What are you not saying that you want to say?
For the first 35 years of my life I was tongue-tied. I had so many feelings that never translated into thoughts and therefore never came out of my mouth. I used to say that my childhood was silent. Now I suspect I WAS THE ONE who was silent. Isn’t it funny how this works. I am not blaming myself. I am seeing myself.
I started to see myself about 20 years ago. To become aware of oneself is a miracle. To actually begin speaking and saying the things I wanted and needed to say was doubly a miracle. There are many obstacles that keep this from happening. Maybe this resonates with you.
More than 10 years ago, I and someone I used to know very well were having an intense conversation and this person said to me: Surely you teach your children to censor themselves. I had never thought about it but it was perhaps the first time in memory that a question insulted my soul. No, I said. I do not teach my children to censor themselves. I encourage them to be who they are.
Here’s another example that I’ve written about before and it is pertinent here. A bit less than 20 years ago when our kids were still very small, we were visiting my mother-in-law at Easter. She wanted to know if we had gone to church that morning. Upon hearing from my husband that we had not been to church that morning, MIL says: Shame on you! I hear myself say to her: Oh, we don’t do shame in our house. MIL says it again and this time stomps her foot for emphasis: Shame on you! I also repeated myself: WE DON’T DO SHAME IN OUR HOUSE.
There are so many beliefs - familial, cultural, religious and even seemingly personal - that if we really looked at these so called beliefs, at our core, we actually don’t believe them. We have simply picked them up along the way or they have been fed to us and we’ve taken them in and on as part of our “identity.” It takes major courage to begin to look at oneself, to SEE oneself and begin to uncover the many layers that exist on top of the REAL YOU. Your process will not be the same as mine because we are different beings but I promise that it will be a process of great discovery. If you have read this far, that tells me you are already on this miraculous journey.
When I ask, what do you want to say that you are not saying, I am not talking about major pronouncements or speeches. I’m also not, not talking about that but my discoveries have shown me that the place where the profundity lies is in the every day moments with those closest to you.
It was 2016, my mom had died two months earlier and I was at lunch with my dad. Driving to lunch I declared to myself: I am not going to talk about nothing! I was tired of having the same old conversations. We had just sat down and my dad says to me: Can you keep a secret? My dear dad went on to confide in me that he had met a woman friend and when I realized he was telling me he liked her, I was so happy for him! At 86 years old, dad was concerned about what people would think because it had only been two months since mom died.
Tragically, instead of keeping us and our identity “safe,” beliefs can keep us from ourselves and the very life we’ve come here to live. Instead of seeing and experiencing our unique and beautiful self, heart and soul, we only see the beliefs and mistakenly take the beliefs for who we are.
I get it, it’s scary to start uttering new, albeit true words in our closest relationships. One of the reasons we don’t speak the truth in relationships is the idea that we are protecting the other person. I have found, that in truth, what we are protecting is the “idea” of the relationship as we know it. Whether the other person is your spouse, grown child, sister/brother, dear friend or colleague, the truth always brings us closer. And as we speak the truth in relationships, we also become more of ourselves. This is the juice. This is the peace. This is the freedom. This is the love.
I will ask you again, what do you want to say that you are not saying? Nothing is too small. In fact, sometimes the smallest, seemingly mundane things are the hardest and yet most transformative to utter. You’re on the couch on a Saturday morning and your S.O. asks you to get coffee with them. You really don’t want to. The answer? No, I’m good right here. Insert your own seemingly mundane example here.
By being who you are, saying what only you can say, doing what only you can do, the people in your life come to know the real person that is YOU and perhaps most importantly, you will come to KNOW yourself.