How do you know you’re just fixed and static and just who you are? Could you prove it in a court of law? Could you stand up to the best logicians and debaters and defend your position about being “just who you are?”
I have been asking myself this very question slowly and vaguely and piece by piece for years now and it has lead to me to today, like all things do. All things, no matter what they are, lead you right here to this moment to ask you, “Still good? Are we still doing this? Are we still holding on or are we letting go? Are you walking into or away from something bigger?”
Slowly and vaguely and piece by piece I’ve been confronted with assumptions about identity and strengths and weaknesses, stories and their unraveling. I know that the “That’s just me” or “That’s just not me” arguments aren’t air tight because I’ve seen the cracks in their armor. Before I had kids, I was not a mother- “That was just me” but then, for some reason, I walked into a willingness to become something different, expand my waistline and my definition of “me-dom.” Before I was a person who made records, I was a person who loved doing live shows and having fun with my friends at a small hobby-like level and “that was just me” but, there again, I decided to enter into a larger definition of myself. So I’ve lived the undoing of the static explanation of identity. I think, if there’s anything worth talking about these days it’s the word, “identity.” What does it mean? What doesn’t it mean? What are the beyond redemption states of being we’ve decided are beyond restoration and why? And, especially in this realm of identity, why are there realms where love and hope don’t get as many votes as brokenness and “that’s just who I am?”
I’ve been confronted more pointedly with this question over the past few months. Both by choice and by happenstance and I’ve felt the earth give way and the knees go weak and the desire to turn around for fear of a volcano just out of eyesight. I wrote down, “It’s a lonely road to connection.” and first, I think that’s tragic and also, I think that’s hilarious. Worth tears of sadness and total absurdity.
So we go back to the fundamentals in the lonely unraveling. I know I am loved. I know I am safe. I know I was put here for a reason and I know I’ve showed up every day from birth til now doing the thing. I know there’s been heartache, elation, fear, joy, loss, peace, despair, wonder, tears, laughter, yelling, breaking, pretty big balances on the credit card every now and again, and bad hair. That sounds like life. That sounds like the stuff that shapes you into who you are. It also signals sounds that there’s a story and there are days yet to live.
Mama didn’t name me “Hope” for nothing. I don’t want to be a nebulous cloud with no end and no beginning nor do I wish to be a peanut butter sandwich. I don’t want to exclude hope from the scenario. Maybe I need to put my name squarely in the driver’s seat of my quest. I want to be sure of who I am in the deepest ways possible and then I want to see what can be shed to make room for something new.
My work is shedding that which I fear may be impossible. My work is shedding the deepest hurts and core shame that drills right on down to everything and helps me blow things up in my life. And I whisper, “Mama didn’t name me ‘Hope’ for nothin’.” I’m not saying I’ll erase them. Hell, that might not be in the plan for me. I am saying I can change my relationship with them. If shame and old shitty past stuff can’t ever be erased, then my work is re-writing what it is and why it’s there in a way that I come out the hero and not the defeated.
Too much? Is this too much? My brain always tells me I’m too much so you’re not alone. In my years of hanging out with this question, one things clear: there’s no way in hell or earth or heaven I am going to just hand over my life and kingdom to some old bullshit story about how I’m so weak and the dragon’s so strong and my fairy tale with always end with me back in rags sleeping in the soot of a fireplace I don’t even own. Fuck that (sorry for the swearing). I’ve learned enough to know that THAT’s just not who I am. Maybe it was at one time, but not anymore.
I could dump out all my fears and worries about who I am in this life, but that list would probably match most other people’s. Brokenness loves to pretend exclusivity to make us think we’re the only ones. Cue isolation, cue lack of help, cue despair, cue Brokenness crossing the finish line and spraying champagne everywhere and it gets in your eyes and it stings and that doesn’t feel like winning. I did that so much. Now I’m working on a different approach. I see you, Brokenness. I’m studying you to know you in every way I can. I’m reading Heidi Goehmann’s new book, “Finding Hope: From Brokenness to Restoration” and I’m walking away from old ways I’ve settled with a, “That’s just me.” High five, everybody. Go be the bright crazy, powerful shininig diamond you were meant to be.