“People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.”
Assata Shakur
In many ways my coaching programs focus on the subject of self-liberation. I find this term more closely represents the coaching program I have set up through Learn to Love Your Story than any other term I have tried using. Self-empowerment, Personal Development, Growth Mindset, Life Transition Expertise…none of these fully capture what I am getting at in my programs. What I really am seeking to do is help free people from the tyranny of the stories they have told themselves and the stories that have been told to them that make them feel small, unheard, and unseen in their lives. And in the worst cases like they have somehow failed. All of these stories are lies that have been told to us and that we are telling to ourselves that hold up the interests of the powers that be. And it turns out a lot of those powers don’t serve us. A LOT!!!
Midlife in many ways is a second adolescence. One in which we gear up to take on the establishment and find our way in this world again. You remember middle school right? That Lord of the Flies hellhole where we figured out our rank in the social pecking order and sold our souls to the devil of “fitting in”. That period of time is one of the most hellacious we go through. We are ill prepared for the battle we face. A battle of trying to be something we are not, in an effort to be accepted. This is where the most difficult social conditioning occurs and we are at such an impressionable time in our lives. Our brains are only starting to formulate the blueprints for our lives and instead are getting filled with crap intel from the treacherous halls of our middle school existence. YUCK!
Well guess what?!? If you are in this glorious stage we call midlife you are right back in that craziness again. Your social currency is fading. You aren’t as young, you’re body is not the same, and your social pecking order is changing right out from underneath you whether you want it to or not. This can be one of the most uncomfortable phases of life. Here we are again trying to make a place for ourselves in this world, trying to belong, while the world is telling a story of how we are inconsequential. So what do we do? We rebel as any good midlife adolescent would. We have a midlife crisis. We try to reinvent ourselves. And sometimes this works for us, but sometimes it can all feel like it comes crashing down on us.
One of my favorite liberation quotes is by American Writer and 1960s Activist, James Baldwin, “It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself and half-believed before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.” That about sums it up, right? When we are so indoctrinated in the social conditioning of who we “should” be, we really start to believe the BS that who we are is not good enough. This is especially true in times of transition such as midlife. Here is my advice to all of us…LET THAT SHIT GO!!!
“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself and half-believed before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”
James Baldwin
Another quote by Comedian, Writer, and Producer Amy Poehler explains how hard “letting go” can be for women, “It takes years as a woman to unlearn what you have been taught to be sorry for.” What this demonstrates is that it is so much harder than just letting it go. It takes another approach entirely. It takes a personal journey of liberating oneself from the culture that has taught us who we are is something to be apologized for in the first place. We have to shed the years of our conditioning that taught us there is an ideal that we are supposed to be working towards and emulating, instead of reveling in the absolute miracle that is us. I mean think about it! You are the only version of you that is like you. THE ONLY ONE. That means in the nearly 8 billion lives on earth right now, no one is just like you. NO ONE. Not even if you are a twin or multiple. Not to mention there has never been and never will be a you just like you, in the billions of lives that have been and ever will be. That is an amazing FACT!
“It takes years as a woman to unlearn what you have been taught to be sorry for.”
Amy Poeler
LIBERATE yourself from this idea that family, religion, culture, and society have given you about what the ideal version of who you should be is. How do they know? How could they know? There is ONLY ONE YOU! How in the world would they know what the worthy version of you is? Quick answer…they don’t. So liberate yourself from this idea that your “best self” is learned from others or that the answer is somewhere outside yourself. Its learned from you. The answer is in you. You only need to liberate yourself to find it.