Learning to Learn Me

As much as I believed that I knew who I was, what I wanted, and how I was going to get there, I have come to realize that in college I was just beginning to learn who I really was as a person.  As I think back on that time in my life, I was young, determined, and focused on the future. I knew what I wanted and my eyes were set on that prize.  I was going to be a doctor and it was all I was concerned about.  My consumption of knowledge focused on moving me towards that goal. In the single-minded pursuit of this goal, I even lost sight and connection with my faith.  I still prayed and read my bible every once in a while, but my heart wasn’t really chasing after God. If I'm honest, I became less focused on my faith and more concerned with my ability to produce and perform. I was going to become a doctor and nothing or no one was going to get in the way of that reality.

My relationship with my husband, who at that time was my college sweetheart, challenged this tunnel vision approach. While I earned good grades, I was not experiencing college and really taking the time to be a present participant in my own life.  I knew what I believed but I could not articulate why I believed it.  I had scars that I protected and wanted to avoid irritating but I did not know how I ended up in the situations that led to the scars.  Due to trauma, I struggled to even be able to pray for myself.  I did not feel like me, but I refused to allow that reality to keep me from pursuing my dream.  My husband reminded me that I could be driven and focused, yet remain curious, not just about the world around me, but also about myself. My husband helped me to explore who I was and not just where I was going.  He helped me to fall in love with getting to know and appreciate Bernice, scars and all.  I had to learn that I was more than the things that tried to destroy me or the things I wanted to achieve.  I was fearfully and wonderfully made, full of purpose, and called for such a time as this.

When was the last time that you took the time and effort to really dive into yourself and grow an appreciation for your story, your hopes, your dreams, your scars, and all of the other things that make you who you are today?  Learning is so much more than just the consumption of information.  Deep learning requires vulnerability and a willingness to challenge what you believe and what others have taught you to believe.  Many of us have been sold falsities about who we are, what our worth and value is, and what we can and cannot achieve.  When working on issues of self worth with clients, I often ask them what their name is and how do they know that is their name.  I am normally met with confused looks as they tell me their name that they know I know and that they know it’s their name because that is what they have always been called.  The reality is, we answer to what we are called, even if what we are called is inaccurate. If I called you Lilly everyday of your life from birth, you would believe your name to be Lilly.  But if we looked at your birth certificate and it read Rachel, legally your name would be Rachel.  You would have been socialized to answer to the wrong name and you would struggle to respond to the name Rachel the way you respond to the name Lilly.  It would take time and effort for Rachel to be the name that resonated with you. I would encourage you to no longer answer to Lilly, to ask the people around you to only call you Rachel, and give you the time and space to grieve letting go of what was wrong but familiar, i.e. the name Lilly.

In learning yourself, you have to be willing to engage in what can be a difficult and painful unlearning process.  Divorcing yourself from the dysfunction that was thrust upon you, is not easy and can challenge your sense of self.  Learning who you are also gives you the opportunity to identify what is and is not working for you and what you want to do about it.  As I have shared with you in previous blogs, I had to come to terms with the reality that I was a people pleaser.  This was not a comfortable realization but it was a necessary one.  I could not stop my learning process at identifying the issue, I had to be willing to do the hard work of figuring out why being a people pleaser felt necessary and what I gained from it.  Child listen, when I tell you that this type of vulnerability got all in my business and made me do some serious self-reflection.  I had to learn to accept myself as is and learn that my value did not rest in my ability to perform and/or make other people comfortable.  Instead my value was intrinsic and was just a fact.  It did not come from my doing.  I was valuable just for being.

This week I want to challenge you to consider how much you really know about yourself and where you want to have a deeper understanding of yourself.  Take some time to journal through the following questions.  Who are you outside of what you do?  How do you feel about that person? What is something new that you have learned about yourself in the last year?  How do you want to cultivate or uproot this newly discovered part of you?  What kind of support can you ask for to achieve this goal? And who can you lean on through this process? As always, be kind to yourself!  You’re still learning.  Love you family!