by Nicole Serafin, Tintenbar, Australia
As a child I was very sensitive and could feel what was ‘going on’ with people; I sometimes found this quite overwhelming. I also found with lots of people that there was little honesty in how they were actually feeling (in regard to their situation, for example), as though they were withholding from expressing what they actually wanted to say; or even at times that there would be an ‘underlying message’ to words spoken / actions done. I didn’t understand why people just didn’t say what it was they were actually feeling…
I always tried hard to get someone to say what it was they were really trying to say, and asked questions, though often my questioning would create or expose things that nobody wanted to hear or feel: “children are to be seen, not heard” is an old saying which was said to, and of me, many, many times. So I began to learn very quickly that I had to just observe and never express what I was truly feeling in myself, and / or about the situation of others around me. I also stopped asking another to express what it was they were trying to say. Gradually, I began to think that having an opinion of my own didn’t count for very much…
As a young and sensitive child I also remember feeling as if I had to ‘become something’ which would make everyone else happy and content; that it was not really about me ‘being me’, but me being what everyone else wanted or needed me to be. And the more I tried to just ‘be myself’ and speak and express what I felt, then the more it just seemed to create more conflict at home and at school. So I decided I needed to do whatever I could to fit in and ‘keep the peace’, so to speak…
Growing up, I was surrounded by women who lived in very different and differing ways – I found some to be extremely withdrawn and that they rarely spoke up about how they were really feeling. And I often saw that alcohol, drugs or shopping were being used as distractions in their lives, or that for some other women, they would throw themselves into their careers.
Clouded in all these mixed messages of what I saw and felt as being a ‘falseness’, it became all too easy to forget, or at least try to forget the fragility and sensitivity that I had once been so familiar with as a young child. Today, looking back, I can see how I’ve compromised my own self for others, and that this pattern continued to play out through my life until my late twenties.
Why was it so easy to choose all that was not me rather than to hold onto what I knew in my heart to feel and be true?
Why was it that I preferred to play the part of what another needed or wanted from me, rather than for me to just be me?
It took me a long time before I realised that in choosing to be anything but me, that this was not only harming to myself, but also that it was beginning to harm others. I was working so hard at holding back who I truly was, leading to my frustration, anger and resentment coming out in ways and through certain behaviours that were abrupt and often explosive, creating upset with other people (as well as myself). I knew this had to stop; that I couldn’t continue living like this, and I began to literally hate myself for the type of person (and woman) I had turned into. I hit rock bottom and didn’t enjoy at all being this person who and through all my own choices I had become. This was a big wake-up call for me and I knew that it was my job to take full responsibility for having created the me that was in fact a ‘false me’, realising there was no-one else to blame for me turning out this way – that it was only me who had chosen to hold back my own true or natural expression, and not anyone else. What a big pill to swallow!
It was a long path back towards allowing myself to begin to feel my own lost fragility, sensitivity and vulnerability again, and often I found this re-discovery process extremely hard – though I soon realised that choosing to be someone that I was not, had been and was actually harder?!
Healing myself with the huge and loving support of the Universal Medicine practitioners, I have been able to re-connect to that part of me that always knew truth – the inner part or inner-heart, and to begin to allow myself to be nurturing and loving, which is also admitting that I (do) need help; and that it’s OK to feel vulnerable and fragile – such things in the past that I’d stopped allowing myself to feel. I’m constantly working and unfolding with all this and it’s been an amazing experience to feel… to feel it’s OK to be and express myself.
Everything else that comes from me just being myself, and living every day as this – is enough.
And with this comes an awareness which allows me to feel what it is that I may need in every moment of each day. With this increased awareness, I’ve also been able to make choices in my life that support me to be the tender woman that I am, and to be able to find my own way amongst all the confusion and distractions of life; to not get lost in what society tells me how as a woman I ‘should be’.
It’s a work-in-progress, but nonetheless something which today I’m now able to really feel and express; that for the first time in my life I’m able to connect to the real me and embrace the beauty of that knowing that I am amazing – just as I am.
That I don’t need to be anyone else other than to just be me. That I am an amazing woman!