shine

Recently, I met a girl whom I found arresting. I’ll call her Estelle. Late 20s, maybe early 30s—tall, lovely figure, beautiful hair, beautiful face; just a truly gorgeous girl. Outgoing. Vivacious. Bright. The type of girl you look at and think, she might be in a small town now, but she is going places.

Estelle was with her boyfriend, who in comparison was stunningly bland. Doubtless he’s a perfectly nice boy, but let’s just say he’s a Ford Fiesta, and this girl is a Porsche all the way. 

And I wanted to tell her. I wanted to take her hands and say, Estelle, honey, you are playing so small. Waiting tables at a tiny diner in a tiny town, weighing yourself down with this bozo, are you kidding me? You have the X factor, child. You have a brightness, an energetic resonance, about you. It’s time to see yourself the way the rest of the world sees you; it’s time to get out there and shine. 

Of course my reaction to poor Estelle (who’s just minding her own business and living her own life and is probably quite happy with Fiestaboy) isn’t really about her, it’s about me. Only recently has it clicked with me that in some ways I’m still walking through the world trailing this cloud of unbelongingness that doesn’t reflect how others see me, only how I see myself—the me from my little-girl-hood, each day leaving the religious compound and venturing into the big bad world of the local elementary school. In my culottes. My yard sale clothes. My long hair captured in two braids. It was the 80s; other girls had short perms, and shoulder pads, and stonewash jeans. And me, the backward religious, so socially disastrous as to be—ironically—unredeemable. 

I haven’t been aware of myself still carrying this around. It hasn’t haunted me. But recently, it came back to me after I traveled to Washington DC to attend a conference and do some advocacy on Capitol Hill. I was shocked to discover how comfortable and capable I felt—I was dressed appropriately; I spoke articulately; I have a story to tell, and a conviction that damn right the power-brokers of our capitol ought to listen as I tell it. I flew home with this stunned realization, that I could be playing a much bigger game—that I have kept myself small, hidden, and why? Because I am still relating to myself as that little girl in culottes, hopelessly dorky, a perpetual misfit, shrinking from the expectation of belittlement everywhere I turn.

It makes me think of Marianne Williamson’s famous reading—“we are all meant to shine, as children do.” Even children in culottes and yard sale clothes. Even the inner child, that old version of myself shut away inside, who requires my constant vigilance or she’ll still call the shots: “you’re dorky and different, you don’t fit in, keep a low profile and maybe no one will notice you don’t belong here.” She gets to shine too! She gets to open her eyes and say, “oh, right, things are different now. I’m an adult. I have skills. I’m not a kid wearing skirts over my snowpants anymore. I can show up as my brightest, fullest self. It’s safe to be seen.” 

It’s not my job to change Estelle—she has her own path to self-actualization, and she’ll find her way, just as I’ve found mine. My job is to recognize that I’m no longer the girl on the playground meekly explaining pants are against my religion. My job is to look at myself the way I looked at Estelle, to see my own brilliance and capacity, to stop playing small, stop worrying what other people think of me, and step into the biggest role I can fathom for myself. 
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My job is actually very simple: to shine.  ​