Here are some reasons I woke up with a knot in my belly this week about my decision to start showing up in Substack.
I don’t have a plan for what I’m going to say.
I’m not a writer, so have no real right to be here.
Someone (it feels like everyone) has already said it, but better.
Commitment has always felt like a really uncomfortable internal pressure to me, and I think I need to pop the pain. Vamoosh, skedaddle, quit.
Saying anything is making noise, and I just want the world to feel quiet.
All of these I think, when looked at from a certain angle, are probably to do with judgement… both of myself, and of others. Making calls on what other people want, need or feel, and making quick snap judgements of my own internal state and insecurities, in order to try to reduce the pain. Always… always we find ourselves second guessing each other, and ourselves, as we don’t want to cause hurt, tension or uncomfortableness. I think that’s my people pleasing tendencies shining through.
Lessons from my mother
But what I’m only slowly starting to see, is that this discomfort, this embarrassment, this feeling…is actually a bloody good lesson for me, and one I need to keep sitting with. You see, I noticed it yesterday on a walk with my mum. She has a whole heap of feelings of not-enoughness that she’s only starting to really notice, and I was, again, feeling myself getting so angry with her. She was telling me how she couldn’t possibly share her artwork like ‘so-and-so’ as his is so much better than hers (which is bloody brilliant by the way). And then how she feels like she’s 75 and feels completely useless compared to her other friend, who has achieved so much with her life.
And as my rage rose, I realised (whilst telling her that I so, so wish she’d stop being so hard on herself and comparing herself to others) that I do the same freaking thing! Which is why I get so angry… it’s so easy to turn my inside pain onto someone else, to be blinkered, and judgemental, and wonder how the hell my mum has got to be such and age and not have discovered how to love herself fully.
Starter Seeds
Because I realise that in lots of stages in my life, but especially at the moment, I too feel like a total beginner, looking out onto fields of wiser, brighter, more ‘successful’ grounded and brilliant plants too. Here are some of the places where I feel my not-enoughness right now:
Going back to work outside my home, after having spent the last 18 years with my kids.
Here, in these writing windows, after having spent a lifetime with numbers and absolutely hating ‘English’, or any form of writing at school.
In my ‘adults new to stammering’ group. It’s bizarre to feel this sense of not-enoughness, even in this healing space. Is a tiny, supportive group, but they’ve had their stammers for longer, and been together as a group for a long time. I even find myself wondering if my stammer is bad enough to be here. WTF.
And there it is. Over and over again, comparison, judgement, and feeling like who I am, what I have to offer (as if we even need to offer?) is not enough.
Seeds of past lives
But I found myself reminding my mum of all the lives she’s led. All the incredible things she’s done, fears she’s conquered, lives she’s supported, relationships with her kids she’s nurtured, homes she’s created, places she’s been, friends she’s grown, garden’s she planted… She has had so many phenomenal lives, and she’s still living them… they’re just a bit clouded at the moment by fear and this fog of not-enoughness.
And I breathed in a big sigh of contentment… when I remembered that when we turn towards the roots of our past lives… when we remember what we’ve grown through already, that we can come home. To all the lives we’ve already lived, the growth, flowers and fruits that we have already planted… that it simply doesn’t matter what we see and imagine around us on the outside. That we can feel at home in these spaces of growth and luscious greenery, even as a small-just-starting-out again seedling, as we all have the unique foundations of so many lives inside us that we’re drawing from. The wisdom of our roots… planted firmly within the soil of our own, unique never-ending universe.
What are you drawing up from yours today I wonder… I hope it feels enough, I hope it feels like home.
Your writing might be noise but it's the noise of a soft rain which makes everything shiny and reflective and brings out the richness of colors that go unnoticed otherwise.
So many nutrients nourishing my growth in this post, Betsy. I loved the way you organised your thoughts. It was easy on my eyes and digestible for my busy brain. The metaphors were stimulating as well. I love how they help ideas grow like vines in my mind as I read. “The wisdom of our roots planted firmly within the soil of our own unique never-ending universe.” What a lovely thing to contemplate….reaching deep down to ground ourselves in an expansive “heaven”. What a lovely way to re enter and counter some of those worries that are like weeds choking our peace of mind and sucking up our energy.