Dear Daring Readers,
As we crawl through the beginning of this year (cheerfully…), I have a few thoughts about hard things that happened during this pandemic, that have little to do with it. (Speaking of which, listen to the thoughtful and funny podcast We Can Do Hard Things, it’s fire!)
I was listening to a podcast (Dare to Lead https://brenebrown.com/podcast/identity-and-integrated-leadership-part-2-of-2/) when I realized what I had been doing for a few years, quietly, or rather without naming it. America Ferrera was talking about integration, a concept I was not terribly familiar with, and I saw the light. That’s it! Integration!
America talked about how she wanted to bring all of herself to places, jobs and meetings, not just the parts that would be appreciated and celebrated. Being seen as one thing and not another, a famous pretty actress some days, on some occasions, and as a lawyer on others, can make you feel like you have separate identities that need to be filed in different folders and kept there. It can make you feel like you are welcome no place as a whole being, only as a cute subsection of what you are allowed to be within a certain environment.
Anger was the part of her that was often excluded from any occasion; the angry Latina was not embraced or accepted, so it stayed inside and didn’t show up that much. I also find that anger is hard to deal with, especially when so many express it in destructive ways, making us feel like there are no safe and cathartic ways of dealing with rage. Also, as far as I am concerned, rage is often the result of living in a very unjust place, a desperate cry for justice, or potentially the sign that a boundary has been crossed.
It gives us relevant information about the things we consider unbearable and unjust, and can be a catalyst for action. We are human and it lives in us like other emotions, yet it is often considered as something that makes people feel uncomfortable, and therefore should be silenced to keep things pleasant.
She worked on integration to make sure all the parts others talked about as separate would be considered, at least by her, as inseparable. That is to say that she would show up as the person she is instead of the one other people are waiting for, and that she would be there as a current version of herself in all her different roles and identities at once, because they are all describing her at all times.
That is exactly what I have been doing! I lost my hair and grieved, yes, but I also found so many parts of myself after that happened, yet some parts of my life seemed to require having a full head of hair. That is where the wig came in, after many failed attempts at making my hair grow, I was ready to start a performance for the sake of pretending I was just like everyone else. And predictably I got sick and tired of it, because the wig was a lot of effort for me to wear, yes, and also because I didn’t actually want to have one in the first place.
I gave up hiding that bit of my life slowly. I went to the park, then to the city center, then to an event, and then finally even to work without the wig, and everything was still fine. No apocalypse. There was immense relief for me in adding my balding self to the self people met on the street because I was adding a part of me that was already there, just not on display. That allowed me to shed shame and add a sense of ease I had not felt before.
I have explored a lot since with other parts of me, some of which I have known about for long and can’t quite bring to many places yet, and others which are new, even to me in some ways. Bisexuality is something that can comfortably stay hidden since I don’t often want to talk about my private life anyway, but I feel like it is nudging me to take it along when I show up more often. My gender identity can play hide and seek with my willingness to contradict people who assume they already know and invariably use gendered language and stereotypes. My mental health status is one I have taken with me several times, and I am glad I did due to the widespread need to share and connect during hard times.
The newest thing I still can’t quite integrate is neurodivergence. I didn’t even know I was neurodivergent until I read Scattered Minds; that made me realize that relating to something that deeply was going to change the course of my life. After coming to terms with my body image issues, I realized I still hated myself very much. There’s no other way to put it.
There are things about ourselves we learn to loathe and obediently keep stomping on, until one day we see unlikable traits as something other than imperfections to be fixed. How your brain is wired, experiences and the environment, among other things, can shape how you show up in the world. Neurodivergence can cause behaviors that are seen as annoying or abnormal by the outside world, but they had an original purpose while you were growing up or have a current one right now. The most common example is stimming: repetitive behaviors that allow a person to feel calmer and self-soothe to deal with daily stressors and sensory overstimulation.
If you are familiar with neurodivergence of any kind (and there are many), you know that people often learn how to mask the ways they are different from others to blend in and be included, and that there are many coping mechanisms you can adopt.
I now see myself as this social being I am examining from within, who is a complex web of neurodivergent traits, a set of masking strategies to conform to some degree, and a long list of coping mechanisms, some of which might not even be working anymore. If you understand what integration is, then you know I have hit a brick wall in terms of making it part of my life. Taking a wig off took years, accepting what I see in the mirror even longer, what about liking myself as a person? What about bringing my neurodivergent self to events, on a date, for a walk or to work? What about that? This is quite a pickle…
What is it going to take?
Time, curiosity and compassion, I think.
What would make you feel seen as a whole integrated being?
Compassionately listening,
Dare to be B@ld
P.S. I have listened to this episode of the podcast twice because it was exactly what I needed.
Dare to be b@ld 