Birthdays & Birthday Suits

There is no better day than the anniversary of your birth to honor yourself in all of your messiness and glory (even weirdness)!

—

I recently observed myself and because I didn’t deny what I was feeling — made some powerful personal connections as a result. I verbalized what needed to heard.

Let me give you a little context.

Early one morning at home I was trying to get dressed and out the door for work. I was in my daily routine, rushing about doing what I normally did but something just felt ‘off’. It was one of those moments where everything felt like a source of agitation. My regular go-to clothes weren’t fitting the way I liked. The fabrics felt scratchy. One article felt too tight, the next too loose...it all felt like too much as a pile of clothes grew beneath my feet.

Ugh. 

I felt like I was climbing out of my own skin...and I really couldn’t pinpoint why or what was the source. Nothing of consequence had occurred to spur this on. Or had it?

It’s an interesting time of year — a dramatic shift of seasons and pace, birthdays (mine & my daughter True’s), luminous Aurora Borealis sightings, forceful supermoons (Hunter’s Moon), oh, and toss in a highly contentious presidential election! The energy is intense — a time where our inner and outer worlds can collide — clashing or collaborating.

True could hear me mumbling to myself from the other room and called to me asking, “Why are you fussing so much?” And without a second thought, I just blurted out, “Do you know how hard it is to control myself?”

Even I was a little stunned by this somewhat dramatic and abrupt response. I tried not to judge it at first. We never know what is ready to be released and healed.

I made an interesting revelation in that seemingly random moment: I’m weird. Yes, you read that correctly. I’m weird and I’ve been pretending to be something I’m not my whole life.

Why?

Because it triggers memories of my childhood being teased, shunned, and laughed at by kids who circled around me on the playground taunting me. Because I was discarded by a school system that tried to label me and left me to fall through the cracks. Because no one took the time to see me, understand me, acknowledge me or get me. So, I felt invisible and unimportant...weird.

Maybe today, I’d be diagnosed as being on the spectrum, or with ADHD or dyslexic or whatever term they’d like to use. But 50+ years ago, my teachers recognized that I didn’t fit into their norm, that I didn’t learn the same way as others, so they just shoved me to the back of the class where I remained quiet. Unseen.

This is where I began to disappear and pretend.

No one cared about exploring anything out of the box which is probably exactly why my life has been anything but linear. I have never marched to the beat of the norm.

Clearly, this is the place where I began to learn that it was important to fit in and to package myself, so I would be palatable to others, but unrecognizable to myself. I’ve been unpeeling those layers ever since. Healing.

But back to that morning of discomfort while getting dressed. I realized it was such an incredible metaphor for how I had felt my whole life — how I protected myself with an invisible armor, how I hid my quirks — the way I processed things and the way I spoke. 

Every morning as I slipped into my clothes, zipped up my dresses, tied up my shoes, buckled, buffed and puffed to make myself presentable — I was dulling a part of myself.

Perhaps this is a gift of my birthday just around the corner?

Maybe I’m ready to let it all go once and for all. This overwhelming sense of not fitting in has propelled me to discover how to be comfortable in my life and business. Besides, what is fitting in anyway?

Not fitting in has helped me find who I am, what I love, what inspires me and makes me feel alive. This community and this café had been such a huge part of it all. Home.

I’m a huge observer of people and life. I love to hear about the stories and journeys of others — to share in their experiences — to laugh, cry, connect and hold one another. To dream. To dare. To become.

I can be so hard on myself. Maybe you can relate. Why do we do that? But I’ve learned to interrupt that thought pattern now. And that morning as I was ‘fussing’ all about, True’s words landed like medicine I want to share with you.

When I tried to explain that I was feeling like I was wearing a shield or a suit that was too tight, she gently smiled as only she can and responded by telling me that I was loved and would be loved being ALL of me.

In that instance my suffering melted. I will hold onto those words for the rest of my life.

I LOVE out-of-the box thinking. I love ‘weirdness’ (mine and yours). I gravitate to uniqueness. And most of all, I love learning to let it all hang out in its unbuttoned-up glory.

I think this is my gift to self this year. I’m easing up on the false narratives that have been dictating my life for far too long. In fact, I’m letting them go. I’m not wasting any more of my precious life source.

I always get a little weird around my birthday (just ask my besties), but I think I’m just going to commit to doing it differently this year...and all those to come.

Happy Birthday to me in all my individuality! And may this be a reminder to you too!

—Lea Haas, Owner, The Garden Cafe Woodstock