Modeling Worthiness

When I was a girl my mother read Emily Dickinson poems to me.  She told me the poems could all be sung to the rhythm of the song "The Yellow Rose of Texas."

I have absolutely no idea if that is true or not; my mother has always been a bit reminiscent of Albert Finney in the movie "Big Fish."  But despite this uncertainty about the song part, more importantly, several of Ms. Dickinson's poems stayed with me after all these years. One, goes like this:

"I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us--don't tell!
They'd banish --you know!"

I looked up this poem again recently and was surprised to see this second stanza that I had forgotten:

"How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell one's name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!"

I wonder what Ms. Dickinson was thinking when she wrote this? For me, on this day, it turns my mind toward my own journey with unworthiness, or what Buddhist teacher and psychologist Tara Brach calls,  "the trance of unworthiness."

When I think back to my girlhood, and I say girlhood not childhood because I think this feeling of unworthiness is epidemic for girls and women in particular, I can remember concrete examples of worthiness. Very literal ways I now think of as evidence that once upon a time, as all fairy tales begin, I felt worthy. Like the fact that in elementary school I had 2 t-shirts that I loved to wear, a Harvard t-shirt and a Yale t-shirt.  I had picked up somewhere along the way that those 2 colleges were the best, and so I just expected I'd of course go to one of them, so I wore the T-shirts.  Never mind that I knew no one who had gotten a degree from either school and there was no one in my life encouraging me to dream to go there. And honestly, I wouldn't even call it a dream. It was more like, "I'm just going there because that's where I'm going."

Suffice it to say, I went to neither.  And now, some 30 years later, I marvel at that little girl's tenacity and confidence. Where did it come from? Where did it go? How do I fully get it back again? Does it have to do with remembering that I come from god and therefore must return to god just as god made me? Just as I am?

What if we girls were to go through life acting from the place of "I'm great. I hope you know you are great too." Imagine the possibilities. But we don't, many of us. Something happens and we forget what we know. We forget we are worthy.

Just today I read this passage in another memoir by Joan Anderson, "A Year By the Sea:" She writes: "Hell, I thought I was invincible for a long time, and then suddenly I stopped taking any risks. Inexplicably, there was a gradual erosion of faith in the essence of myself, as the habit of deference grew like a cancer on my soul until what I had become was out of my hands." When did that erosion begin for me? When did it begin for you?

Brene Brown, who just a couple years ago was novel in her research and TED talks on vulnerability and shame, both highly associated with unworthiness, but is now almost trite after being taken up (over) by Ms. Oprah Winfrey. But regardless, her writing about what she calls "daring greatly" to combat feelings of unworthiness and the "who do you think you are" thought, is still ground-breaking to me. Ms. Brown challenges us to consider the thoughts that hold us back from stepping out and taking a risk.

Like the thoughts that showed up for me even when I considered writing this blog. I thought, "who are you to write this blog? You are nobody-" as Ms. Dickinson poetically reminds us.

But maybe I'll decide to be an proud "nobody." One who thinks she's no better than another, but at the same time just as worthy and valuable as all others.

To be fair to Ms. Dickinson though, I'm terrible at interpreting poetry. I truly have no idea if she meant this poem to be interpreted from the dialectical place of "I'm magnificent and yet simultaneously minuscule in the cosmos." Regardless, that is how I'm choosing to read the poem today. A long way, I'll tell you, from where I was not all that long ago, and yet still so far from that audacious little girl who wore Harvard and Yale T-shirts.

Sometimes when I am praying to god I ask, or beg, that she look over my daughter to not walk in my footsteps. Not in all things. Just in the areas that I get stuck in the quicksand, like unworthiness. I ask god to please let my daughter know every day of her life that she is a worthy human being who is loved unconditionally. I ask that god help her to take strategic risks because I pray my daughter, unlike me I hope, will not tie the outcome of her effort to her own self worth.

I'll end tonight on this note: Brene Brown wrote something called  "The Whole Hearted Parenting Manifesto." It is like a pledge for parents who want to raise children to know they are imperfectly perfect just as they are. It starts with: "Above all, I want you to know that you are loved and lovable. You will learn this from my words and actions- the lessons on love are in how I treat you and how I treat myself." Beautiful.

Let's try this, ok? Starting today we are all worthy, and we will model self worth and self love for our children, and particularly our daughters. Then we will know and not forget, as I did somewhere along the way, that each of us is valuable and valued. Whether you believe in god or not, I believe we are all created in unique perfection, and that alone is truly miraculous.

Let's try not to forget this time.