When epiphanies land...

In anticipation of the January 6^th Epiphany (the Christian feast marking the arrival of the three Magi to Christ’s birthplace)  I thought I’d offer a recent epiphany of my own (obviously, on a much smaller scale).

It’s an epiphany from my friend Sheila, who inadvertently freed me from some emotional bondage plaguing me since childhood.  Sheila and I crossed paths in the 80’s at a Weight Watchers ‘spa’ in Southern California. Hardly a five-star destination, the accommodations were in a Quality Inn on a busy commercial strip less than a mile from Disney Land. But it didn’t matter, we were in the land of eternal sun and had a month to shed the weight that had plagued us most of our lives.

Sheila and I ate the insipid, iceberg-lettuce-centric meals (and subsequently snuck out to convenience stores for sugary snacks to mitigate the misery), showed up with our 80’s spiked hair sheathed in colorful headbands for aerobics each morning, and diligently plunged into the pool for water cardio. It was inevitable that she and I would end up bonding over damages incurred from growing up as fat girls trapped in a world that revered thinness. Both in our 20’s at the time, we were ready to vaporize old labels and take on the world as adults – preferably minus 20-30 pounds. I ended up going on to dump 75 unwanted pounds – only to discover that the needle of my self-esteem barely budged. This bore witness to the cloying and deep-rooted power of labels.

As anyone who’s ever been tossed a dart - whether in the guise of good-natured ribbing or brazen bullying – knows, labels can stick. If you’ve attended public school, summer camp, played on a sports team, or any other sundry activity where youths gather, you probably bear a few scars from being (mis)labeled or excluded.  The problem with labels, erroneous as they are is, they don’t just stick, they often embed. The ‘sticks and stones’ prescription parents dispensed back in the day did little to salve the pain. By fifth grade, I found myself actually hoping for a blunt object to come my way instead of an embarrassing name. The cynical and the disconnected declare name-calling a normal rite of passage, but I’ll never cede to that cop-out.

Maybe the next generation will bring the dawn of a new way of treating one another, but until then, there are legions of us walking the earth who have no clue, thanks to faulty programming, how fantastic we are.

I’ve seen how the spectrum of despair and self-loathing can fluctuate amongst the wounded. Sure, different personality types account for how effectively the coping process can go. Environment also plays a key role. Those blessed to be appreciated by their caretakers and sphere of friends will likely not have an arduous task ahead of them. I’ve witnessed in astonishment some kids deflect incoming shrapnel the way Wonder Woman bounces bullets off her bracelet cuffs.  

If only more of us were so well equipped. But facts are facts: Not everyone inherits a nurturing environment or a DILLIGAF-infused disposition. I convulsed in sobs at the end of movies like Sounder and Bambi, blushed when I was called on in class, and stammered my way through awkward lunch conversations in the cafeteria. I was shy, highly sensitive, and self-loathing, a perfect storm for the distortion of self-image. Even though my survival strategy was to shut down and play dead, I couldn’t shut off my hearing, and took as gospel the proclamations of the label-givers.

It’s been said that memories are intensified and nourished by emotion. Because of this, we’re more likely to remember encounters and conversations where a highly charged emotional response is included – whether the emotion is joy or embarrassment. I’ve fortified the healing process with everything from affirmations and reading self-help books, to talk-therapy and bully-confrontation. It works, but sometimes, there’s backsliding. Maybe that’s part of being imperfectly human. Some days, I throw my hands up in despair and shout, ‘Really?  Square one again???”  It happens. And then I regroup and hope it happens less often.

Sheila and I lost touch following our month-long Orange County adventure, but the tentacles of social media reconnected us in middle age, and she flew out for a weekend visit. There was lots of catching up to do about where life had taken us, but it ultimately led back to reminiscing on the past. “You still don’t have confidence, Stacey, not fully,” Sheila observed. That was a bit like taking a bullet, but she always spoke from her heart and I knew Sheila was right. Still…after all these years I shrink back, get butterflies in my stomach if I get up from a table at a restaurant and walk by crowded tables, over-apologize when it’s not necessary, and in general, engage in far too much self-doubt.

“So what’s your secret?” I asked, As a child, Sheila wasn’t just scrutinized for her size, but also because she was the lone minority in her school after her father’s career landed the family in a foreign country when she was eight. “People ridiculed me all the time, but I never let them get to me,” Sheila recalled. “Anytime I felt sad -  I would dance. And when I got older, I went to discos a lot.” Oh, if only Sheila and I had been classmates, my life would have had a markedly different direction.

When Sheila told me that hightailing it to the nearest disco to dance her troubles away lifted her to a better realm of existence, I had the Ah-HA moment. Whether or not I seek a disco ball as remedy doesn’t matter. What does matter is what I choose to believe. Not new information, but the nature of personal epiphanies is, they manifest in their own mysterious timing.

Suddenly it was all laid out before me in stunning clarity: at a tender age, Sheila knew it would be a grave mistake to give someone as wretched as an abuser any kind of power to define her goodness. It makes about as much sense as giving a tone-deaf singer the lead in Rigoletto, or entrusting the keys to Tiffany’s to a kleptomaniac. Both will be mishandled, just as a mean-spirited person won’t give proper respect to the sanctity of my heart.

People in positions of power are heavily vetted for a reason…right? Why would I continue to give authority to that judgmental lot of humans known as bullies (a.k.a the walking wounded)? In the real world, they’d be fired for reprehensible behavior and escorted out of the building by security.

As a kid, I knew in my gut these miscreants were wrong, but lacked the self-worth to fully embrace it. Overall though, I did pretty well in digging out of the trench I was handed: the world at large who disapproved of my largeness and my parents who declared it my fault for offending the world by being fat - a toxic ping-pong volley if there ever was one. My epiphany took a little longer to solidify than Sheila’s, but better late than never.

So on the day when the giving of precious gifts such as gold and frankincense is celebrated, why don’t we celebrate another treasure: the recognition of our innate magnificence. Who gets to define us?  We do. The free ride’s over and this is the last stop on the A Train: the menaces are ordered to disembark….and just in time for the new year and Saturday’s Feast of the Epiphany. Square one can be a beautiful thing.