It seems poetic to me that our best and worst traits almost always exist as two opposing ends of a continuum, indelibly linked, like a glistening, resilient strand of hair. It took me years to realise that the parts of me I most cherished – my passion, my grit and drive, my curiosity, my open heart, my vulnerability – grew from the same seeds as my more challenging or ugly characteristics. Passion manifests as anger, harsh and righteous; grit and drive as dogged determination, entitlement and a pejorative ambition; curiosity as greed and excess; my open heart as intensity; and my vulnerability as profound neediness. It’s all too much, I’m too much. Women being too much is dangerous, as it always has been. There’s no doubt in my mind I’d have been burned at the stake 200 years ago, a persistent wave-maker no matter the era. We have to tone it down, and so I tried, for years. I eventually found beauty in a painful, reflective process. And much peace through inquiring about those traits, through observing and understanding their roots, I believed I could harness the too much in ways that felt healthy. Certainly it cultivated fertile ground for calm and serenity, talismans I treasure on my travels.
But I found a catch that tugs. Despite my devotion to celebrating and worshipping my powerful traits, I have continued to apologise for their corollaries. Of course, one pole cannot exist without the other, they are anchored together in the depths of our hearts and minds, natured and nurtured into maturity. And what I’ve learned is that the darker end of the spectrum is not stark, the strength and fragility, the glorious and profane intertwine like roaming, tangled tree roots. Inseparable, in remarkable equilibrium.
True peace and acceptance is in finding a way to be the me-est me, and trusting that what will be projected outward is my complex, nuanced, warm, love-drenched, thinking, joyous core.