I know a woman and her husband who have helped me find courage to be more of who I truly am.

A quick follow up from my last post about trying to set our agendas aside to be more present with humans.  Lest you think I have my act together, here is a story about how quickly I forgot the lessons from last week. As often happens, I received an extremely upset phone call from my close-family-member- with-dementia. She was having a fight w her caregiver over a trivial matter that I happened to know did not happen as she believed it did.  My agenda immediately became convey to her that her caregiver is one of the good guys with her best interests at heart, convince her both that she is wrong & this doesn’t matter, and to try to end the call as quickly as possible because emotionally charged calls with this person are draining and make me sad. Her agenda was to express her anger and seek support for how obviously wronged she had been. Although I listened sympathetically, I also pushed back on the “what actually happened” front. She hung up on me.

In the long list of trivial events that annoy us Humans, being hung up on is close to the top for me. I really, really don’t like being hung up on in the middle of an emotionally charged conversation. As we all know by now, I am “nice” and few things make me mad. This is one of them.  And it did the trick of highlighting what a dumb ass I was being. Not listening because of my agenda; hmmm, yes, that sounds familiar now that you mention it.  Sometimes what I need is to be whacked on head in order to be able to remember.  I took a deep breath, called her back, conveyed “You talk, I listen.” and then did my best to really listen to what she was trying to express.  Like a gasoline soaked rag in a Molotov cocktail, her words were soaked with fear; fear of not having her needs met, not being taken care of, not being valued enough to be listened to, being abandoned, being alone. It helped to have me stop trying to fix what the dementia would not let be fixed, and to listen to this Human who needed to be heard.

Many years ago at a family funeral, I witnessed one of the most brave and amazing things I have ever seen.  I believe the family member was in his mid-80s and died after an illness of several years.  His son and his son’s wife had taken care of him for quite awhile until the disease reached the point he needed a level of care requiring a nursing home.  During the funeral, his son got up, as expected, and did an amazing thing, that was not expected.  His son told the truth. He told the truth about his father who was not a nice person, who had been a destructive force in the lives of his family.  This was delivered without vengeance or anger.  It simply was truth of who this man was. It felt to me, and hopefully his son, that this was a powerful moment to be honest.  As I said, one of the most brave and amazing things I have ever seen.

For those of you who lean toward science fiction, there is a character in Orson Scott Card’s book Speaker for the Dead who belongs to a group tasked with attending funerals and speaking the truth about the deceased.  Their task is considered sacred and, once requested, no one can stop the Speaker from completing their work.  These people are tasked with presenting who the deceased truly was as a person, a complex person with faults and strengths, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, a full picture of a real human for all to witness. They are tasked with telling the truth.

I wonder if an even more powerful & more difficult task is for us to share and speak the truth about who we are when we are still alive.

I don’t know about you, but I have come to see that I happen to specialize in not revealing who I am. I probably have a trophy laying about someplace for this. About 10 years ago, I was having lunch with a good friend, we were talking about various challenges she was facing, and out of the blue she said, “You know, I don’t actually know very much about you.”  I realized she was completely right.  In all the years we had been friends, I had never shared much at all of who I was.  I specialized in appearing to be open and sharing when I am not actually doing so, it was a facade. In fact, I used the strengths I have (smart, “nice,” witty and hilarious…..oh, and attractive. Let’s not forget that) as tools to mask how little of myself I am honestly sharing. People got to see the me who was an acted character; not the naked, vulnerable, insecure, frightened me with a pack of demons under the stairs.

That nakedness and vulnerability is frightening, and liberating.  To be that honest about who we are, not even to the whole world (although wouldn’t that be game changing?), but to the people in *Your World*, the people you most cherish, you most love, you most want to see You, you most want to truly know who You are and have them somehow still love You.  Wow. Can you imagine?  How wonderful to be like that in the world; to be that brave, to have people in your life you felt that safe with.

Perhaps you have that, in which case go you (!), and I kind of hate you.  When I was younger, I was terrified of being that open, honest and vulnerable, and so I wasn’t.  I hid completely in plain sight.  Which sucked for everyone involved and messed up a lot of my relationships with the people in my life.  I am no longer terrified. Now I am just afraid of being that open, honest and vulnerable, so I strive to be that way every day even though sometimes I wet my pants from fear (Let’s pretend that is a hyperbole, ok?).  It is all part of that being Fearlessly Frightened thing.  So I try, and it often feels really awkward and weird, like I am just rambling, stuff pours out of my brain which I suspect makes absolutely no sense to the people in my life (which would explain some of the looks I have been getting lately).  Feels more like I am naked and oozing crazy than expressing honestly who I am and what I am thinking…..although I am certainly open to the idea that oozing crazy may in fact reflect the truth of who I am.  My goodness, that does sound attractive and like it will lead to closer, more intimate relationships with the people in my life. I mean what friend or potential romantic partner isn’t gonna want to signup for some oozing crazy? I cannot imagine that not being a great way to find love.  Bartender, another round of oozing crazy over here for me to share with those I care most deeply about!

I suspect that I am not alone with the challenge of being an authentic self in the world.  Again, this may not be you, in which case go you(!), and I still kind of hate you.  For the rest of us, what if we really are oozing crazy? What if the flaws we work so hard to hide are in fact unacceptable to other people? What if letting people, especially those we most ache and long to be with, know who we really are means we will be rejected, abandoned, and alone?  What if it is not even about being rejected? What if being honest about who we are is used against us as a weapon?  What if the people in our life use our revealed truths to hurt us? Of course, we might not really be oozing any especially crazy crazy, just standard crazy, but being authentic seems like a terrifying risk with high potential for being seriously hurt.

And (there is always an “and,” isn’t there?) what if we don’t take that risk? What if we hide who we are? Maybe this strategy will work well for you.  For me, hiding who I really am lead to me still being hurt, rejected, abandoned, and alone, and on top of that hiding who I am lead to me feeling isolated, misunderstood and unseen, which in the long run might hurt worse….emphasis on might.  I have been trying to do this Fearlessly Frightened, share-who-I-am strategy for a couple months. Mostly is still scary, although I don’t wet my pants as often (It is a hyperbole, people!). The main change I have noticed is I can’t go back to hiding like I used to do so well. Lots of days I wish I could.  I’ll let you know how it goes.