Suit of Armor

Late to the Party, again.

A few weeks ago I found a podcast from 2016 by Liz Gilbert, author of one of my favorite books, Eat, Pray, Love. On her podcast she interviewed Glennon Doyle Melton, another author of another best-selling book and soon-to-be movie, Love Warrior. Immediately after listening to this podcast I downloaded Love Warrior from the library and listened to it each morning and afternoon on my ride to and from work. This book was originally published in 2016, and maybe you’ve read it already. Nonetheless, this book stirred something inside me. Before I delve into it, I also found it peculiar that I unknowingly already had Glennon’s first book, Carry On, Warrior - The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life. There it was, sitting right there on my bedside table, unread. Then I remembered that my sister-in-law, Alicia, bought it for me two Christmases ago and I don’t know why I didn’t read it. And you know what else? Both Glennon’s book and Liz’s book were sitting on top of each other on my bedside table. Weird, right? After listening to a beautiful conversation via a podcast between these two amazingly brave women, I notice my own books written by these women have been almost strategically placed together right under my nose. There they were serendipitously sandwiched together within a small stack of books. But I don’t think it was a coincidence—-I think the Universe was sending me and guiding me.

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Anyway, I think Glennon’s over all message within Love Warrior, is that we need to find the courage to be our true selves at the surface and to stop hiding the unpleasant pieces of ourselves beneath the surface. Sounds ridiculously scary and unrealistic, doesn’t it? Maybe this way of “living your truth” isn’t for everyone, but you guys, it was so moving and beautiful to read Glennon’s raw and freeing truth. It’s starting to sound like I’ve uncovered a theme here in my 2019 blog posts, huh? Remember my post about Busy Phillips? Anyway, Glennon is right. We walk about having half-hearted, low-level, and somewhat dishonest conversations with people. We don’t ever really say much when asked except, “I’m good, I’m fine, things are good, or things are great, we are well, etc.” When really, on the inside, I am a bubbling mess of chaos and fear. Why can’t we have real conversations with people? Why are we so afraid to burden each other with our real thoughts? Even with my good friends we fall into this easy-breezy conversation style with each other. Since we have little time together, we keep it light and airy—otherwise it would be weird and almost rude, right? But Light & Airy barely scratches the surface. We’re almost proud to let each other know all our “things” are in order and neat and tidy at the surface and don’t worry, I’ll keep all the dirty, messy, unconventional things well below and hidden to keep things from getting awkward.

I mean, this is what’s expected of us, right? We’re supposed to and need to keep our shit show beneath. We proudly suit up with our armor —-a barrier between our true selves and the self we let out into the world. But you guys, that armor….that armor is a lie. We’ve become so good at hiding our messy and scared-shitless selves that we barely recognize our true selves. We keep this other version of ourselves protected from judgement and in doing so we become so conditioned to be the fake-armored version of ourselves and then we’re left trapped inside a body riddled with confusion, stress, depression, loneliness, and fear.

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What I’m discovering about me the past several months is that I’m craving real connections and the courage to reveal all of me. But could you imagine that? Could you imagine it? My response being, “Oh, me? I’m freaking out right now because Aidan is about the graduate high school and no one ever really talks about how weird that really is, and I just started a new job that sort of feels like a mistake or even a potentially critical and bad move, I have a hard time getting out of bed most days, I have this irrational fear of sink holes that seems to be manifesting as I age, we are one expensive emergency away from financial ruin, I worry more than I should that I’m not enough to survive our marriage, recently I’ve dreamed more than once about running away to literally a place where no one knows my name and never coming back, I have a temper and hate my short fuse and ridiculous behavior that surface at times because of it, I’m pretty sure that the world is literally ending right before our eyes and I’m baffled at what people argue and fight about politically, I feel guilt and shame for being embarrassed by my upbringing, and about three weeks ago, while home alone, I screamed, “fuck you,” to the Universe at as loud as I could for no particular reason and all the reasons, and it felt good, and I am mostly sure that I may die an untimely death and think about this more than normal, I think.

WTF, right? And that’s not even all of it because my armor is so protectively strong and a real part of me. But if I said all of that out loud to anyone, what would come next? Confusion? Silence? A slow backing up and exit from our conversation? Or maybe unwanted advice? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. But what if we could unlearn what we’re supposed to say or do as moms and women? What if we could unlearn and take off our armor and stand vulnerable to speak our truths, and if we as the woman on the receiving end, stand without our armor and just listen. Listen to see —listen to just see each other and be. Nothing more. Just be together without our armor. Working together to help each other to be our real, authentic, and beautiful souls. What if we filled each other up with the love that comes from listening without judgment and with acknowledgment. How do we get there? How do we unlearn? How do we undress from our armor? I don’t know exactly. For me, writing is helping. But it needs to be collaborative. So how? Maybe it starts with us acknowledging our fear and trying to do it anyway. Truth-telling in the presence of fear is courage. So, I see you my dear and close friend Fear and I know you’re not going anywhere, but I’m gonna go over here and do this “thing” anyway.

xoTrish