On Self-Compassion
and embracing our own humanness
Growing up, I never really struggled with my self esteem—maybe a little bit in high school when it came to my appearance, but as a whole, I generally felt pretty good about myself. I knew I was smart, I knew I was a good actress and singer, I knew I was generally liked by my peers, and on the whole was a pretty good kid—and I had the grades to prove it.
I never really understood when people talked about hating themselves—it never felt like an issue to me. I remember being annoyed at girls my age for pinching their belly skin between their fingers and bemoaning how fat they were (when they were much smaller than I was and I didn’t consider myself fat). Sometimes self-hatred felt like it was “en vogue” in high school; part of that angsty teenage persona that I never really took on.
I maintained my grades and my self-esteem through college, as well as my reputation for being a “good girl” (if you can’t tell already, my grades/good-girl persona and my self-esteem very much went hand in hand). Then, in a summer interim as I was prepping to apply to grad school, I fell in love and got married instead. I became instant mom to an adorable 4 year old from my husband’s previous marriage, and I breezed into marriage and motherhood with all of the confidence of a 24 year old who was used to getting ALL THE GOLD STARS in everything she did (except in PE, but, like, who cares about PE).
I had no idea what I was walking into. Motherhood and marriage are the land of no gold stars.
I felt like a failure at everything from pretty much the first day after the honeymoon. I could never (and two kids later still can’t) keep up on the laundry, the meals, the house, the emotional care-taking, the errands, the shopping, the kid-grooming, the taxi-ing, the nurturing, the magic-making, and all the other invisible work that often falls into the laps of wives and mothers all over the world. The week after my honeymoon I quickly fell into a deep depression that I have been trying to claw my way out of ever since. I threw myself into my work, taught a couple of great lessons at church, and got really involved in local community theater—this gave me enough external validation to keep going, but made me feel like I was neglecting my role as wife and mother.
I had my first daughter about the same time I lost my testimony of the church. Along with becoming more overwhelmed with mothering a new baby, I was grappling with feeling a huge loss of respect from my community and family for no longer sharing their beliefs and traditions. In a lot of ways I felt like a social outcast…I felt pity from people, I felt disgust from people, I felt people’s fear of me and my opinions, but rarely was I met with true curiosity and compassion. And NEVER was I met with those gold stars that I sooo desperately crave. Well, that’s not entirely true…I got validation from those who had already left the religion, but in my mind, gold stars from people I had long considered “black dot” people, didn’t really count. I missed the acceptance and admiration from my community—not to mention the self-assurance that comes when you believe you are living your life according to God’s will.
(If you are confused by my reference to gold stars and black dots in this post, go check out the story “You Are Special” by Max Lucado)
At least I still had my job and musical theater to fill me up and make me feel like a valuable person. But after my second daughter, I stopped being involved in those things, too. And then….it’s like I became manic depressed. I would sink into the depths of shame and despair, and, to battle it, I would start a new project or business which would inevitably fall by the wayside (due to the fact that I lack the executive function necessary to be a good business person and I struggle completing projects without deadlines and someone else keeping me accountable, so this was probably never a good idea to maintain my self-esteem) and the cycle would start again.
The two best things that I did for myself during this time period (thank you Covid for the opportunity) were:
1. Sell what I called “Bad Portraits” (Commissioned portraits that I painted in an hour or less and didn’t beat myself up about, no matter how weird they looked—in fact, the weirder the better) and
2. Start a podcast called “Just Be Your Bad Self.” “Where you get to show up imperfectly, make space for your authentic self, remember your inner child, and sink into the magic of the present moment.”
I didn’t really understand it at the time, but now I see that that those two things were a practice in self-compassion. Something that I had had very little practice in up until my life felt like it was falling apart.
I listen to a podcast called “First This” in the mornings to meditate, and today’s meditation said this:
The difference between self compassion and self esteem is that esteem has been often presented to us as feeling good about ourselves because we can do something that others can’t; that we are better at something, so we deserve to feel good. I’m sure you can see some obvious problems there. What happens to your self worth when things change? But self compassion is sort of the opposite. It says “You deserve to feel good about yourself because you’re actually the same as everyone else, and it’s something everyone deserves automatically—a birth right. Compassion is your birth right.”
That hit me right between the eyes.
I deserve feel good about myself because I’m the same as everyone else.
I’ve been binging clips of Aurora lately—she is my favorite musical artist (though my 8 year old is a bigger super-fan than I am), probably because I see so much of myself in her. My inner self. The weird stuff that I keep hidden from almost everyone except my little sister. People say things about Aurora like “Is she even from this planet?” “What flower did she emerge from?” As if she is not human—because she is so obviously different from “normal people.”
But you know what I think? I think Aurora seems strange to us because of how utterly human she is. She feels her feelings, she shows up openly and vulnerably, and that is EXACTLY what makes her loveable. (Exhibit A) (Exhibit B)
The confusing thing is….if it is our humanness that makes us lovable to other people, why is that same trait that often makes us hate ourselves? Given the choice, most of us would rather be super-human than human…we would choose to reject many of the very things that are the most human about us.
I want to share a clip from an artist I discovered named Ren. This is a 9 minute song and there are plenty of F words so for the impatient and/or language-sensitive folks, you may just want to skip the song to the message that starts at about 7:25 (Though I think it’s the song that makes the conclusion so incredibly powerful—so it’s worth the watch if you have the stamina). Here it is
All this to say (I guess): it’s ok if you are human. I am too. We all are.
Just a bunch of imperfect, lonely weirdos walking around on this giant blue ball floating through space hiding from each other while desperately longing to be seen and loved for who we really are—human.
I think the secret is that when we learn to love ourselves in our own human-ness (which I guess is what self-compassion is all about), that is when we gain the ability to truly see and love others, and let ourselves be seen and loved by others in return. It’s a scary and difficult path to walk…but it may be the only path worth walking.
Three more songs on being human and then I’m really done:
Through the Eyes of a Child-Aurora
I love you, you beautiful human—in all of your messy humanness!
Love,
Kimber
Beautiful share, you remarkable human. xo