Beloved, you no longer need to be likable in order to feel safe.
Early summer sunlight streams in through the kitchen window. Hot coffee has been sipped. Honeyed yogurt and a warmed baguette have been deliciously enjoyed. The house is peaceful, and the awakening world outside the window vibrantly shimmers in glossy greens, plants still thriving from a rain-kissed spring.
Beloved, you no longer need to be likable in order to feel safe.
The epiphany spells itself across the neat lines of my notebook. My morning pages reveal the breath-giving counsel of my higher self, who I envision dwells in the cocooned depths of my oceanic heart.
She gently advocates for a brighter embodiment of self-sovereignty.
To shine the blaze of the inner sun, to burn away the survival strategies that no longer serve me. I honor the keen intelligence of these survival systems set into place by my child self, the child with a highly sensitive nervous system, who brilliantly attuned to the subtle energetics of an environment swiftly. She strategized safety by making a point to befriend the bully, to fawn and go along, to snake-charm the mean-streaked ones so she could achieve a sense of safety.
She thought relationships meant constant compromise and over-giving. She thought her needs were weird, when in fact, they were simply unique and different, and being different does not make you wrong or bad. And those who tease you for your differences are just showing their own fears of inadequacy.
She thought that in order to feel at ease with herself, then everyone needed to like her and approve of her. She thought likability meant safety, and as a young child, dependent on adults, this strategy probably did serve.
Beloved, you no longer need to be likable in order to feel safe.
Earlier this year, in another kitchen, one that held the view of palm trees flickering in and out of the Floridian sun, I danced spontaneously, just a feel-good moment that moved into joyous motion, and suddenly, a thought like lightning struck when I was cautioned by ego-ruling fear to remember that so-and-so does not like me and if so-and-so does not like me then how can I dance so freely, so joyfully in the kitchen? How can I possibly like myself when others disapprove of me?
My awareness shines like the sun – spotlights the constriction of this narrative, senses the familiarity of the narrative, and believes in another story, a truer story, and this is the healing. In dancing, my body brought to the surface a story ready to be released, to be seen, acknowledged and tenderly held. There is no shame, regret, and blaming here. We’re all walking the path to the best of current capabilities.
And then, I see her.
Little Meredith appears, and reaches arms out to me, because I am now safe, I am now at peace enough for her to feel safe with me. I’ve made peace with my edges. I’ve softened toward my perfectionism. I practice allowing the waves of my emotions without getting consumed by their intensity. I forgive myself, daily. And this has created a spaciousness that has allowed the inner child to know that she now can be seen with compassion, presence, playfulness, active listening.
I pick her up. I dance with her in the kitchen. We sway with the palm trees.
Beloved, you are safe. Beloved, you are safe to be as you need to be. Beloved, you belong.
She is with me now. Here on a summer morning in June. I am writing to her. These journal pages are to soothe and ease any fear that is lingering, any little lightning storms that still pass through my nervous system and get me unsettled and anxious about not being likable and therefore, not feeling safe. I write them out. I breathe into these fictional tales to return me back to reality, to the soles of my feet on the carpet, to the all-knowing guidance of my inner child, whose needs are elegantly simple.
The inner child, the little Meredith, who is a metaphor for my innocence, my blessed sensitivity, my intuitive knowing, does look like me (and! the inner child does not have to be an exact replica of you, they can appear in whatever expression best serves to communicate present-moment understanding and needs). She has blonde hair and bangs, and wears a white floral dress decorated in blue blooms. She is often quiet, calm, attentive, and completely content and sublimely happy in her own company.
And she told me, with her gentle and clear gaze, to use the word sublime, she wants to emphasize the sacredness of her alone time, and wants me to re-remember this critical, essential need of mine, and is often the instrumental need of the highly sensitive, intuitive child.
She’s yearning for me to give her permission, to let her rest and live in her own unique way of being, to gift her the replenishing solitude that is essential for her optimal wellbeing.
In striving to be likable, to construct false safety, I abandoned my inner child. I made her go to parties when she didn’t want to go, to stay in friendships that were well-past their time, and often, I would at the last minute get a sore throat, a sudden cold, so my body would bail me out right before I had to be social out of sense of obligation versus a genuine heart-motivation for substantial connection.
This morning, I see my inner child at that party, surrounded with other kids and yet feeling so drained and exhausted, and simply wanting to leave so she can go home into the rich inner world of her imaginings.
She’s just looking at me for permission to go.
Beloved, you get to choose you, you get to befriend yourself, now. There is safety and support in this choice.
And so I take her hand and we walk into a gorgeously dense forest, shadowy and cool, an idyllic playground for imaginings and storytelling.
It’s time to come home. To her. It’s time to come home to my unbridled creativity, to my creative dreams, my inspiration that is nature and to marvel with childlike wonder at the beauty of the world.
I am safe because I am with her, my inner child, and she is with me.
Beloveds, we are free to dance in the kitchen, joyfully and to our own unique beat.