Ferocious Truth

I want to unfold.
I don’t want to stay folded anywhere,
because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

{Rainer Maria Rilke}

My heart beats out the rhythm: tell the truth tell the truth tell the truth.

Tell the truth of who you are, of how you are.  Tell the truth about what you need. Tell the truth of your story as a human on this planet.

Tell the truth because in your silence, you are breeding the story that you are alone struggle. That you are alone in feeling this messy. Tell the truth to remove the artificial borders that you have created for yourself, sealing you in here, with your white hot and bubbling truths.

Tell the truth to honor your desire to move forward, to grow, because there is no growth without truth.

When I avoid my truth, my growth is circuitous, winding through the darkness. I lay myself a careful trail of breadcrumbs, so that I will be able to find my way back through the mist of clues and stories. When I avoid my truth, I must be careful to remember what I’d told, to whom. My energy is diffuse with all of that elaborate record keeping.

When I avoid my truth, I become a stranger in my own life. 

In truth I am flourishing in a hot house of honest vulnerability. I am messy, open. I am wild, untethered. In truth, my many pieces are on display for you, but I am safe in belonging to myself. In truth, I know that it is not my job to manage your response to my words, my actions. In truth, my energy is reclaimed and I am whole.

When I live in the bright light of truth, I am free. 

My lies were inconspicuous. They were quiet lies, white lies. They weren’t lies as much as they were omissions of depth. They were born in the moment that followed my impulse to cover my tracks, dim my shine. They grew out of the desire to be loved and feeling unsure of whether or not I deserved it.

My lies were quiet lies. They spread beneath me as I walked, qualifying my understanding of my own goodness. Was I good with the lie? Was I good enough?

My lies were lies of contorting the truth. Doling it out to myself piece by piece, because I assumed that I wasn’t strong enough to love all of myself – just as I assumed that you might not love me, if you saw all of me.

In my heart of hearts, I want to unburden us of the need to lie to one another.

These quiet lies are eating us alive. They writhe their way into our relationship with ourselves, with others. They promise to be the answer to our deepest longing for love. They promise to light the way.

But, these lies are not our saviors. The relationships that they allow are cultivated in uneven earth. Instead of the love that they promise, they breed our loneliness. These lies stack up upon one another, building walls between us and everyone else.

These lies reinforce the ultimate lie: That there is something wrong with you. That you can’t be honest and be loved. That you are unlovable. 

It can feel risky, telling the truth. It can challenge all of our notions of belonging. It can trigger every single feeling that we might have, every memory tucked deep in our flesh about what it means to belong and what it means to be cast out.

I have been cast out. I do not want to be cast out again.

But, I will not live a lie, for your love.

I will not cut myself up into little pieces, so that I am easily palatable. I will not quiet myself in order to make you feel more comfortable. I have been doing that for far too long.

The truth is, your goodness is inherent. There is nothing here for you to prove.

Your worth is not hinged on anything you do.

But, unless you allow others to truly see you, you will never feel the warmth of that inherent goodness, the warmth of your worth reflected back at you in a look of love. Unless you allow others to see you as you are, in your truth, you will never have the opportunity to be loved as you are.

You will never have an opportunity to love yourself, as you are.

Yes, there will be those who see you in your truth and do not like you. But, there is a perfection in that, a whittling down. An honesty. We are not for everyone. That is ok.

You must teach yourself to tolerate their reactions to you. Your job is to show up in your truth, in your messy, human vulnerability. Your job is to do the best that you can with the tools that you have on hand. Your job is not to micromanage how others react to you.

Honoring your truth about belonging to yourself. Trusting that it is safe to speak your truth no matter what is an act of belonging to yourself. When you speak your truth you are claiming sovereignty of your life. This is what occurs when you trust yourself to speak your truth and belong. When you speak to yourself honestly about who you are and what you need. When you allow others to witness you as you.

Belonging to yourself is permanent, grounding, even if your membership to others circles feels tenuous or uncertain.

But, unless you are speaking your truth, you will never belong to yourself. 

This is the essential piece, the beginning piece. This is the piece that you can practice, even if it is only in the safe space of your own mind. Start with one truth. And then another.

There is space for all of you here, if you allow it.

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Want to share your ferocious truths?

I will be playing with truth through the New Moon, April 18th, on Instagram with the hashtag #ferocioustruth. Join me.