The art of authentic expression
Exploring what it means to truly be authentic and why it matters so much.
Authenticity.
A word I’ve always advocated for. A way of being that I’ve held as a value and pillar in my life. And yet, lately, I’ve been struck with this sense that authenticity is not actually, truly embodied in my experience.
You see, about 10 months ago I realized that I had been morphing, ever so subtly, into versions of myself I thought were more acceptable. More swallowable. If I’m not too much, or too little, or more easily digestible, then I’ll get the safety and love that I need to survive.
Whoa.
It’s an insidious, quiet little voice that comes from deep in my subconscious and warns me that I need to be vigilant. I need to be a little more in this experience over here, and a little less with that person over there, until suddenly I’m spending all my energy mixing colours and trying to paint a picture that’s so far removed from the truth of who I am, I barely recognize myself.
And I had no idea it was happening.
The desire to be loved and approved of is woven intimately into my DNA, as is it with most of us. The need to attach to others and belong is inherent to our survival. We’re beautifully social creatures. Relating is our art.
Guided by my need to find a patch of ground safe enough to stand on, I’d gotten skilled at squeezing out words like, “I’m really good, thank you”. I wasn’t.
I smiled to seem more pleasing.
I over-explained because god forbid I be misunderstood.
And every time my words wedged themselves through a clenched stomach and a tight throat, I became smaller. Splitting off from myself and shoo-ing the parts I deemed unlovable, tucking them into the back corners of a closet.
Hide, little one, or you’ll be found out.
I crunched and contracted until there was no room left for my voice, and the waters of my body stopped flowing. Stagnant and frozen.
Somewhere along the way my survival needs for attachment overruled my expression. I lost myself. I could play the part of who I thought was acceptable to be loved, valued, or worthy, but in my trade for authenticity, was I truly in connection at all? Did I belong?
My answer is no. I abandoned my authenticity for attachment and grasped, gripped, and extracted from others to secure my own safety. And in that act of contorting, I unknowingly fed myself the narrative that I, me, was not actually worthy of true belonging.
And oh boy. When I began to step back and witness this unconscious, self-imposed act, the scaffolding came crashing down.
It was the moment I died before I died. The moment it crumbled. When I sat in the disbelief and the grief of my own betrayal. When the illusions were brought out of the shadows and I started fumbling my fingers over the strewn and broken pieces, trying to understand how I got here in the first place.
There were many months of sitting in the confusion and painful disassembly of this carefully curated safety mechanism. The dismantling of it was akin to peeling off layers of old wallpaper; sometimes it would fall in giant satisfying pieces and other times I scraped, soaked, and steamed to loosen up what had been glued down for decades.
It was messy and sticky. It was incoherent.
I was reminded, at the time, by a dear friend, of the process of the caterpillar weaving itself into a chrysalis: the caterpillar digests itself from the inside out. To transform into an entirely new creature– the butterfly– it must be broken down and completely dissolved.
And so here I was, in the painful process of digesting. Dissecting choices and integrating moments, following the threads of different times when I unknowingly appeased. It made me cringe.
I was 20 when I got married. I was 29 when I got divorced. I was 30 when I agreeably entered a relationship with someone who abused, betrayed, and lied from the start. I was 38 when I finally became ill enough to want to leave.
And this was the consequence; the internal split created so much dissonance that I sacrificed my health, peace, joy, harmony, and freedom.
So, who was this woman that was so willing to disappear? Who was this woman who was willing to shrink, to turn down her volume, to collapse into a pile on the floor, to say yes when her burning stomach was screaming no.
Well, the truth is, it wasn’t a woman at all. It was a part of me stuck in time at the age of a little girl who was asking to be loved but didn’t yet have context for the words.
A little girl whose survival depended on connection, and this was the only way she knew how.
Fast forward 6 months and I was sitting at the edges of “people pleasing seems like the safest option” and “inauthenticity is slowly dehydrating me”. Pendulating between these spaces; dipping my toes into the waters that would nourish my spirit but were still scary and unfamiliar.
How much should I show? What’s safe to reveal? What happens if I say no? Sometimes I’d be moved by the force of a wave that was out of my control and from somewhere deep in my body, a resounding truth would emerge.
A moment of complete release. An “I-don’t-give-a-fuck” and would come out gracefully and soft and full of conviction. And usually, usually, it would resonate so much with another that they move in closer. The intimacy would deepen. And a true dance could begin.
These days I’m using my body as a guide and authenticity as a true north. I feel more fulfilled because I’m seen in my truth, but even more than that, I feel a somewhat indescribable sense of wholeness. An internal inclusivity. And the feeling that I’m standing firmly on my own ground with roots that extend so deep beneath me they simply can’t be uprooted..
What I love so much is how wired we are for connection. That intimacy is so critical to our souls that we’d do whatever it takes to feel seen, heard and understood. And now, equipped with bigger capacity, more awareness, and a stronger toolkit, I’m forming relationships that nourish and satiate me from the inside out.
Reciprocal and authentic; founded on the truth of expression. And truly, they’re works of art.
“There’s a belief that you have to be tough, push it down, follow the path that has been laid out for you by others.
And that version of life doesn’t leave a lot of room for highly sensitive, intuitive or traumatized people to feel safe or to feel like they can find a space to express what is really going on inside of them. Their own art.
Because of this, you may have had to hide who you were in order to feel loved, accepted and safe in the world. After years of that, your internal guidance system may dim, you might forget just how magically powerful you are and you might be stuck in a nervous system response that is undermining your ability to move forward feeling authentic, inspired and truly alive”.
My weekly recommendations:
Song: Firefly by Eltonnick. I took an ecstatic dance class the other day and this song just hit right. I love electronic music because of how cathartic it feels. It’s the best way to move from my head into my body and shake off anything stagnant.
Podcast: That Sucked, Now What? on the Mark Groves Podcast.
Book: Belonging, by Toko-Pa Turner
Thank you so much for being. If this article spoke to you or inspired you in any way, I encourage you to share it as a way to help this work get to the people who may benefit from it. xo