“Take up Space My Darling”
“You were wild once. Don’t let them tame you.”―
I run a Women’s group at work.
It’s one of my favorite hours each week.
It is a lovely group of women all struggling with various mental
illnesses, traumas and syndromes. They
are all working on themselves and have banded together to try and support and
uplift one another. My job is to provide
a platform, a space and a structure. I
moderate at times and referee but for the most part I sit back and let them
interact with one another. It started
out as a process group that I inherited, but it has slowly become an
empowerment group and as they allow me to help them with their struggles and
create a safe space for their stories I feel more and more honored to watch
them gain in self-confidence.
As a girl growing up, I was taught so many things that were
designed to make me smaller. By that I
mean, I was supposed to follow rules more than the boys who were my age
because “boys will be boys” you know.
But girls, well girls are supposed to be polite, sit with their legs
crossed and look pretty. My brother
played soccer and my dad was the coach of his team. I longed to play soccer, mostly because I
wanted to be closer to my dad. But I
wasn’t allowed to play soccer because “girls do ballet Fiona”. I hated ballet… I am not that coordinated and I don’t like
pink and frills and glitter and I could never get it right. Soccer looked like so much more fun, AND they
had orange wedges at half-time. You can
make silly smiles with orange rinds when you are a kid…
I don’t remember when it was that I stopped skipping, but I know
there was a time I just knew it was no longer appropriate. I remember knowing that I was supposed to hug
relatives because that was the “nice girl” thing to do and I was supposed to
answer questions but not really ask them.
I inherently seemed to know that it was better to smile and nod and seem
to agree when things got tense just to placate because it was better to diffuse
a situation than to incite someone and I noticed pretty quickly that my
opinions seemed to make some people mad – mostly they were male.
As I got older and more trauma became baked into me, more mental
illness manifested and addiction emerged from a hollow inside my soul. Alcohol became a friend, a comfort and an
escape before it turned into an insidious lover with whom I had the most toxic and
abusive relationship. What had at first
been a haven and provided fun became a master of the worst kind and one from
whom I could not run. Addiction
overtook my thoughts and my decisions and the core of me, the “Fiona” of me,
became so quiet, I forgot to listen for her voice and soon I forgot what she
even sounded like.
The decisions I made while in active addiction will always haunt
me on some level. Spectacular mistakes
were made and extraordinary pain was dealt out to all the people who surrounded
and tried to love me. I can never wipe
that away from their memories or my story.
But I am grateful that I can hear the “Fiona” voice once again and
better decisions get made today because she listens to a much kinder and wiser
master.
I was teaching karate yesterday morning as I do most Saturday
mornings now. I help with the classes
for 6-12 year olds and the 3-5 year olds.
I have a penchant for getting very little children really excited to do
things like jumping jacks and mountain climbers by counting wrong or making
silly mistakes so they have to correct me.
Kids that little haven’t stopped skipping and it’s a joy to be around
them and their unfiltered reactions.
They don’t know not to be exactly who they are and that is a precious
commodity.
During each class there is something called the “Lesson of the
week”, where the kids will gather around one of the instructors in a circle on
the floor and the instructor will explain the lesson the week. The lesson of the week is tied to concept of
the week and is usually told in the form of a story. This week’s concept was self-confidence and
the story was about a speaker who stood in front of a room of 200 people and
asked who among them would like a $20 bill.
They all raised their hands (as did the kids). The speaker then took the bill and crumpled
it up and asked the audience, “now that I have crumpled it up – who among you
still wants the $20 bill”? The audience
all raised their hands (as did the kids).
The speaker then took the bill, dropped it on the ground and stomped on
it with his foot. He then took the money
and asked, “now that I have ground it into the ground, who among you still
wants to $20 bill”? The audience all
raised their hands (as did the kids).
The speaker then told the audience that the lesson had proved that no
matter how battered or dirty the $20 had gotten, it had not lost any of its
value.
No matter how many decisions I have made that have been bad ones,
decisions that have hurt others, that have caused pain… I still have value – in fact I still have the
same value. The decisions were bad, I
wasn’t bad. I have the same value as a
human being now as I did when I was born.
I still have the same value now as I did before I learned to stop
skipping, to be a “nice girl”, to placate, to not argue, to be polite, to
acquiesce. There is a lot of stigma
around addiction and mental illness, around gender and age. But I can remind myself that it is alright to
take up space and be joyously me and glory in all my value.
