steel can be beautified

With the right amount of patience and heat

The tender hands of God, the blacksmith

Can begin to temper the broken puzzle pieces

To build a bright and shiny new landscape

After the pain, after the fire

After the suffering and broken back from

All the years of lugging your burdens

After you stand under the microscope and burn

Your demons like ants on a Texas summer day

Your pieces will begin to fit

Shaped by a heavenly forge and His hands

To create the puzzle that was waiting inside you

Cocooned by eons of self protection and uncried tears

Bright and with a beautiful hue

That pieces never broken can never have

But yours, because they have had

Such sculpting and pain

Love and Sorrow

All in one lifetime - they are different

They are shaped to fit the puzzle that is

Raw, awesome, and without bitterness

Because the heavenly fire charred it all away

Leaving only the shine gleaming

Your puzzle is now complete again in a new way

A better way, a way you could never foresee

And you didn’t need the king’s men after all

You just needed the King.

~ Rachel Massey