Going Public: “This Is Who I Am!”
Originally posted at The Way of the Rose 54-Day Novena Facebook group December 9, 2020
Novena Day 7
The Joyful Mysteries
I’ve noticed a theme on Way of the Rose novena posts lately, people baring their hearts and souls and changing themselves and others in the process.
This is a theme I would like to see continuing. I think it is very important that as many of us as possible stand up and say, “This is who I am.”
The world shifted for me when I met my ex-husband. He gave me what I wanted most from a partner; he saw me as I was and liked what he saw.
There is nothing like that feeling of knowing that you are not just “okay” but spectacularly wonderful in someone’s eyes.
Being seen like this is NOT the same as being worshiped or put on a pedestal. One is relaxing, and the other, stressful. If you must maintain someone’s else’s arbitrary standard of awesome, you are expending energy to appear other than you are or to deal with the fallout of not doing so.
In other words, it’s the opposite of what I’m talking about.
Really seeing someone requires meeting and accepting what some call “the shadow side,” the parts of ourselves that we usually keep out of sight because they tend to be less socially acceptable. It requires searching out the quirky things that make each of us special and unique.
When my son was a toddler, he had a speech planning disorder that made speaking words very difficult for him. When I was looking for ways to help him, I reread Barry Neil Kaufman’s book Son-Rise about the therapy program that his family had devised for working with his autistic son, Raun. One particular strategy—they called it “joining”—struck me.
The idea was to observe the child doing whatever it was the child wanted to do and join them in it, imitating them to the best of your ability. The Kaufmans got brilliant results with this strategy, so I decided to try it at the first opportunity.
I noticed that Bryce tended to make random noises when we were driving in the car. One day I started imitating his noises, and I could see in the rear view mirror that immediately got his attention. At first he wasn’t sure whether or not it was a coincidence, so he tested me. Every time he made the noise, I copied it. He laughed, delighted with this game and his leadership role in it. Soon, he was varying his noises to see if I would follow, and I always did. Eventually, this game led to a far more sophisticated version that we called “Blue Car.”
One day he called out “Boo dar!” with pretended terror in his voice. His sister and I figured out that blue cars were “bad news,” so we came up with strategies to defeat the evildoers that were certainly driving the blue cars. Our strategies included “throw snakes!” and “evasive maneuvers!” until the threat had safely passed. It sounds silly as can be, but we had a lot of fun with that game when Bryce was learning to talk. There’s no doubt in my mind that the joy we expressed in joining him exactly where he was helped him enormously. When we mirrored his activities with total acceptance, he felt seen. There was no pressure to fulfill anyone else’s idea of what he should be doing, just the joy of doing.
To me, this is the essence of The Presentation, the fourth joyful mystery. Mary and Jesus are recognized by Simeon for who they are, the promised Messiah and his mother. I think of it as “Going Public,” letting the world in on those parts of ourselves that we might not otherwise reveal—and at the same time publicly declaring our dedication to “God” as we see it. Note that these hidden things about Mary and her son are in no way “bad”; in fact, they are glorious. But often it is our very gloriousness we are most afraid to reveal, isn’t it?
As Marianne Williamson put it in A Return to Love,
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
But what if people react badly to what they see in us? After all, the power of Jesus was met by one hell of a backlash. Or what if someone stops seeing us as we are? That happened with my ex. We went through a period of several years where he would be the first to tell you he did not see me as I was. And I have to say, being with someone who used to see me but no longer did was the loneliest feeling I’ve ever had. Or what if your shininess comes packaged with inescapable pain, as Simeon predicted for Mary?
Seeing what the world has done to some of its most brilliant souls throughout history, it’s not surprising that “It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.”
How do we transcend that fear and continue to show up—to take our true selves public so that in our own liberation we may liberate others?
I can’t say I know for sure. I’m on the verge of sending the proposal for my memoir to an agent, and I often feel blocked by fear of exposing so much about myself to the scrutiny of others. But it seems to me that one way is to talk to our Mama about our fears. If we do that on a regular basis, She has many opportunities to remind us that She sees us and loves us as we are. (Beware: She will also take the opportunity to nudge us to do hard stuff—like show up as Her representative on earth.) Being reflected by Her, we can learn to see ourselves as the flawed-but-glorious incarnations that we are.
And every time someone gathers the courage to stand up and joyously say, “This is who I am, and that is wonderful,” the world gets just a little bit better. And eventually we’ll reach a tipping point where the world will be a lot better.
Let’s keep it up.
