The various definitions of beautiful...

My friend Staci & I in our kitchen.

I was 11 years old in this picture, which is a year younger than my twins are now. I look at my boys, strong and confident but needing reassurance sometimes as they adjust to the continuous physical changes to their bodies, the dynamics of middle school that’s filled with clusters of individuals navigating the same and other circumstances specific to their own lives, and the stresses of being more aware of the good and the bad going on in the world around them and beyond them. I am in awe of them constantly for the knowledge they have acquired in their short lives, and I do my best to help them be aware that there is plenty they don’t know that they don’t know and that that singular fact will never change. So it is important to be someone who is open to learning and understanding and showing grace. I remind myself of this often too; I’m human and am prone to trying to “figure people out”; it’s important not to run with the results of that expedition and close the door on other levels of understanding.

We are all individuals that no one really knows in their entirety other than oneself. We are all full of experiences and dreams and wants and needs that no other one single person knows all about. Does that thought invoke loneliness in you? Does it make you feel terribly misunderstood? Are you terrified of being found out while at the same time desperate to be seen? Does it inspire you to be more than those around you think you are? Is it a catapult to be more than anyone gives you credit for? Do you feel a surge of desire in yourself to take over the controls and not be stifled, not be limited, not run out of time to make up for lost time, not lose the qualities you have within yourself before you have the chance to nurture them and let them soar? These were all a yes for me.

When I see this person in the photograph that I was then, all of the insecurities, fears, and heart compression returns to me in an instant but at a soft distance, because I’ve learned to not let it consume me when I look at it. I was an individual that no one really knew entirely other than myself, and I was lonely, I felt misunderstood. I wanted to feel safe and protected. I wanted to feel what unconditional love felt like. I was keenly aware that unconditional love wasn’t something you could go out and get; someone just felt it through no actions of your or their own part. How would anyone ever just feel that for me for no reason? I longed to be able to set all my problems down in front of someone who would take them from me, heal me, love me, protect me, not make fun of or belittle me, not minimize my hurts. I longed for someone to hold onto my sensitive, vulnerable heart until the cracks were no longer visible.

I didn’t know this then, but I needed someone to talk to me about the various definitions of beautiful; I needed to know it wasn’t one perfect, unharmed thing. I needed someone to explain to me how the things people did to hurt me weren’t reflected back to other people that passed by; I didn’t carry around a “look” that immediately identified me as icky, dirty, and greasy. I wish I’d been told ithat I was not expendable nor was I deserving of being sexually and mentally abused. I felt like I walked around with my insides on the outside - exposed, vulnerable to comments, causing people to wince at the grotesqueness, awkward. I was so sensitive and so nervous. I wanted to feel beautiful, and I might have if I'd known that strength is beautiful, surviving is beautiful, maintaining a kindness in the face of pain is beautiful.

Yeah, so, I was 11 years old in this picture, and my step dad was sexually abusing me. That smile? I got good at that smile to the point that I grew up with people telling me, “You’re always so happy and smiling”, and my internal reaction would be, “Really?” It was counter-intuitive to believe that people could see that I was being abused but also believe I was a happy person. I deduced that they could see something ugly, something off about me but not quite put their finger on what it was, especially since I was so “happy”. So this became a survival skill of mine for many decades to come - poker face, happy smile, fake-it-til-you-make-it, etc. The thing I couldn’t shake then or now is feeling like an imposter. A work in progress, I am.

I remember scouring my mind for people I could run away to, show up on their doorstep, and be welcomed with open arms into a safety net where all my anxieties would fall away. I could not think of anyone that could be a serious option. I would imagine a family and then remember a reason they wouldn’t want to keep me. I’d remember someone else and know they’d just send me back. This other family would say they don’t want to get involved. These people that I KNOW would take me are too far. The future project manager in me would, from time to time, pick the plan back up to get 5 states away on my own without any one finding out. I anticipated challenges along the way and took inventory of the various options for each.

Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that I just had to ride out the rest of my childhood until I could afford to move out. And so this became the beginning of my quest to take any and every job I could in order to save up enough money to leave. My goal was $2k. I babysat, I pulled weeds, I mowed lawns, I cleaned out gutters and closets and garages, etc.

A lot happened between the day I made this vow and the day I walked out the backdoor with the last of my belongings and $2k in ones, fives, and tens in a pink caboodle, still unsure about how I was getting to school, to work, and back home every single day in all kinds of West Michigan lake-effect weather. But I knew I would find a way. If I was willing to walk 5 states away, I could walk a few miles a couple times per day from the cold, damp basement of a house of adult roommates to stake my own claim on my own life and be free. It wasn’t without cost to be sure, but I was willing to do whatever I had to do to survive on my own long enough to finish high school, turn 18, be able to legally make my own decisions, and launch myself forward with challenges I knew I would be able to overcome if I dug deep. It turned out that there were a couple of angels along my way that gave me a second wind here and there when I really needed it. I’ve always known I may not have survived it all if it weren’t for them because I was continuing to realize just how little you can count on people displaying good behavior even if they’re suppose to care about you.

In this picture is a girl who spent her summer break terrified of being alone in the same room with her stepfather. It’s a girl who was scared, confused, overwhelmed, could not talk to her mom about anything, and questioned whether her mom even loved her. It’s a girl who jumped at the chance to go spend summers with her grandparents to get away. It’s the girl who one night in the dark told her grandma that she needed to tell her a secret.

