Braving the Wilderness as a 5-year-old

Project Perseverance: Journal Entry #2

Written on: Monday 5 February 2018

Braving the Wilderness by Brene Brown p.13

“…I just started sobbing. I didn’t break down because I hadn’t made the drill team, I wept for the girl that I couldn’t comfort back then. The girl who didn’t understand what was happening or why…”

As I read this, I can totally relate. I am processing many moments of pain, regret, disappointment, wounding, misunderstandings, mismatched expectations–many of which have been suppressed for years. I have often been experiencing just what Brene Brown describes here looking back at the devastation to her teenage heart and all the pain and meaning made from not being accepted to the drill team and how all this meaning involved not belonging and the despair of never belonging or fitting in anywhere.

I know this feeling well.

I cry now for sweet, five-year-old Molly who was beginning to paint a picture during free choice time in kindergarten and the teacher ripped down her painting (just one blue horizontal stroke, so far) and put it on the floor by the window. “It’s not your turn to paint, Molly.” Another child had asked permission to paint at the easel.

Because I had not asked (because it was free choice time and we were told we could choose to do anything we wanted), I was humiliated. I never painted again except in art class when we were required to.

I remember really wanting to be in art club in high school, but “knew” that I wasn’t good enough and probably wouldn’t be allowed to anyway. And so now, 25 years later, I have learned to say to sweet, five-year-old Molly: “It’s always my turn to paint.”

Brown says, “These are the moments that, when left unspoken and unresolved, send us into our adult lives searching desperately for belonging and settling for fitting in.”

These five questions have helped me and some of my friends to reflect and notice when something is holding us back or keeping us stuck. They could help you, too. Sign up here.

Leave me a comment.

What are some of the voices that have echoed in your ears for many years?
What do you do when you are “searching desperate for belonging”?
What would you like to try today that you lost out on when you were younger?