Your Personal Power Looks Good on You!
A couple weeks ago I was thumbing through blouses at Nordstrom Rack. I had a gift card to burn, and while I normally pride myself on being a re-used clothing enthusiast, I was having fun shopping. But as I looked through racks of crop tops and droopy sweater robes, I thought, I hate this stuff. None of this is ME.
My best friend Jackie and I have been taking Tan France’s Masterclass on how to style yourself. Jackie and I both joke that we have been dressing like little boys for most of our adulthood and it’s maybe time to throw out the ratty thrift store sweaters and dress a little more like the confident, smart women we are. Tan France has two style rules: know your proportions and wear what feels like you.
All of this has reminded yet again of the golden truth of healing: In all things, you have to be who you really are. I have always been a tomboy at heart. I go for simple neutrals that are easy to move in- kinda like a feminine lumberjack. So that day at Nordstrom, I slid a well-fitting rose shirt over to the cashier, already knowing I’d wear it with jeans and boots and feel perfectly like myself.
I’ve written about that provocative statement before -- you gotta be yourself in order to heal -- because it hit me right between the eyes when I first read from author Amy Scher. What? What does being myself have anything to do with killing off a bacterial infection?
Curious, I’ve been closely watching for what happens in moments when I’m not being quite myself. When I say something is okay when it really isn’t. For when I agree to go out when my body longs to be soaking in a hot bath instead.
Here’s what happens: My power goes out a little bit. My trust and safety within myself are dimmed.
The nervous system, as we hear so often these days, can get activated and stuck in modes of fight, flight or freeze after any sort of trauma - emotional or physical, big or small. Healing can’t happen when we’re in freak out mode.
But I’m finding an ever-so-subtle element of nervous system dysregulation can also happen when I’m not acting, talking, behaving (or dressing!) like myself.
The more I tune in with my preferences, taste, boundaries and needs, the more I become who I truly am.
For the person who has been sick a really long time, finding your sources of power is super duper important. I found I let my power continually get zapped out of me over the last ten years as I’ve struggled to “move forward” through the culturally prescribed rites of adulthood. My entire working life, for one, has felt like a giant flop - me always extending myself with shooting-star ambition in times of health, only to have to draw back under the covers when my body crumbles.
Only, I’m changing that now. As I harness more resolve to heal permanently and completely, I’m coming to see that being who I really am means embracing where I really am in my life. And that place still carries some tough physical limitations. It’s still painful to walk down the street most days.
As my friend Lizzie and I laid in the golden Indian Summer sun over the weekend, we talked about things we’re working to overcome. Mostly old ways of thinking. ”I’d feel so free,” I told her, tearing up a bit, “if I could live without this constant devil on my shoulder that’s asking me: ‘What are you doing with your life? What are you achieving?’”
My power -- to be fully myself, to be fully where I am, to love my life even if my health isn’t awesome -- is on the other side of those shitty, cold-hearted questions.
My invitation to you - anyone recovering from an illness or enduring something really hard - is to identify the one daily snag that's keeping you from being your powerful, radiant, lovely self.
If you don’t know already, it’s likely that critical and anxious thought you think about yourself or your life everyday - and usually first thing in the morning.
When I woke up this morning, I felt the instant prick of the what-are-you-doing-with-your-life thorn. But this time, I caught it. I can feel those harsh judgments shrinking like one of my old thrift store sweaters. They just don’t fit me anymore. That’s not who I am.
So. What am I doing with my life? I hardly need to defend that question anymore. Trust in a beautiful, healthful future looks so much better on me.
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You do you, y’all. Me with my ducks. Nate’s finger covering the lens.
