“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.”

– Bernice Johnson Reagon

When I was very young and living as a child in my nuclear family, I could see who I was simply by looking around me and then looking into the mirror.  I was pretty — my parents told me so.  I was smart like my mother — I could see the similarities we shared, and it made me feel good to know that I was like her.  I was athletic — my father bragged to everyone that I could outrun the boys and throw a ball farther than any girl ever should.  I was silly and creative and quick and funny and confident that the world was my own — that there would be a place for me to grow into all the things I was practicing and becoming surrounded by the love of my family.

When I became a bit older and started school, my world expanded to include my neighborhood and my classroom.  I learned on the school bus and on the playground that maybe I was other things, too.  I was way too small, and some kids enjoyed teasing me and treating me like a baby.  I was way too quick in the classroom; and although I never would have chosen for that to make anyone feel bad about themselves, I learned that just being who I was sometimes made other kids angry.  I learned in school about jealousy and competition and the way people hide who they really are in order not to be excluded by their peers.  In a way, I learned to hide who I was from the teachers who would pose a question to the class and then follow it with, “let’s not always see the same hands” when those of us who were excited by learning would raise our hands for permission to share the answer.  I learned to be quiet about who I was in school.

The bigger our world becomes, the greater the challenge we face in being true to ourselves.  This is especially true when we first discover that who we are seems to be a problem for someone else.  I am not only talking about the bullies who choose to create trouble with virtually everyone.  I am talking about the discovery that someone we really love is hurt in some way because we are true to ourselves.  I remember spending months wishing I could be just a little less capable in school after my best friend’s mom looked at both our report cards on report card day and asked her daughter, “Why don’t YOU get A’s like Pammy?”  I remember to this day the hurt look on my friend’s face and the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that I was, somehow, responsible for her pain.  This childhood lesson was one that hit hard, and for many years I did everything I could to downplay my own abilities and gifts in order not to offend anyone.  It is a sad thing to become invisible.  When you look in the mirror, there is not much to see.

For a time, I decided to be my intellect.  I excelled in school and made no excuses for loving the give and take of teacher and student and the chance to bounce ideas back when they were taught to me.  I became somewhat separate and hardened to any impact my own achievements might have on anyone else, and I defended my absolute right to be who I was.  But the ironic thing is that I was being much less that I was on that day when my empathy nearly burst me wide open in response to my friend’s disappointment that she had let her mother down by not living up to being me.  In my own quest not to be hurt by other people’s opinions of me, I had become isolated not only from them but from some of the best parts of myself.

I credit motherhood with helping me to find that loving, caring part of me that had retreated to a corner to lick its wounds.  In the midst of encouraging my own children never to be less than who they are, I rediscovered the parts of me that had been underground and learned that they could come to the surface in ways that built others up.  I learned that the jealousies and wounds of childhood had no place in the adult world.  I learned that my self-imposed separation had equipped me to include others who had learned to hide who they really were.

It all seems silly now; but as I read the words of Bernice Johnson Reagon, I realized that some challenges can take years to overcome.  But ultimately, if we continue to strive to be the best we can be, they lead us to discover who we really are.