Trading Perfection for Love
On belonging to ourselves as a way to save the world
Hello Beautifuls,
I was reading an article the other day where the author was interviewing a woman from Denmark about happiness and the differences between the US and her country, namely a stable government and healthcare and education for all. I wish I had written the quote down, but I did not, so from memory this is more or less what the woman said: Danes never worry about things Americans start worrying about in their 20s: housing, how to pay for education, healthcare, care in old age (for themselves and their parents). She said that Danes pay 50% of their income in tax, but everything is taken care of. There is never a question of being able to afford to care for themselves, their children or their aging parents.
I think what we're lacking here in the states right now, what I most hear from my friends and neighbors is that we are craving (slowly going mad from lack of?) stability. Things have been unstable here since 2016 and I think, as a people, Americans are exhausted. Exorbitant home prices, rising inflation and interest rates, the threat of Trump and America lingering on the brink of a hostile takeover into dictatorship; or if you swing the other way, fear that has turned to hate and hostility of anything that isn't white and male and believes that God is on one side or the other–a judgmental and punishing force.
A couple of girlfriends and I got together for New Year's Eve and as we were talking, one of them said the most beautiful thing about her son and belonging in the world. I didn't write this down either, but it went something like: I won't believe in a God who limits which of us gets to belong, a God who thinks that some are enough to be loved and included and others aren't.
This is just it. This is what we've lost sight of. That we all need each other. That we're not here each in our own bubble. Our decades-long transition to individualism and our relentless pursuit of more has left us empty and angry and unfulfilled. We're seeing this everywhere in the US, at home, at work, in our rising levels of obesity, depression and debt. We fear we don't and won’t belong: to God, to ourselves.
I just started re-reading Brené Brown's Braving the Wilderness from 2017. In the first few pages she describes how her sense of not belonging was fostered through her family dynamic, moving constantly and a key experience in yet another brand new school, where she just knew if she made the drill team, she would finally belong.
She didn't make the team. Her whole family, mom, dad, brother, were in the car waiting as she jumped out to go look at the posted list on the gym door. Her number wasn't there. She felt devastatingly alone as she trudged back to her family's car. She says, "My parents didn't say one word, not a single word. Their silence cut into me like a knife to the heart. They were ashamed of me and for me. "
She internalized her lack of belonging and said, "I don't know if this was a true story, or the story I told myself in that silence, but that became the day I no longer belonged to my family."
She goes on to say that, "Even in the context of suffering – poverty, violence, human rights violations – not belonging in our families is still one of the most dangerous hurts. That's because it has the power to break our heart, our spirit, and our sense of self-worth. It broke all three for me. And when those things break, there are only three outcomes, something I've borne witness to in my life and in my work:
1. You live in constant pain and seek relief by numbing it and/or inflicting it on others;
2. You deny your pain, and your denial ensures that you pass it on to those around you and down to your children; or
3. You find the courage to own the pain and develop a level of empathy and compassion for yourself and others that allows you to spot hurt in the world in a unique way."
Here in the US, we have created a family where we don’t belong and it is breaking our hearts, our spirits and our sense of self-worth.
Brené Brown talks too about a quote from an interview Maya Angelou gave to Bill Moyers in 1973, in which she says, "You are only free when you realize you belong no place – you belong every place."
Maya Angelou's writing had been a guiding force for Brené Brown since she was in her early 20s, but Brené didn't agree with, didn't understand, Maya's belief that we belong no place. Until, many years later, she had a conversation with her husband in which he said, "You will always belong anywhere you show up as yourself and talk about yourself and your work in a real way."
Belonging begins with belonging to ourselves. It begins when we love ourselves more than we love what we look like to others: our faces, our hair, our jobs, our houses, our cars. And we've forgotten how to love ourselves, how to belong to ourselves.
Belonging begins when we choose number three on Brené's list instead of numbers one or two.
My own experiences tell me this is true.
I spent most of my teens, 20s and 30s vacillating between denial and numbing. By the time I packed a suitcase and left my entire life in Costa Rica: husband, dog, career, friends, house (the husband eventually followed with the dog), I was at the point where staying in the denial and the numbing was going to kill me. Maybe not right away, maybe not even for decades, but if I was going to be free, if I was going to do anything good with myself, (I didn't realize at the time I would have to learn to love myself) it was at that moment, or not at all.
Maybe some of you have been there too.
I wondered at the time, what am I doing? How can I just leave like this? But the tiny quiet voice inside me that was escalating to a constant, dull roar in my ears, was telling me that the only way to survive was to leave and try to find out how to belong to myself.
Because once you belong to yourself, you belong nowhere and everywhere, all at once. And from that place of stability, you can do anything, be anything, survive anything.
Charlie Mackesy's, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, is one of the most beautiful and true books of belonging I've ever seen and read. If you haven't experienced his drawings and his words in this book, please go get yourself a copy and buy more for your friends, because you will want to give it away. It is pure love.
"'Sometimes I feel lost,' said the boy.
'Me too," said the mole,
'but we love you, and
love brings you home.'
'I think everyone is just trying to get home,' said the mole.’"
This is what we need as a country. We need to realize we're at that point, that live or die point, where we must come back to ourselves, to our hearts and the love that is innately ours–all of ours. We need to understand how deeply we need each other and that hate and exclusion is never the answer. We need to come home. But I'm not sure as a country we haven't already passed that point.
I'm hoping we can still ask each other for help out of this mess we've created. Mackesy's horse understands, "'Asking for help isn't giving up,' said the horse, 'It's refusing to give up.'"
And there is part of me, the part I'm working on spending more time with, who realizes that this is truth. Even though things are fundamentally, horribly f****d up and not okay and I cannot change everyone or everything, or really anyone or any much thing, I can be brave and ask for help.
Because, that is really why we're here. To help each other, to love each other, to recognize ourselves in each other. Asking for help is just one way we extend our hand and let someone else show us what's in their heart, what their soul is capable of.
The rest is just distraction, numbing. The way to security has nothing to do with what's outside of ourselves, but what's within.
"'The great illusion,' said the mole, 'is that life should be perfect.'"
The mole is so right. We could move mountains if we'd ask for help from each other. If we’d trade perfection for love.
You belong right here, my friend.💛 This book is a favorite. My little boy and I read together often. He always asks for it. Soooo good!! Alls we do truly need is love!
One of your very bests❣️ Thsnkmyou.