Setting the Stage: The Beginning of Honest Entries
“When the whole decayed building collapses and gives way to true, deep and defenseless mourning, all the distortions are no longer needed”. -The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller
“Years spent traveling through the archives of memories of time to understand my past; going back so I could go forward.”
SETTING THE STAGE
My entire life was spent on a stage, made up in makeup, under the bright lights, singing and performing. Arriving in Nashville 10 years ago, I didn’t know I would be entering a new stage - the stages of grief and healing - where I would begin to unearth the brutal yet enlightening truth of discovering Who I truly Am. My time there became a journey of unlearning. It was a dismantling and a rebuilding. Years spent traveling through the archives of memories of time to understand my past; going back so I could go forward - all along shedding the layers of who I was told I was and was ‘supposed to be’, reclaiming the parts of myself that I lost to placating, performing and pleasing. The depth of my own suffering led to an inner reckoning and awakening - first leading me so far down into the darkness of my despair that I had no choice but to begin to uncover what was hidden, but always there. Then, where I once believed this all would have just buried me, what I found underneath was what had been neglected; my true nature, my essence. In the darkness of this time, I began to see myself in a new light. I came to know my own soul, plant new seeds, nurture and mature in my own growth. I grew deeper roots and stretched wide, so that I could begin breaking new ground and branching out - blooming into who I was always meant to be.
Starmania: 6 years old
GETTING HONEST
Honesty, for me, came by way of sheer blunt and brutal force. After 20 years of a climb towards a career that collapsed, all the rugs were ripped, and my life and my family as I knew it would never be the same. The destruction pulled back the curtain on a life that was seemingly ‘perfect’…. But what happened revealed what had been under the surface - unearthing all the ways that covering up in makeup and singing under lights hid emotional neglect masked in high performance and achievement. Thinking “if I just made it”…
Arms stretched wide, and like the bathroom floor that rock bottom symbolizes, I was shattered by grief…. I had nothing left; nothing left to protect, nothing left to lose. I was emptied of everything but the truth. So alone in the core of my despair, I needed a place for the depth of my pain; where I could start to make visible what I learned had been hidden for years. It’s easy to identity what is externalized - outward expressions where you can clearly see, point to and begin giving aid to a person who needs help… using every resource running to the rescue. But what goes unseen is the pain of the person that by all standards looks like they’re doing well. I was the child nobody had to worry about…
How often we can be living a life by what it looks like… never showing the parts of ourselves that are in deep hiding, despair, mourning… surviving.
I began writing - it was the tool that I used to begin to reveal the truth about my life and myself: and the truth was, I was not well. I had become so LOST living inside of an image. Upholding and presenting a life based on expectations and demands for who I needed to be. Living by how it looks - not by how it felt. Living out all of the conditions behind the pleasing personality, the performing persona created out of a childhood of walking on egg shells.
I wrote journal entries daily that brought me through a transformation of a 10 year period of time. Nashville is, after all, a ten year town. It was my way of bearing witness - alleviating my suffering by being able to be seen and felt… even if it was just me validating and seeing myself for the first time. Writing revealed not only all that I lost, but also, what I found. Where rock bottom unlocked something that set me on a completely new trajectory for my life. Where I went on a journey of unlearning who I was told I was and supposed to be. Where who I was slowly came out of hiding - out of the powerlessness, out of co-dependence, and helped me begin to start living from my essence; a more honest expression. It became my recovery. I was learning to align with myself again; to hear my own voice, to say what I think, to know my own preferences. Mending the parts of myself that fractured every time I chose pleasing and appeasing for attachment over my authenticity. The honesty in my entries became the clearest mirror reflecting who I was back to me
“So I took the risk, sharing the reality of my grief openly, and I was met with ‘concern’ and sympathy - as if being honest was a ‘cry for help’, and in truth, I had never felt more free. I had never felt more myself.
HONEST ENTRIES
Years ago I decided to bring my honesty online. Having lived inside of the fixation of the False Self, I began seeing it all around me; only publishing what we want others to see, and I could not, in good conscious, continue doing this to myself. It kept me hidden inside of an internal prison. So I took the risk, sharing the reality of my grief openly, and I was met with ‘concern’ and sympathy - as if being honest was a ‘cry for help’ - and in truth, I had never felt more free. I had never felt more myself.
The suppression of expressing my real Self was what got me here in the first place. That ways of looking at my life through the lens of what everybody else thinks was not working. The hyper-vigilance of reading a room that came at the cost of betraying what I knew to be true. Because of this, I went through years of pitfalls in depressive spells - living a majority of my life not being truly seen, known, heard and deeply felt. I was not living in Integrity with myself. Integrity meaning whole and undivided. One thing. This is the ‘why’ behind Honest Entries; going below the surface, revealing what is behind the curtain; instead of sharing only one side of life that is doing all of us a disservice. They will be unveiling the pain that leads to the transformation. The mess that will serve as the medicine. The meaning and the weaving of all of the wounds and lessons. Sharing and storytelling as antidote to suffering. Sharing my own unique perspective; and just like Martha beck says to:
* Know what you really know.
* Feel what you really feel.
* Say what you really mean.
* Do what you really want.
WHERE I’LL SHARE
I’ll be using instagram as an extension for this longer form of expression. Using it as a tool rather than letting it use me. Spending less time consuming and more on creating. Where I don’t feel so fast, fractured, filtered, or false - pushing vulnerability on those who didn’t ask for it or care. Because the truth is, I have too much to share for a square. It will be used as more of an invitation. The door that opens to the house inside. Read if it resonates, come in if you like.
To read the entires from Instagram, click the link in my bio, and then simply click on the photo grid with the corresponding writing that you want to read - that will take you directly to that entry. Otherwise, the entries will be available in the chapter 4 section on my website homepage. And before we leave…. in these entries it is also my hope that as you travel down the road that is your own, you may feel some parallels in my story, and in turn, you won’t feel so alone.