December newsletter: Belonging without having to Fit In

I find it inordinately difficult to get to the end of a self-help book.  Sometimes they are good ideas badly written and I can’t get past the latter.  Sometimes the author comes across as smug (judgemental, much, Trisha?) or I feel like I got the plot line 250 pages before the book ends (arrogant, much?).  For whatever reason, I’ve started many but finished very few. 

I can imagine that a not insignificant percentage of my readership will have both started and finished many of Brené Brown’s books – she’s massively popular and I appreciate the outstanding public relations job she has achieved for both vulnerability and shame, which I’ve absorbed though I have not finished any of her books either.

But a few weeks back my dear friend and colleague in The Thinking Environment Faculty, Ruth McCarthy shared a quote from Brené with me and it switched on a big lightbulb in my head.

"The opposite of belonging is fitting in" - Brené Brown

I heard that and thought “that’s genius, that is!”  If you had asked me, I would have said the opposite of belonging was alienation, or exclusion, or being outcast.

Brené has distinguished something subtle but brilliant here.  Because if you do what you have to do to fit in (which normally requires some kind of compliance to a set of rules or norms that you did not generate for yourself) then it is not you, the real you who is so-called belonging at the end of that compromise.

And who among us has not done that to some degree or another?  Who among us is not doing it still?  I suspect there are a lot of us, reading this right now, who are in recovery from fitting in, and are seeking their true selves, peeling back the layers of gunk that assimilation has smeared over their authentic self-expression.

Like most recovery journeys we will experience relapse.  Swiftly on the heels of breakthroughs in authentic sharing, vulnerability hangovers come shuffling in.  Setting boundaries in relationships that have been fueled by co-dependent people pleasing can feel like we’ve just behaved unforgivably.  Whereas in fact all we’ve done is assert a need.

My last newsletter was the start of a journey I am still on to understand the psychology of need in the development of us human beings, and how much archeology is needed to surface what they truly are.  This, because we are conditioned from early on to subvert our needs to fit in and find approval for doing so.  It strikes me that submerging our natural character under layers of conformity – a kind of devastating loss of Self – to achieve acceptance from those upon whom we are depending for our survival, is a tragic albeit understandable equation.

Since the end of my marriage back in 2001 – three and half years ago now, I have undertaken, as part of my healing process, three guided psilocybin medicine journeys.  For the first two I was part of a group.  Beautifully held and facilitated by a couple who are friends of mine, both journeys built awareness for me that surviving being left alone in an oxygen tent as an infant had laid down deeply engraved neural pathways that I am on my own and no-one is coming to help.  Repetitive experiences of surviving near-fatal asthma attacks, in which my poor mother exhorted me to be brave (she needed this from me, and I needed her needs to be met) as she left me alone again amongst strangers, solidified a fortress of coping strategies that made being independent a necessity rather than a choice.

My needs to be comforted and reassured, to be held, to be vulnerable and needy lie buried beneath an ironclad and proudly maintained armouring of self-sufficiency.   “Ask for help when you need it”, people will say – not realizing that they might as well be suggesting I walk naked through a shopping mall.

The third voyage I undertook solo, with another dear friend as a guide.  She suggested that I needed the experience of not having to suppress myself during the trip given my longtime practice of giving preference to the needs of others in the group. (A replaying of the dynamic learned early in life with my mother).  

I could never have imagined the gift that this would offer me.  I took the famous “hero(ine)’s dose” of five grams.  And I cried.  I don’t think I have ever cried like that before.  My body shook with sobs, all-encompassing and volcanic.  I did not know crying like that was even possible.  I am beyond grateful to have had that encounter.  The next day I literally felt washed clean, and newborn.  The release in layer upon layer of the consequences of subverting my own needs reverberated through my body, and mind, and spirit.  When reflecting together the next day, my friend and guide shared her realisation of how much we (women in particular) all have endured years of being toned down, turned down, and tuned out of ourselves – to fit in.

