Growing in Public
Do you grow in private, in public, or both?
Katie Reeve-Arnold & StoriesOfSelf
5/8/20242 min read
A long long time ago, when I was still small,
I learned how to grow from others, the road to stand tall.
I learned to get it right, not to be wrong,
I learned to do what they asked of me, my voice sang their song.
I learned to look up to them, not right or left,
I learned to accept that they knew what was best.
I learned - to repeat and I learned to - replay,
Was safer than creating and forging my way.
I learned all the things that I shouldn’t be,
I lock them up inside and I buried the key.
I learned oh so well what they wanted of me,
That i forgot myself, disappeared completely.
Into a mirror of their own projection,
Into obediance, achievement and resurrection -
Of all they failed; I took it as my own,
I gutted my house and I gave it a home.
But now, you see, life is mine to reclaim,
My, myself and I, stand under the name
Given to us by others, now ringing with me,
Low, loud, lilting resonance, bounding and free.
Nothing left of the should, nothing left of the shame,
Nothing left looking round me for someone to blame.
Nothing left in hiding, not able to show,
The uncomf’table stretch belonging to’us as we grow.
Not torn, not twisted, not bound, not apart,
When I welcome it all - my whole work of art.
I’m owning it all, standing proud, standing strong,
’Cause it all was all of me, you see, all along.
And it’s not about waiting to pitch perfection,
It’s about starting off in your truest direction.
It’s not about hiding the difficult parts of life’s flow -
It’s all about growing in public, you know.
(by Katie Reeve-Arnold , Narrative Fiction in italics)
I spent a lot of my life making myself safe and making sure I was not ‘wrong’ by following what I was told to do. There is a structure to follow and we all feel it when we are very young - so much so that it becomes normal to us. But ‘normal’ is just what the majority of people are doing. We are all different and just because it is normal, doesn’t make it right for you.
I spent a lot of my life thinking I had to be ‘more ready’ to launch myself in the world. In fact I spent so much time thinking I had to be ready, that I kept putting off the ‘launching’ bit. I was never quite ready enough, you see. But I would be….one day in the future.
Yet I started to realise that if I kept that destination day in the future, then it would never come. Tomorrow would never become Today, while I kept calling it Tomorrow.
And so I stepped in, just where I was. And in that moment Tomorrow became Today.
It doesn’t have to start in a big way, just do something that you have been saying you will do in future Right Now. The moment you turn away from the screen, do it. And realise that the more you apply this, the more things in life become, not hanging, timetabled for the future, but in motion in the present, happening now.
Try it out - live now instead of looking forward to it someday….
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