The Non-Ordinary – Part XI: Connecting With Our Interior Selves – Influencers

Recognizing Influencers

There is a community of influencers that surround us throughout our lives. We most often think of influencers as people, family when we are very young and a growing circle of other people as we mature. Yet influencers can also be nonhuman, a dog or another pet or really any animal that becomes a part of our lives in some way. Influencers can be places, or even watermark events. Whatever form they take, it is not uncommon for us to internalize those influences. And then they somehow become a part of our very nature.

We’ve heard about the proverbial “tape recording” playing in the subconscious, maybe a mother’s critical voice repeating a mantra about our failures or her disappointment in us.

My father once said that he would “dance on my grave.” That’s a mantra that took years to identify and finally come to terms with. But there have been other voices, other influences. My grandfather called me Brownie because he enjoyed my dark brown eyes. He made me a stick pony and watched me ride it around in circles in his huge backyard. He laughed with delight in his eyes.

There was also a tree in my grandfather’s back yard. When I was a young girl, it was just small enough for me to climb, just tall enough for me to be rather hidden and to gain a bigger perspective than was possible from the ground. That tree is still with me, that place of solitude and perspective still guides me.

Mrs. Weems, my seventh grade English teacher lived with her heart on her sleeve. That’s the way she taught story, to read it and write it – with heart. The day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, her heart spilled out in the tears that flowed from behind shaded glasses. All through the class period she wept. Mrs. Weems is still with me, reminding me that story is about being genuine, about allowing yourself to be real and that story comes from the heart.

My Aunt Ethel, who would have been about one-hundred-and-ten years old by now, still hounds me about how to fold sheets and how to iron and how to finish a line of stitching. Hawaii where I wrote my first and only completed manuscript keeps calling me back to its wild, stormy coastline. Other influencers try to cause shame, some cause grief, others joy. It’s good to identify these influencers that we carry around inside of ourselves. It’s good to bring them to the light. The things that stay hidden can sometimes cause mischief.

If influencers are allowed to have a “voice,” if they’re allowed to be heard, seriously heard, then we can have a dialogue, then we might be able to make sense of the competing messages at odds in our interior landscape. We might be able to bring a balanced sense of who we are if we bring it all into the light.

To my father’s hateful diatribe I might be able to say, “Yes, it’s definitely true that there was no love lost between us as I was growing up. But I’ve come to recognize that you are just a person, not a god. You were a little boy once, a little boy who went to war and came home looking more like a monster than a person. The “you” who was damaged came home filled with anger, that anger turned into hatred and then it spilled out like a poison. That poison has no authority in my world. Because my world was also shaped by a grandfather that adored me, a tree that instructed me, a teacher that redeemed me and many other places, people and actors that tell me that I belong and that I have value.”

How will you engage with the Influencers that live in your hidden places?

Writing Prompt for the Week: An Honest Look Inside