The superficial and deeply inadequate replacement for true belonging that this false equivalence has bought us results, I think, in grief or anger or shame.  And underneath burns a longing the enormity of which would shake us to our core if we knew how to let it.

I am looking forward to a New Year in which I can continue this odyssey – I hope to continue to travel to new, and unexplored territories, to find treasure, to bring it home to share with anyone for whom it may be intended.  As we head off into what I hope for many, if not all, will be a time of at least some retreat from the busyness of the always on world into glades of rest and restoration, I send a wish out to the True Originals that we each are.  Come home to your Self, for that is where we truly belong.  And here to end is a poem from Tom Hirons, (it’s long but so worth it) who could not have said it better:

Sometimes a Wild God

Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.

He is awkward and does not know the ways

Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.

His voice makes vinegar from wine.

When the wild god arrives at the door,

You will probably fear him.

He reminds you of something dark

That you might have dreamt,

Or the secret you do not wish to be shared.

He will not ring the doorbell;

Instead he scrapes with his fingers

Leaving blood on the paintwork,

Though primroses grow

In circles round his feet.

You do not want to let him in.

You are very busy.

It is late, or early, and besides…

You cannot look at him straight

Because he makes you want to cry.

Your dog barks;

The wild god smiles.

He holds out his hand and

The dog licks his wounds,

Then leads him inside.

The wild god stands in your kitchen.

Ivy is taking over your sideboard;

Mistletoe has moved into the lampshades

And wrens have begun to sing

An old song in the mouth of your kettle.

‘I haven’t much,’ you say

And give him the worst of your food.

He sits at the table, bleeding.

He coughs up foxes.

There are otters in his eyes.

When your wife calls down,

You close the door and

Tell her it’s fine.

You will not let her see

The strange guest at your table.

The wild god asks for whiskey

And you pour a glass for him,

Then a glass for yourself.

Three snakes are beginning to nest

In your voicebox. You cough.

Oh, limitless space.

Oh, eternal mystery.

Oh, endless cycles of death and birth.

Oh, miracle of life.

Oh, the wondrous dance of it all.

You cough again,

Expectorate the snakes and

Water down the whiskey,

Wondering how you got so old

And where your passion went.

The wild god reaches into a bag

Made of moles and nightingale-skin.

He pulls out a two-reeded pipe,

Raises an eyebrow

And all the birds begin to sing.

The fox leaps into your eyes.

Otters rush from the darkness.

The snakes pour through your body.

Your dog howls and upstairs

Your wife both exults and weeps at once.

The wild god dances with your dog.

You dance with the sparrows.

A white stag pulls up a stool

And bellows hymns to enchantments.

A pelican leaps from chair to chair.

In the distance, warriors pour from their tombs.

Ancient gold grows like grass in the fields.

Everyone dreams the words to long-forgotten songs.

The hills echo and the grey stones ring

With laughter and madness and pain.

In the middle of the dance,

The house takes off from the ground.

Clouds climb through the windows;

Lightning pounds its fists on the table

And the moon leans in.

The wild god points to your side.

You are bleeding heavily.

You have been bleeding for a long time,

Possibly since you were born.

There is a bear in the wound.

‘Why did you leave me to die?’

Asks the wild god and you say:

‘I was busy surviving.

The shops were all closed;

I didn’t know how. I’m sorry.’

Listen to them:

The fox in your neck and

The snakes in your arms and

The wren and the sparrow and the deer…

The great un-nameable beasts

In your liver and your kidneys and your heart…

There is a symphony of howling.

A cacophony of dissent.

The wild god nods his head and

You wake on the floor holding a knife,

A bottle and a handful of black fur.

Your dog is asleep on the table.

Your wife is stirring, far above.

Your cheeks are wet with tears;

Your mouth aches from laughter or shouting.

A black bear is sitting by the fire.

Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.

He is awkward and does not know the ways

Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.

His voice makes vinegar from wine

And brings the dead to life.

 © Tom Hirons

All rights reserved.

This comes from my brave heart to yours...

With love,

Trisha Lord