In my young mind, my grandma loved me enough to keep my secret. In my grown up mind, I don’t understand why my grandmother didn’t love me enough to not keep my secret. Between then and now I learned that she had actually told some pieces of it to some people, none of whom did anything to intervene. In fact, when my mom finally insisted I tell her if something had been done to me after nagging me for hours about the way I treated my stepdad with indifference, I didn’t see shock in her eyes at all. Maybe it was there; maybe she had a good poker face too. But if I thought that she was going to whisk me away from him and get as far away as possible so I could feel safe, I was very, very wrong. In fact, a few days later she asked me if I wanted her to leave him. She asked this people-pleasing, devoid of any self-esteem or self-worth teenage girl if I wanted to be the reason everyone’s life was turned upside down. Ok, she didn’t say those words, but that was what it came down to. I didn’t know how to answer a question like that. My answer was obviously yes, Yes, YES!! But she’s asking me with this tone in her voice that sounded to me like, “Can’t you just deal with it and let it go? Let bygones be bygones?” She didn’t say those words, but she may as well have. I could tell from her posturing that she wanted to just move on and wanted me to do the same. The gist was she would talk to him, and it wouldn’t happen again, and that should be enough, right? Let’s just say I would have done things completely different in her shoes. But then we are cut from different cloth. I just shrugged and told her I didn’t know. I kept thinking maybe if she knew everything her husband had done to me she wouldn’t be asking me this, but then I had to wonder why she didn’t ask me what all he’d done to me. Didn’t she want to know? Didn’t she need to know? Is this what it means when people say “Ignorance is bliss”?

I went to a Christian school from 4th to 9th grade, and I felt like I walked around with a tremendous pressure on me to keep my secrets, to not be exposed, and all of this while I was also beginning to go through puberty and deal with catty girls and punk boys at school. You never knew from one day to the next who was going to be your friend and be nice to you and who was going to make fun of and torment you. There was so much jealousy over who is better friends with whom, and I just wanted to be liked by everyone. Those things on their own would have been plenty to deal with and most kids deal with these things to some extent in the course of growing up, but when there’s abuse at home and secrets to keep, the compounding of it all can feel like too much to some kids. It certainly felt too much for me. I felt daily like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and I couldn’t get to my $2k goal fast enough. I cried myself to sleep almost every night, and I just clung to the day when this would all be in my rearview mirror.

Fast forward to 2021

My friend, Melissa, has a sound bath and energy healing business called SoulcialLight. She is endlessly creative, fun, introspective, and thoughtful. She invited me to one of her sound bath events in Dallas, and, while I’d always wanted to experience one, I didn’t know what to expect. Honestly, I was just excited to lie down somewhere uninterrupted and feel some calming sensations. What I ended up experiencing was so meaningful to me that here I am a year later still thinking about it and feeling some peace from it.

Once we did a quick little warm up with stretching and light yoga, we moved into position on our backs with a pillow and light blanket. When Melissa started using the bowls and sounds were swirling all around me, I found myself sort of separating from my body and looking down at myself. I spent the next hour visiting myself at different ages, and I spent a particularly long time with my younger self during the time when I often cried myself to sleep every night with deep heaves and puffy faced headaches. As the little girl, I felt like someone was there caring for me. As the spirit, I took on the too-big emotions of my younger self and let her know she was ok and would come out ahead of all of this one day. I was myself as the little girl sobbing and the spirit of myself visiting her at the same time. Though I was still physically lying on the floor with my blanket and pillow in the sound bath room, I was also in these other places, and I felt tears falling from my eyes down my temples, onto my ears, and dripping onto the mat below me.

Once I left my bedside, my spirit self was sitting next to me as a little girl in my neighbor’s backyard where I went to pick mulberries and hide from my stepdad. It’s where I could sit under the Weeping Willow tree and see and smell the lilac trees that lined the alley behind their yard. The days I was actually back there as a kid, I was scared and sick with worry. In this sort of vision I was experiencing, the child-me felt soothed by my spirit being there. My jumpiness and anxiety calmed, and I took deep breaths and let my shoulders down. I felt like i was going to be ok. These are feelings I desperately needed to feel back then.

And so on it went - I would go directly to the scene of myself as a child when I was hurt or scared or sad and I would sit with myself and put a cloak of safety and warmth around me as the little girl. And what came over me every time as the little girl version was a sense of feeling protected by the spirit of myself that I couldn’t even see. It gave me a strength in knowing I would be ok.

The time continuum of all of this was not lost on me. Those things that happened to me as a little girl already happened, and I know that feeling of not being comforted and not feeling safe in my memories. But after this Sound Bath experience of visiting myself during those times and offering comfort now in my adulthood, well, it oddly enough takes some of the sting away from my memories. If no one else was there for me during those painful times, I was there for myself. And I’m the only one that knows me inside and out, top to bottom. Because as I said from the beginning, we are all individuals that no one really knows in their entirety other than oneself. So in that moment on the floor of the room in Melissa’s class, what I experienced was the thing I’d spent my whole life wanting so badly: unconditional love. And I got it during that experience. I got it from myself - the energy and spirit of myself. And I still feel a peace from it today.

Melissa is a Vision Strategist and continues to hold these sound bath classes at various locations around the Dallas, Texas, area, and you will do yourself a beautiful favor by attending any of her classes. You can find her on Instagram at @soulcial.light

If you’re in or close to the Atlanta area, I highly recommend finding a schedule of events from Angela; she is a Certified Sound Practitioner, and her business is called In The Key of Love, and she focuses on sound, music, and lyrical intentions, which includes sound baths, as well. She has gone through her own journey with anxiety and hard emotions, and you can trust her with yours. Her Instagram page is @InTheKeyOfLove.

Your experience during a Sound Bath class will be your own and look quite different from anyone else’s, and that’s probably because you’re not anyone else. Gift yourself or someone else with the time to sit in your own thoughts and emotions and see how the sounds Melissa and Angela provide help you process them.

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