On Sunday I took part in a revival. At least that’s what it seemed to me, so spiritual, so powerful, so miraculous. I watched nearly a dozen women stand before a microphone on a stage, awash in holy spotlight, and testify. I watched an audience captivated by the magic of writing unleashed, witnessed human beings buoyed by the power of un-silencing, and I felt born again.
My own personal placing-of-hands produced my most lovely and profound parenting experience to date. It happened when I stood up on that stage and told the world how amazing my daughter is. I did this while she watched and, unbeknown to me, cried. What happened after that is between she and I, and something I never saw coming. My point is, I don’t know why it never occurred to me the gift I was giving her as I tenderly listed her attributes, as I vowed to respect her at her core always, before a crowd of witnesses. I don’t know why I didn’t see ahead of time how rare that was for her, for anyone, to hear someone else say such sweet things about you so publicly. I anticipated her embarrassment, but that never came. I did not anticipate her swelling of spirit, which came in spades.
I’m pretty good at articulating my personal shame and pain, but I’m not very good at making sure the people I love know just how powerfully I love them. I don’t say thank you enough to my husband. I don’t say I love you enough to my own mother. I don’t tell my kids the specifics of their unique beauty and genius as often as I could. I think all of these things inside my head but I don’t give them voice. We should all be so lucky as to have someone shout their love for us from a stage, and to do the same in return. We should all feel solid in our right to feel what we feel, to be who we are, and share it publicly without shame.
In that audience on Sunday sat writers too afraid to call themselves writers, mothers still unsure of their own worth, people who have bought hook-line-and-sinker stories about themselves that simply aren’t true. There sat hundreds of people who keep close their regrets, the fear that flattens them, the events that silence them, the ways they feel alone. I wish they could have experienced how it feels to finally write your hardest things. I know they got a taste of what it feels like to hear them.
After the show I found myself wishing I had this opportunity more often, to stand before the world and un-spool for you the endless thread of my gratitude and fear. To tell you all the ways I ache, and watch you nod in recognition, in solidarity. To stun and be stunned into hushed reverence. To seek connection and remind myself I’m not alone, and neither are you, and words are to be shared not stifled, even when, especially when, they’re big and clumsy and painful. I drove away wishing I had a megaphone and a stage from which to reach for those deep places in you, and to hear you echo back love in return. I wished I had a seat in a theater to listen to your hardest things, so that I could rise to my feet and applaud and call all the cats with my fervent whistling.
And then I remembered–I do. We do. It’s right here.
The image of a woman holding a megaphone, the one Ann chose for this Mother’s Day production, was lost on me in the beginning. Yes, it seemed appropriate, but I didn’t give it too much thought. I have been a blogger for several years and so I already know and take for granted the breadth and depth of the blogosphere, and what this special kind of back-and-forth brings to my life. I also forget its power far, far too often.
This space is a megaphone gripped firmly in chapped hands, these hands that smooth my daughters’ hair, these words my own self-soothing touch. I get so wrapped up inside my head, tangled up in my own snarls, that I forget the power of speaking out (despite twice-weekly proof.) For a girl who over-thinks everything it’s shocking to me how much I miss, the obvious truths that never even occur to me. I hem and I haw and I fold my little arguments into pleats and I write post after post in my head, but not here. I judge and jury every thought I have until the resulting sentence is solitary confinement, a spiritual sort of death.
The answer is to write. Block out the fear and the critical judgment and the unfounded certainty that you’re not worth hearing, that you’re not good enough, that your words don’t fall into place the way you’d like them to. Stop weighing your own feelings against someone else’s and give your love without expectation. Throw out the rule books and crack wide your heart and honor your own experience, your own honesty, especially you, you who feels isolated. Don’t worry about the numbers in your audience–if you touch one, it will be an immeasurable gift. More importantly, if you unlock your own pain you will be saved. Testify. Keep testifying. Keep writing.
And remind me when I forget.
