On reflections and mirrors
Where you plant yourself matters :: ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED on AUGUST 8th 2022
I have really wonderful mirrors in my life. My clients - for one. My readers of my books and even of this very newsletter- yes yes. And I actually have a handful of best friends I’ve collected over the years who truly see me and who I know would never hurt me or try to tear down my power- my dearest people like Iman and Shan and Uzma, etc.
It wasn’t always like this. I had mostly terrible mirrors as friends or peers growing up. The catholic church was a horrible mirror. Teachers and authority like figures were also the worse in my experience. And I didn’t usually score very big with great mirrors in deeply intimate spaces. The people I got naked with, were often the people who were reflecting back to me things like… I was not worth much, I was not to be respected, that my needs were not important, that I was not important, that I was not special, that I wasn’t lovable, the list goes on. Or like I wrote here in the spring, some people saw me as stronger than I am, absolving themselves of responsibility or accountability when it came to how they treated me because they knew I’d be fine and I’d handle it.
I have found that the danger of inaccurate mirrors is quite large at different points in my life. I’ve hurt myself profoundly by listening and believing unsafe mirrors for me. Inaccurate mirrors can actually be catastrophic. Inaccurate mirrors can destroy your self-esteem, your sense of self, your sense of trust, your sense of value. It can rob you from the most precious pieces of yourself. They can really distort reality for you.
In a lot of ways, my work is about undoing the impact of inaccurate mirrors for people. People stand in front of me and I love them like they should have been loved. I respect them like they always deserved. I point out things they are brilliant at. I nurture the parts of them that are calling for reassurance.
Planting myself in front of mirrors that don’t love me (or they say they do, but then they do or say stuff that doesn’t match that), that don’t respect me, that belittle me, that make me lose my self-trust and my self-esteem and that distort reality, makes me sick.
I can’t believe I always forget this when it happens again. I go, oh I am sick again. I wonder why? And I have genuinely forgotten so many times to connect the dot between getting sickly and analyzing who is reflecting me back to me right now. And when I knew to look, I have also felt like it would be crazy to attribute it to that.
Yet, when you plant a garden where there’s no sun, and the wind is quite brutal and the air is cold, your garden will not bloom. It will be weak and sick. Same same.