Work

and identity

I have always had a tendency to run myself ragged. I can fill up time off with a whole lot of time on, to the point of frustration — hobbies become obsessions, fun exercises become chores. It must have something to do with being self-employed for most of my life. When you’re a working artist, you have to not only wake up everyday and make it up, you have to figure out a way to turn what you make up into a way to support yourself. Art doesn’t have to earn money to be valid. That’s not it. But if you spend your time making art, then you’re going to need to figure out a way… you understand.

I’ve also spent my life trying to prove my worth and earn love through whatever means I could do it. Somewhere along the way, I got the message that who I was without performing or behaving inauthentically wasn’t enough. And that may have to do with actual performing too, as in doing things in front of a crowd — I’ve recently realized that it was never my idea to sing in public when I was a child. I was always told to do it and often had to be coerced, guilted, or shamed into it. Of course, I chimed in joyously with harmony parts as soon as I could talk, but there’s a difference between being an artist and being a performer. One does not equal the other and just because I could sing didn’t mean I was also meant to be on stage. I think I was born an artist. But I was also shy, an observer with darting eyes, an early to bed/early to rise type, while the rest of my family seemed to prefer later hours. The rest of my family preferred to play music anywhere and everywhere. The rest of my family told me what, when, where, and how to sing. My identity became something that didn’t have much to do with who I really was. And so much time was spent living up to that forced identity: the performer, the responsible one, the one no one had to worry about, that that’s who I became, or what I tried to live, albeit uncomfortably.

It has only been in the past year that I’ve begun to remember some things about what I felt like when I was a small child. And it was a tremendously healing reiki session that started me on the path. Someday I’ll write about the experience in sentences lyrical enough to do it justice, but that won’t come until I’ve integrated it fully and I’m not there yet. I will just tell you now that to encounter a clear-eyed, innocent, and open version of myself was like going home to a place I didn’t know existed. I will also say that it bolstered my belief that our answers lie within us. I’ve been blessed to have had two more deeply cosmic encounters since then, which have only strengthened the sense that I am being specifically guided on this journey of healing. I know it will have many phases, but it starts with addressing the abandonment wound that came with those original feelings of rejection of who I came here to be.

It happens to most of us. Families are funny. They spend so much time drawing connections — so and so favors so and so, oh you’re the funny one, you’re the black sheep, you’re the good-looking one — maybe we’re just trying to organize chaos. And according to my therapist, that’s my best thing! She told me I’ve spent most of my life just trying to clean up the mess.

Damn.

Some of what I’ve tried to fix wasn’t my mess. I’m learning how to take responsibility for the part that is, which is sobering, and also know that that is the only part I’m responsible for, but learning how to let things be instead of always trying to clean it all up, including myself, is the really

hard part. So these days, instead of always trying to prove my worth, I’m questioning myself every time I have the impulse to work. I have to watch myself in this space too — even though I know I can’t keep what I find on this path unless I offer it to you, the joy is extinguished the moment it becomes heavy with my own expectation. I fall into perfectionism and workaholism so easily and when I do, I become unreachable to those who love me. I have been there and don’t want to go back again.

I clearly see that the pursuit of spiritual abundance also requires the pursuit of play and rest. Seems like I can go at anything like an addict except for play and rest! I get excited about things! I want to play music and make recordings, I want to paint watercolor after watercolor, I want to go on trips and long walks with John Henry, I want to research every obscure communication method he might have success with, make our every day together one to remember, I want to cook delicious meals, I want to read all the books, I want to have conversations, I want to write, host parties, go on trips, have time with my sister, time with my husband, time with my friends, with my family. There just isn’t enough time to do all of that, but I catch myself trying to juggle, then balls inevitably fall to the floor. I judge myself so harshly for failing at being something no person could ever succeed at being, which is flawless. Enter self-loathing. Then I become rigid, judgmental, and isolated like the little red hen. And then it all goes to shit in a sack because I forgot I was supposed to be giving myself love, allowing myself to be human, and lo and behold, having fun doing this loving and loving thing. Richard Rohr says the path of descent is the path of transformation. Struggle, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines.

So I have to remember to be myself, to keep looking for and reminding myself who that is. I have to remember that I am responsible for myself and my happiness and contentment. That all requires that I work daily at knowing that I, just as I am, am enough and am allowed to just be, and am even allowed to be still. I don’t have to always be planning my next move or figuring out my next project, I can just breathe, and breaths only come one at the time. This morning, I had to remind myself that I can’t go ahead and breathe the breaths I’ve got to breathe five or ten years from now today, and it made so much simple sense. Even though that sentence might not.

Right now, I can breathe in love, and breathe out love.

Right now, I can breathe in acceptance, and breathe out acceptance.

Right now, I can breathe in forgiveness and breathe out forgiveness.

Right now, I can breathe in healing and breathe out healing.

Right now, I can breathe in peace, and breathe out peace.

And right now, everything is okay.

Learning, remembering, and LIVING all of that is the hardest work I’ve ever done. I will fail at all of it again today. I will keep trying and praying for grace.

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Thanks for encouraging this work. It means the world to me that y’all read what I write and that we’re here and going through this experience of being human together.

Lots of peace and love to y’all.

Allison

PS. I will have more to say about the performing thing.

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in Rome last May. Lucky traveler.

“We can be present in anything that arises, without exception and with kindness. Anybody can do that as a practice.”

—Bruce Tift

But we must remember it is a practice, not a perfect.

. —Allison Moorer