Be a light unto yourself. – Buddha
This year, in solidarity with my friend and fellow blogger, Kathleen Fisher (aka A Speckled Trout), I submitted a piece of writing to Listen to Your Mother. For those of you unfamiliar, Listen to Your Mother is a national series of original live readings about motherhood shared locally on stages in the weeks leading up to Mother’s Day, and globally via social media. In February, I was excited to learn that my piece was one of those selected for this year’s Kansas City cast.
So, for the last few months, I’ve been on this unique journey of storytelling and soul-bearing about the highs and lows of my motherhood experience with a group of women within my community. We came together from all walks of life and a vast array of perspectives – the one thing uniting us being motherhood and a desire to share our stories.
In our group’s first read-through, one of the women in our cast recounted that although she was raised to be a strong woman, she was not raised to be brave. Her words reverberated within me. Prior to hearing her piece, I had not stopped to think about the fact that someone could be quite strong in their constitution and at the same time struggle with being brave.
We often interchange strength and bravery as if they denote the same thing, but in fact, they are qualitatively different in their meaning. Being strong can look like a lot of things, but it inherently suggests the need to protect something we value from coming to harm. To be brave, in contrast, suggests a certain amount of vulnerability because we are willing to take risks for the sake of what we hold close. It is fed by the waters of personal truth – the soft, still voice within us that seeks expression.
I’ve lived much of my existence within the spectrum of “strong.” From being a child without a voice learning to endure as the chaos of other people’s suffering encircled me, to being an independent, self-sufficient woman who was so busy being a hard-ass that I couldn’t let anyone into my emotional space for fear of being seen in all my messy glory.
The danger always inherent to strength is that it can become a comfortable layer between ourselves and the rest of the world that continues to be worn long past its usefulness. For as strong as I’ve been, and felt I needed to be at times, life seems to constantly nudge me to move towards something else, something less safe but more authentic.
The decision to submit a piece of writing to the Listen to Your Mother showcase came from a desire to be more open about my life, to risk in a much more public way. In practice, however, sharing a portion of my personal story left me feeling absolutely raw and exposed, as if torn from my moorings. At moments, it was terrifying and I questioned whether I had done the right thing.
But as has been true every other time I’ve been brave in my life, the experience was nothing short of transformative. This past weekend, our collective journey culminated with our individual moments of surrendering security for the sake of our stories. We spoke with gumpshun and tears – and everything in between. We shared the jewel within our respective hearts to anyone who dared listen. To say it was magical is an understatement.
As I sink further into this experience that I call my life, feeling both the gift and responsibility of it, I am compelled to continue to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability – to no longer leave important things unsaid or undone. What has awaited me thus far is not annihilation, as the mind would have me believe, but a greater intimacy with life. I know the road I walk is far less secure and predictable. Nevertheless, I’ll continue to do my best to remain open as I take in the experience of being fully present.
In every moment, we have a choice between staying strong for the sake of safety or being brave for the sake of authenticity. Perhaps life is encouraging all of us to be a little braver, to not spend so much of our time building the walls of security, but to risk, to do the scary stuff and expose that jewel within us, allowing it to shine through. I can’t speak for anyone else in our cast, but this little light of mine…well, I think you know the rest.