I was thinking the other day about things I typically
don’t let people know. I’m not withholding some kind of ‘deep dark secret’ ,
but I AM withholding, and often don’t reveal certain things about myself. You may not care about these things, and you may find
them meaningless or amusing, but to me, I unconsciously and automatically skip
over certain things about myself. Things
that reveal how sensitive I am, or about how much I enjoy being ‘domestic’…
I don’t tell people that in High School I won the
Betty Crocker Future Homemaker of America award…but I did. When you see those
posts and articles about the 110 shortcuts for our home, I promise you, I know
most of them. I love to cook and I'm really good at it. Not the 'Martha perfection in place-mats' kind of thing- but the food is love on a plate kind of thing.
I am a gatherer and
compiler of information. I hate ‘real’ puzzles- the kind out of a box, but I
love the puzzles in which words, thoughts, ideas can be combined and recombined to make new
things happen, or to solve old problems in new ways. Love that.
I don’t admit what a soft touch I can be. I
protect myself from myself by putting policies into place to get paid on time, and keep people that I might allow to take
advantage of me at a distance. I cry at the movies…hell, sometimes I even cry during
a TV commercial.
Yes I can be tough as nails when I’m coaching, and people
mistake my ability to be a warrior on behalf of the being that’s being bullied
by the mind, for the person I am in the rest of my life. Growing up I denied
and suppressed all things ‘feminine’, wanting and needing to be strong,
mistaking strength for a kind of masculine stoicism, all the while refusing to do
things for myself as simple as buying good hair conditioner. I have had some Very Bad Hair years. (Yes,
years)
I eventually woke up and started admitting the deep
longing I had for softness, for ‘girl’ things, for stuffed animals and
beautiful pictures of nature. I started taking pictures, and yes I do have a
small collection of stuffed animals.
My bedroom is pink. There, I said it. My bedroom is
pink and I really like sparkly things. I’m a sucker for sparkly nail polish and
things that catch the light. When my mother was buried, it was the first time I
ever saw her wearing nail polish. Somebody said, “She never had time for that.”
, and I decided to always wear nail polish from that point forward, to remind
myself what it cost my mother to put herself last, and to honor her memory with
this small nearly invisible gesture. I still polish my nails. As I type these
words I’m wearing pink glittery nail polish. And I’m enjoying the way the
sunlight shimmers across my nails as I type.
I’m an introvert. No, really. Yes I do know I do
workshops and lectures and have a big mouth. But in a crowded room of people I
do not know, I’m the one observing, rarely the one being social and
interacting. I just don’t enjoy small talk. I prefer not to talk unless I have
something to say, and I find most of the typical getting-to-know-you type of
social interactions are mostly bullshit substituting for real conversation.
I’m a geek. I never realized just how much of geek I
am until some years ago, when I was regularly invited to a friend’s home who
routinely gathered a group of
fascinating people including authors, remote viewers, scientists,
astronauts, physicists …and me.
It never occurred to me that I was the ‘odd woman out’ because I was able to
hold wonderful rich conversations with these people. I was surprised by
how much I knew by just reading, researching and putting things together on my
own. I was definitely not the ‘observer’
in the background in those gatherings. I asked questions, I gave opinions, and
I found myself really feeling at home with people for the first time in my
adult life.
Well, these are a few of the things I generally don’t
offer up in conversation, though anyone who really knows me, knows all these plus
far more.
I encourage you to share even your semi-secrets, the
ones that make you a little squirmy, the ones that make you think “Oh NO, what if everyone knew THAT about me”…because
without revealing your deep self, no has the opportunity to actually know you. Not that I’m suggesting you go around telling
everyone, but that you for sure tell everyone close to you and anyone that you
would like to be close to. Honesty is the water that intimacy thrives in.
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