Owning Your Truth

Someone said to me recently, "There are a few of us for whom motherhood is very difficult." I countered back, "Or there are only a few of us who'll actually admit it out loud." She agreed.

I've been thinking recently about why it's so hard to own our own truths. Deep down, in our secret places, we know what we believe and how we feel. Perhaps it's difficult for us to articulate it clearly with words, but we have that gut feeling. In February and March of 2009, I had such a hard time reconciling how I felt about motherhood with what I thought I should be feeling about motherhood. Since then I've spent a lot of time - the greater part of the last three years - beating myself over the head (and heart) with how I thought I should feel about being a mama. The problem was...I didn't feel it. Do you know how hard, how lonely, how crazy-making it is trying to make yourself feel one way, when the truth is, you feel the polar opposite? I'm willing to bet you do because I think we all experience times in our lives when we try to make ourselves be something we aren't, just because we think we should.

Here's the thing.
I can only be me, with all my many parts, even the crazy and ruined ones.
And you can only be you.

I'm realizing it's time to start owning my truth. To stop trying to feel how I think I should, and start honoring who I really am and all I really feel.

"Life, he says, doesn't have to be so bad all the time. We don't have to be so anxious about everything. We can just be. We can get up, anticipate that the day will probably have a few good moments and a few bad ones, and then just deal with it. Take it all in and deal as best we can."

from John Corey Whaley's "Where Things Come Back"

That's the crux of the whole thing, I think.

...as best we can...

Not how your best friend would do it, or how you think your mom would want you to, or whoever it is you hear in your head telling you you should.

Seek out your voice.
Your truth.
Own that.
Live that.

There's freedom waiting there.