Darling VS Courageous - Different Perceptions

The thing about becoming Zia is I can no longer ignore my truth.

It comes to my throat, I can feel it, a small ache.  When it happens I know that there is something I need to pay attention to, a signal that something is a miss and I need to speak up. No more ignoring, or swallowing my feelings, instead being conscious, aware and realizing I need to speak up.

Yesterday, I got that feeling in my throat. I was talking to my Mom about a family friend that had surgery this week.  It was a complicated, long and very serious surgery.  He had been through a bunch of other procedures and surgeries, and it was hopeful that this would be the last he would need.  It was really critical. Thankfully he came through it fine.  He posted a picture of himself on Facebook standing up, taking a few steps, just 12 hours after surgery.  Pretty amazing since he had a huge incision. In the picture he was smiling, looking a bit shaky, but healthy. When I showed this picture to my Mom she said, “Isn’t he darling!”

Darling! the word stung, and I felt that ache in my throat. Darling? What a word to choose.

“Darling is not the word I would pick.” I said with a bit of anger, “I think courageous, brave and determined seem more appropriate.”

I tired to say it without judgement, but there was a edge. Learning to speak my feelings in an open, honest, and diplomatic way is going to take some practice. But, saying this to her, honestly speaking my feelings was new. I had been keeping quiet most of my life. Six months ago, I would have ignored it, or been pissed at her shallowness and just swallowed it, thinking what was the point of saying anything. Really, I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true.  I was trained well. Ignoring and burying my feelings was my go-to position.

Sure, my Mom will soon be 94, and she sees things differently, but really, darling?  I’m not sure what she meant by it, but it seemed pretty superficial and a bit inappropriate. It triggered a lifetime of feelings connected to so many situations, where she always saw the outside of a person, when my entire life I saw the inside.  It was a perception and focus thing.  I have always seen the person and she has always seen the persona. That trigger was a big one, one that I realize I may have over reacted to.  Yet, it came for a reason, a lesson.  

This perception and focus situation has been with me since childhood. As a mother, her influence over me was huge. She was always concerned about how we “looked” and what “other people” thought, but some innate part of me knew that didn’t hold value for me.  I saw things in people she didn’t see, and the superficial things she saw as important, I never connected with. It was a struggle, one that I kept silent about and rarely challenged. Now I realize that I have to own that trait, that gift of seeing the real person, the whole.  It is something to be proud of, not something to hide.  

This is a lifetime issue, a lesson I came here to learn.  Because the superficial world I was raised in taught me not only to judge other people by their looks, it taught me to judge myself the same way. It taught me to discount the internal values and focus on the external, and I always fell short.  Never feeling good enough, always focused on pleasing some unseen collection of “people”, but knowing in my heart what really mattered was inside.  Yesterday I was given the opportunity to stand up to those beliefs and speak my truth.  It stopped being about my Mom, she is certainly too old to change now, but I thank her for the lesson.  It is about me, connecting with the truth I had always know, but was to afraid to own.  That is what my throat is trying to teach me, and I am paying attention!  

Becoming Zia, opening my mouth and letting the truth fall out.