What Is That?

You are beautiful! – What are you talking about? Have you seen me lately? God no! Is there something wrong with my face? It’s my shirt isn’t it? I need to hide…

You are amazing! – What for? I didn’t do anything. You got the wrong person. Leave me alone…

You have a great personality. – Stop being sarcastic. I don’t appreciate people making fun of me…

You are a creative genius. – Nuh-uh, no way. Far from it. Didn’t you see all the flaws? I failed.

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I remember growing up, I would get mixed feelings from the things people would tell me, often not understand why people would say something and I would feel completely opposite than what they were trying to achieve.

When someone would tell me I was pretty, I wanted to hide. I thought I was the ugliest of duckling and couldn’t figure out why someone would tell me something like that. I wanted to hide.

Every compliment I got about something I did or wore or even the makeup I put on I felt like they were making fun of me. I could honestly think that no one was genuine which in turn I forced myself to hide from people.

I can say that I was teased a lot because I was poor. Maybe I should rephrase that. I was teased; I was the one they chose to pick on and used anything they could find to use against me. So that didn’t help me.

I hid myself more and more and literally locked myself in my bedroom for 8 years. The only reason I got out of my room was to go to school, eat and use the bathroom. On the weekends, not even my family saw much of me unless my step dad forced me out to do yard work. And even then I stayed on the other side of the yard to work alone.

Why did I do that? What is that? What made me do that to myself? I deprived myself of a social life, a child’s life, a teenager’s life and even as a young adult my choices were not for the best for myself. I stayed with people that had even less respect for me than I had for myself. And the people that had more respect for me, I couldn’t stand it. I thought they were so wrong to want to hand out with me. So wrong for thinking I was likeable.

So what is that?

Many people feel this way, from one reason or another. For me my upbringing could be the reason. I could blame my mother, my father for not accepting me as his daughter. I could blame my sister, I could keep blaming everyone.
Feeling worthless, having low self esteem does come from somewhere and when it’s routing from our childhood it is hard to grow out of it.

For me, it changed when I had my 3 children. Motherly instincts came on full force which in turn showed me what I was missing this whole time.

Self respect.

I had no respect for myself what so ever and so it was ok for me to let people run me in the ditch. But why is it ok for us to let that happen to ourselves?

Should I blame it on our natural programming? How our brains are wired? How about the society? Like those massive billboards you see in the cities of a perfect woman in her underwear, telling us this is how we have to be in order to be normal and pretty?

I like to think the answer is the last question listed. If you think about how First Nation tribes were so many years ago, before fashion trends, before government. When they all worked together and everyone was equal and respect for everything, each other, animals and Mother Nature was at its highest. No one was ashamed of who they were. No one was in hiding like it is today. Not to my knowledge.

I know in my previous blog, I wrote that the words like ‘need and shouldn’t’ were bad words to use. But in this case I would like to make an exception.

We need to see ourselves as a being of nature, of spirit. We need to respect ourselves first before someone tries to bring ourselves down, making us feel like they have the right to be here and not us, like if they have the right to remove our own self from this planet. Not let them dig our graves. We need to love ourselves in order to give ourselves respect and stand our grounds. And then spread the love and respect to others.

During this day and age, when the pushovers are the neighbors, the family, the governments, the priests, the kids and the teachers, we need to start showing this to our kids at an early age, before they go to school. Reinforce that so they can have a true, strong chore within themselves. This is how we protect our kids at a distance.

With love, respect, proper connections and being connected with others that offer the same, we will be able to raise our children to be strong the way this world needs to be. We need less chaos and war and to do that, the future has to be stable. Our children are the future. Make them strong within themselves and see everything change for the better. It is a hard path, the struggles will be there. But with persistence and love and spirit, we will conquer and we will truly live as one.

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