It’s amazing how much time can be spent trying to figure out the root of personal evils when it’s often tagging along right behind you all the time. I recently spent a week with family, paying close attention to things I’ve uncovered that I want to change. Why I just stop talking when interrupted or challenged. Why I’ve always resisted standing up for my beliefs and opinions. I have a fairly new understanding of my strength, yet I’ve often used it only when the path was clear. An underlying feeling that no one will believe me or take my thoughts seriously. Why I’ve always stuck around, putting up with insensitive behavior.

With ponderings over the past few years, I seemed to have figured it out. But in the last week, I saw it unfold right in front of me. At least the part that still preys on me day to day. I learned that from the time I was small, I gave in to arguments because the only other option was to argue nonstop, as the other party insists they are always right. No matter the evidence to the contrary. And when the evidence presents itself, it’s hidden. I never had the opportunity to even learn that I was right.

As the youngest, my thoughts were giggled at, teased. How could her ideas be valid, she’s just the baby. Now I know they are. Even more than valid…insightful. I know when I’m right. And I recognize the evidence. Yet the struggle continues.

I also seem to be in direct line with my mother and grandmother. As the generations have passed, confidence has grown a bit stronger. I know that Gram wanted more. She worked at Princeton University Library as a single woman before she became a farmer’s wife and her life turned into plucking chickens and boiling water on the stove for the children’s baths. I don’t know the details of her longings, but she had the air of a stately and graceful woman. Not the type to haul and plant and gather eggs.

I believe Mom loved her life as a mother. She took pride in her home and had the support of Dad who would do all of the wallpapering and home decorating that she desired. We lived in nature where she watched her wildflowers grow and peeked at the groundhogs, deer, and periodic egret through the binoculars. But she also had a strong creative urge that was never satisfied. With the perfectionist strain that ran in the family, or perhaps was passed from parent to child through the generations, the creative endeavors she attempted were never good enough and she let them go. Although she always encouraged them in her children… every week-long beach vacation included paint-by-numbers, stained glass, or a homemade craft project like decorating Dad’s old tobacco tins with burlap contact paper and creatures made of small shells.

I’ve thought many times, maybe I can be the one to break some of these patterns. I know that chances are slim I’ll be able to change the innate characteristics of certain people, but maybe in changing myself I can show what’s possible. Especially to myself. Can I break out of the mindset that I need to follow rather than lead? Do things that fulfill me, rather than what I’m supposed to? Can I find a way to relate to people who will always be in my life so that I can still speak my mind without having to fight for the right?

Much of what holds me feels like a shell that needs to be busted…break it large, not a little at a time. I peck away at the smaller things, hoping eventually they will create a weakness in my shell that I can burst through.