I Love Your You-Ness

There are messages we get from the outside world:  I matter, I am loved and appreciated for who I am, what I want counts to people around me.  I am safe.  I am seen.  I am soothed.  I am bathed in security. And there are messages that aren’t that:

I am annoying.  I am not as interesting as other things.  I am bad.  I am a constant disappointment no matter how hard I try.  

I am never good enough to be cared for and left alone, like a vine that given water, soil, and sun will flourish without need or desire for constant pruning and training. 

I see these kids, Ax and his friends, and I see their hearts begging:  

Nourish me and let me be!  I am not a bonsai to be trimmed and trimmed and trimmed!  I am a passion flower vine and I want to flower everywhere, all over, messily and abundantly!  And be adored!

If you cut me back here I will grow over there and if you want me neat and tidy then you’ll have to cut cut cut til

you’ve nearly killed me and you won’t get to enjoy my flowers.  Which maybe weren’t the flowers you’d hoped for.  But are the ones I am.  I wish you could love me as I am.  I wish you would let me be as I am.

So love me or clip me.  If you clip me you kill a part of yourself — perhaps a part you cannot love?  A part you were taught is unlovable?

If you love me perhaps you can learn to love yourself — all those parts of you that you learned were too much or not enough or somehow not right.  

Love those parts of me, those parts of you, and bloom your own particular flower too.  Instead of pruning and cutting at yourself.  And showing me how to do that, how to hide, to feel shame, to feel afraid.  For things like wanting to draw when it’s dinnertime, or chat when it’s bedtime, or run naked through the whole house singing nonsense.  For not wanting to share Every Single Time that grabby kid of your friend comes over.  Is that all really so intolerable?  

Do you really want me to feel as worthless and sub-optimal as you do?  What really matters to you anyway? So many rules I have no idea what’s actually important.  It all seems so important to you. 

Don’t you want to love me?  Let yourself love me, and love yourself.  Take care of me, my me-ness.  And

take care of your you-ness, mom and dad.  It’s about time.  And I love you as you are.

I’m gonna keep going.

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