On How We Transform
Have you ever experienced unconditional love? Not that of a parent or relative but from someone who has absolutely no reason, other than the fact that you exist, to love you? I have, but I have learned that it is also important to give it to myself.
I’ve gone through several life-changing moments and many of them involved falling in love; falling in love with moments, falling in love with others and now, falling in love with myself.
I remember the first time I fell in love with a moment. I was 7 years old and my mother was throwing a birthday party for me. She invited some of the other children from the community along with a few of my cousins and aunts. There was a cake, ice-cream and everything. Thinking back, it was in that moment that I realised just how important my birthday was to me. It was the single day of all days to celebrate me and my muchness, to show that I do and deserve to take up space in the world and in peoples’ hearts. The first time I fell in love with another person, I learned that there was more to life than the achievements tied to our names and the labels we put on ourselves. I learned that life could be fun and interesting. I learned that memories could be made from anything and they are some of the best things we can ever hope to keep.
I must admit that falling in and out of love with others throughout my life — platonically and romantically, left me with wounds I did not know I would ever receive and some methods of healing that didn’t really heal. These wounds seemed to be gone on the surface but would sometimes rip open again as I made my way through life navigating different people, phases and circumstances.
Many of us have been through situations in our lives that led us to believe that people will treat us differently if they knew all about us, if they knew the parts of our souls that we don’t readily show, even if they weren’t necessarily bad things. Many of us are afraid of being judged — and so we judge ourselves first. Life and some of its experiences hardened me so much, that I wasn’t always sure how to be soft, even when soft was the only thing I wanted to be. I’m not entirely sure when I started to believe the negative things people told me about myself, when I started to believe that I wasn’t special or when I accepted that the things that made me who I am weren’t “that big a deal”.
What a lie I told myself!
But life has a way of pushing us to become better versions of ourselves, even when we don’t see it coming and even when we’re not always ready. As Gwendolyn Brooks says in Speech To The Young, “Even if you are not ready for the day, it cannot always be night.”
Recently, I was pushed to start a journey of self reflection and needless to say, it has forced me out of the ‘night’. Something in me changed and all of a sudden I was flooded with the multitude of ways I was policing myself and shunning my own authenticity. I’ve been looking for a word to describe what I’ve been feeling and the only thing I can come up with is “a state of transformation”. By acknowledging even the smallest things that made me who I am, I was able to release who I thought I was supposed to be. I was able to better understand that I am already fully and incredibly loved.
When we come across people who care enough to want to know and love us, we are then forced to sit with ourselves and unpack the things we thought made us unloveable, the things that make us react harmfully or hide ourselves away. When we are loved for who we are and not for the things we have or can do, we are then free and able to exist in a space that doesn’t require anything of us except that we show up.
In my childhood trauma post, I shared about my sensitivity and the fact that I wasn’t allowed to be anything other than the box I was placed in. In the post I wrote about shame, I touched on the fact that there were things about myself that I wanted to change but didn’t quite know how. Now that I’m feeling a sense of newness, I’m learning that there are people in my life who can (and do) love me even if I no longer fit into a box — the problem was that I was still trying to fit into that box, because I wasn’t sure (and was afraid of) who I would become once I stepped out of it. The truth of the matter is, the moment I decided to move forward without judgment, I started to see myself in all my glory.
I’m owning the fact that I am sensitive and soft. I’m owning the fact that I sometimes have complex emotions. Owning the fact that I don’t always have the answers and owning the reality that we are all works in progress and there is no such thing as perfection. I am owning me and no longer trying to fit into an old version of myself because with every passing day, there is something else to love. I have no idea how long this state of transformation will last and for maybe the first time in my life, I am not concerned with that. I am simply allowing myself to be.
How sweet it is to be loved by you(rself).