Wendilicious
Moi
Teach. Sing. Write. Fly. Dive. Rave.
I'm not the girl your mom warned you about, her imagination was never this good.
Work for pasta and ice cream and also makes pasta and ice cream work for me.
Ecoutez
More of me
1/10/17, 10:31 AM
My journey to growing up
Too many people across generations go through life not knowing the secret to being strong as an individual. I am still searching to regain my confidence from many events that push me down over the past quarter of a century. We pick up quotes online and messages that tell us how to be who we are, so much so that we forget that our identity is multi faceted and that staying true to yourself does not equate to being mono identified.
It struck me that what I needed to succeed in my role as a grown up is to code-switch between identities.
This does not mean hiding behind a mask and being someone that we are not, although certain uncomfy situations might force us to be so. It means embracing various aspects of your identity and working on all the faces of it. Instead of thinking that you are just that one genuine representation of yourself.
It means being a gentle soul when your partner needs help and being patient and observant to their needs.
It means being grateful to those who stick by you and showing them love in every way you know how and opening your heart up to love and being afraid of failure but trying anyway.
It also means embracing the working identity that forces you to put on a show and to seem like you hve it all figured out. To be visually strong amidst all the changes and insults that put you down. To walk with a stained skirt and still be proud of being in that skirt because you know you are much more than a pretty image.
It means going home and being kind and soft with your family. Helping out at home. Having hobbies and cooking for them. Telling them that you are okay, even if you are breaking down inside on so many levels. A different kind of strong.
It means sitting up at night thinking of how to become a better teacher tomorrow when the whole world seems to be counting on you for comfort, assurances, strength, confidence. When you face a class of confused faces and a lot of 100 students looking to you for some sign that they are good enough even if they seem like they want to hurt you, even if they seem uninterested, even if they have their troubles and expect you to read it off their faces. You shut your eyes and strengthen yourself. You embrace your weakness of caring too much. You take 10minutes to cry it out. To allow your weakness to show. And to motivate yourself. Then you spend the next hour thinking of ways to be strong again for tomorrow.
You switch in and out of what might seem like a thin stemmed flower on the rails of a train track. Some moments you embrace your gentle nature and feed yourself with comfort, for the world seems busy with their own problems. And when the train arrives, you brace yourself for the massive blow that will tip you over the 45degree angle that is humanly possible to bend over before you break. Only you don't break.
You hold on tight to that hug you gave yourself the previous night. You know you can go against your very nature of breaking.
