Excerpt from “Life Lessons for Woman” Stephanie Marston, M.F.T

With a Little Help from a Stranger

I met a friend of a friend when they included me in their lunch plans. My friend is a rare enough kind of bird so I could have anticipated that her friends would rise, exponentially, on the scale of non-traditional species. No surprise, then, when I was led into a home eclectically decorated with exotic remnants of extraordinary places. Not a spoon collection or snow globe in this riverfront bungalow. How about a coconut shell, carved into a totem likeness of my hostess; “a gift from the shaman,” she explained casually.

Over lunch I had to pretend perfect calm as I noted not one but four wasps buzzing at the overhead plant in her kitchen. “Oh, those are rescued. I had to save their hive and they live in here and on the patio. They won’t hurt you.”

And they didn’t

She supported herself as a freelance art photographer. Her work was tastefully exhibited in discreet clusters. Her name was something ethereal, full of A’s and R’s, requiring a leisurely roll about the tongue. She was one of the most genuine humans I had ever had a chance to meet.

And so it was that in the presence of the free-range wasp colony, ice water with the freshest twist of lemon and a lunch of hummus on pita bread, this most unusual of creatures turned to me, full and attentive, sincere and with absolute meaning and said, “Tell me about you.”

“Well, I…”
She really wanted to know!
“I guess I’m…”
She was still paying attention. She wanted me to tell her about ME.

So I suppose I stammered about being a nurse or a grandmother or winters in Minnesota. I’m not sure. I was quite unsure of my role in this question, and further, my role in my own world.

It was a take-home gift, that kind of query. I don’t think I was meant to answer it properly there, or ever, for her. If I am not what I do, or a person in a relationship, or a resident of a particular place, but all that and none of that, then tell me about me.

If I could return to that luncheon table, wasps singing above (still safe in her presence, I’m sure), I would try to answer her. I might talk about the things I wish for and the things that make me unexpectedly happy, or the darkest thoughts I’ve ever had to sweep from my mind. I might tell her the things I pretend to be or to feel or to understand when I really don’t believe a bit of it. How about when I should be sad but am only really angry, or when I seem red-hot angry but really feel ice-blue with fear? What if I told her all the things I wander about and how little I know for sure?

So, on those days when uncertainty reigns supreme and I’m tempted to skitter off into a familiar pattern of internal chaos, I can take myself, for just a moment, back to that warm, blessed kitchen table in the house by the river and begin, “Let me tell you about Me.”

I’m the one who needs to attend to the conversation that follows.

Beadrin Youngdahl

LIFE LESSON #3
GET TO KNOW THE REAL YOU

At this point you might be asking yourself, what are they talking about? I know myself. After all, I’m with myself twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. How much better can I know me? You spend so much of your time focused on your relationships with other people that you often neglect the most important relationship of all – the relationship with yourself.

The Majority of women are so caught up in their lives that they have forgotten who they truly are. When someone asks you to introduce yourself, do you respond by telling them what you do, where you live, or who you know? Those are certainly important aspects of your life, but they aren’t your whole life – or at least they shouldn’t be.

Women are so identified with their roles as mother, wife, caretaker, daughter and sometimes career woman that they often loose track of themselves. Women forget who they are beyond these roles. They forget who they wanted to be, what they dreamt of becoming, what they love, what they value. In effect, they’ve forgotten their “self”. You may be wondering what “self” we’re referring to here.

While it may be known by several different names – your true self, your essential self, your wise self – this is the part of you that is eternal and undiminished by time. It is your soul made evident.

Many women have buried their authentic selves’ inner a façade of constructed in order to please other people or to be socially acceptable. Yet the effort to sustain this image is both draining and self-defeating, and it requires too much energy to maintain. It’s time to step free of the scripted life you’ve been living and search for who you really are in the depth of your being. Peel away everything that’s not essential and discover your authentic identity. Reclaim the woman you truly are!

Remember what’s most important in your life. Remember your hopes and dreams. Discover or rediscover your deepest yearnings. In order to do this, you need to embark on a psychological search-and-rescue mission to comb back through your life and recover your joy, wisdom, passion, enthusiasm, self-confidence, vitality – the threads of your true self that you lost along the way.

Creating a life you love requires courage, commitment and perseverance. All of which you have. The call now is for you to be authentically yourself.