Does Your Heart Long to Be Accepted for Being Just You?

I was alone on Christmas Day for the first time in my life, but I will say that was not lonely.

Instead, I felt a strange sense of spending time with someone that I have felt awkward with for too long – me. It used to be that I could barely stand to spend any time with me; it was a concept so foreign that I would even say I was afraid to be alone.

Today as I sat on the beach by myself, I no longer feel that fear. A memory sprang up of sitting alone in a park in Sweden after a break up long ago. It was a beautiful summer’s day, and the park was busy with families and couples and people connecting. I sat in the grass among them feeling conspicuous, anxious, thinking “I could do this; I can be on my own”.

And for a while, a short while, I was. I had some time to connect in with myself, but I gave it up without having found any of the real answers I was looking for. There were possibilities laid at my door: join Al Gore’s ranks in Aussie, creating awareness about climate change; head to an African country to volunteer my services with an organisation I knew of through a leadership development programme I had worked with; or forego those and satisfy the internal clock that was ticking oh so loudly.

Making a conscious decision, I chose the opportunity to start a family. Not that it was easy, I had to earn an income and I had turned away from those other possibilities not yet knowing this me I had only just become aware of. At the time it was with a heavy heart that I turned back back to what had been tried and tested for me in a career sense.

And the starting a family part took a further three years, and two more miscarriages. But finally I satisfied that internal clock that had, in some ways, distracted me further from who I am. Because being codependent in my relationship style, knowing nothing else, I turned my back on that me I had a brief dalliance with.

I regret nothing though, it has been my honour to birth and raise such beautiful people into the world, and I enjoy seeing who they are becoming. And their birth was also my rebirth in many ways.

My closest friends called me a doormat in reference to what became in those years afterward. While that was rather jarring to hear, at one time I would have raged with indignation at such a statement, I am grateful to have such honest friends. “How did a strong, independent woman like me become a doormat?” I wondered. It is a long story and not one for the telling now, but as I slowly became reacquainted with the me that I am, being a doormat was never going to be sustainable.

I listened to Jim Carrey talk about his role playing Andy Kaufman in Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond, and I was struck by his analogy between the way a pearl is formed and the way people take on a persona that is different to their inherent self.

He said that no matter what masterpiece we create to hide the parts of us we don’t feel are acceptable – in his case it was the comedic guise he took on - at some point we have to put the real us out there. Otherwise, for him, it was an empty existence, all that fame and wealth meant nothing when hiding from himself.

I can understand that, I’ve longed to be seen and valued for so much of my life, yet I am the one who rejected parts of myself I didn’t feel were acceptable. Of course, a lot of this rejection was subconscious and part of the normal childhood adapting to fit in.

I certainly know who I had become. In the words of Lisa Romano, people who are codependent in their relationship style “feel better when rescuing, fixing and managing the poor choices of others”. And, she says “abandonment issues keep us stuck in the past, we worry, we are not true to ourselves because we are too busy trying to be what we think others need us to be and we often deny our needs for the sake of others and feel invisible in our relationships”.

To sum up the desires driving me, I wished for peace, fun, love, to feel enough and to feel seen.

But who is this me I so utterly rejected? That is who I completely lost sight of, the person my heart longed to be accepted.

As someone who loves to learn, to explore ideas, to be in my inner world and connect with others through emotional and spiritual awareness, it is bewildering to look back now and see just how much I had rejected those part of myself.

I bought into the idea that in order to be an acceptable daughter, employee, partner and mother I had to do it all or die trying. I would always do all the things I felt were expected of me and then – if there was time or (more importantly) energy - I could do the things I love.

My beliefs were also so compromised it’s ridiculous. Why should I have been afraid to explore that broader part of me that knows so much more than I ever learned from a school teacher, a doctor or a minister? Was I really so threatened by mainstream narrative and the narrow range of vision of those around me at times throughout my life?

I see now that it has often been from a very contained and restrained place of pleasing others I have looked out through eyes and into the world over the years.

I will be forever grateful for the blunt lessons that called me back from the fog. For no matter how well I kept the house, no matter how well I ran the finances, no matter how well I did in my career, no matter how well I looked after the kids and nurtured them through emotionally trying times, no matter how well I anticipated and took care of everyone’s needs, it was never enough.

There was always some criticism; the windows needed cleaning, or the way I had cooked the meal wasn’t right, or the meal itself wasn’t right, or the groceries I purchased weren’t right, or the hotel I had booked wasn’t good enough. The list was endless.

And should I take time to self care, that always attracted unwanted attention. Comments in a tone that were decidedly divisive and designed to ensure I knew that it was not acceptable for me to sit and read my book for half an hour, or go for walk along the beach in the middle of the day, or invite friends or family over or to stay for any length of time to name a few.

All of these things were absolute gifts, because they caused me to get angry and to stand up for myself, albeit carrying a great deal of grief at not feeling seen or valued for who I am. Well, now the constraints are gone. I am alone and I feel relief.

And a little awkwardness at denying and disowning the authentic parts of me, that would so fascinate me in others, for so long. As I have begun to know myself more, I say “Hello world, here I am” and it is on those terms you will meet me.

I have learned the valuable lesson that I can never be good enough to please other people all of the time. The number one person I need to respect is my self, a self that I am thoroughly enjoying getting reacquainted with and reclaiming.

Over this holiday season, are you able to take a little time to become aware of parts of yourself that you may be rejecting in order to feel accepted? In your heart, might you even want to become reacquainted with the you that you were born to be? After all, if we are not being ourselves then who is the person that is living your life other than an illusion?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Who Are You Protecting? Why Telling Your Story Is Powerful , Normal Is Dysfunctional That Is the Growth Opportunity , Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation and Resentment, the Family Business. Are You Willing to Let It Go? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog .