Learning to Stay
I’ve spent years hiding behind pleasing, perfection, and fixing. This is what happens when I finally sit down, remove the mask, and meet myself in the dark.
There’s a part of me I’ve spent years running from. The part that feels too much, tries too hard, and hides behind pleasing. This letter is the beginning of calling her home, meeting her in the dark, and finally listening with love.
Dear Jennifer,
I see you. I feel you. And I’m sorry that I try so damn hard to avoid you. I don’t want to meet you in the dark. I don’t want to see you in the mirror. I run from you. I hide from you. I feel ugly inside you and don’t want to share all the things.
And yet, they eventually leak out. Especially when I get squeezed. When life squeezes me. Pressures me. It’s like a slowly erupting volcano. I am a slowly erupting volcano. Built up with years of feelings, hiding, loathing, pretending, molding, fixing.
I am scared. I am afraid to be me. I have to hide myself. I hide behind the pleaser, the doer, the fixer, the perfectionist, the hyperfunctioning, independent single mom. I let people see an edited version of me, but rarely the real me.
The real me is scary. The erupting volcano in me is terrifying, and when it leaks out, people run, as they should. I burn them with my sadness. I burn them with my martyrdom. I just want to be held, rescued, and taken care of.
I want to float in the warm ocean waves, far away from my storm. My internal storm. The hidden burning icky, sticky, ugly parts of me. And yet, they leak out, and people can see it, hear it, smell it.
And no one wants to be around it. Sometimes, someone sees my good parts, and so some stay. Some feel safe being close to me; they haven’t hurt me, so I can show my soft side. But most end up seeing the ugly, hot red lava of hurt, pain, and jealousy behind a thin veil I hope hides, but fear it does not. Does not hide the bubbling lava of pain and hurt.
I work so damn hard, yet I don’t yield nearly enough—enough of what I don’t know. But when I am brave enough to look, to look at all the pain and scary stuff, it’s not so frightening. I’m not so scary. I love. I feel deeply. I feel other people—maybe too much.
But I use that superpower of feeling, and instead of meeting the feeling, I respond and quickly adjust. I get scared, and I turn into the little mouse. The quiet, tiptoeing mouse that doesn’t disturb, that is quiet and offers to help even when she doesn’t have the strength to assist.
She shrinks herself not to disturb others. This comes from a deep fear of being hurt. Of making the scary man mad. Making him yell, throw, and hit, until the girl shrinks and scurries away out of harm’s way.
And even though she may no longer be in physical harm, this is the only way she knows how to be safe, to find safety quickly. It means to shrink, run, and hide. And so she does this in so many ways and so many instances.
She is ruled by fear. Fear of harm, fear of being thrown, fear of being hit, harmed, or yelled at. And when she has been shrinking and shrinking for years, she doesn’t know how not to. It’s learned and practiced and perfected—or at least she deceives herself into believing it.
But the problem is that the mouse is too small. It hurts to shrink; she is too big to fit inside the mouse, and yet she stays, because it’s too scary out there. She just wants to feel safe, warm, and held. But she doesn’t feel those things.
And so she stays. At least inside the mouse, she can’t be fully seen or touched, which keeps her “safe.” Or so she believes. But years of squeezing inside the mouse have left her tired, sore, and in pain. She longs to be free.
She longs to feel the warmth of the sun on her skin, the complete expansion of her lungs, the ability to stretch and feel and touch and taste and digest and take up all of the space she was and is meant to take up—her full human form.
She has had moments when she has let herself emerge and shed the mouse skin, yet she keeps it close, just in case, and often squeezes herself back in. Sometimes, she dresses up the mouse, adds a cute outfit, maybe some sunglasses and a purse, but nonetheless, she is still not herself.
She is still hiding in the mouse. And many times she thinks she is out and about in her proper form, but really she deludes herself. She’s delusional. She is never fully present. She is afraid of the present moment.
Because then she starts to feel all of the feelings, the eruptions, the lava. And it’s too big, too scary, and too ugly. She thinks her eruptions are ugly and destructive, and maybe they are. Still, deep down, she also knows that beautiful paradises eventually grow from the lava, that new land is formed, and that sanctuaries are built.
She longs to be in her body. Her own human female body. To sit in it, feel it. At first, it feels weird and wrong. It feels ugly and unknown. She judges it and wonders what this is. Why this? Why all this fuss?
What’s wrong with me? Why am I so scared of myself? She then thinks, “It has been a long time since you lived with the scary beasts.” There have been some minor beasts along the way, and each one of these scared the woman back into her mouse outfit.
Because she learned that the mouse equals safety. And safety is the goal at all costs, even if it means not allowing herself to be the magnificent human creature God made her to be.
So, how does the woman stop being the mouse? She looks at herself in the mirror, in the dark and in the light, and she says it’s okay. You are okay. You are safe. You don’t have to be a mouse. You can be a beautiful human woman. You can be you. It is safe to be in your body.
But the woman says, “I don’t know how.” I don’t know how to sit inside my own body and be safe. I only know how to squeeze myself into a little mouse, be quiet, helpful, small, and unassuming.
I have learned to survive all these years as a little mouse. I don’t know if I can be a human woman and sit and walk in my body. Feel myself. Let myself be me.
Do I even know who this human woman is? I know I’ve seen her and felt her from time to time. But I forgot. I forget. And the only way I know how to get back is to sit with her.
Sit with her on the floor, wait for her to emerge from her mouse outfit, discard it, and let her come lie in my lap. And hold her and tell her it’s okay. You are OK, you are safe. You are loved. And I am sorry for not staying with you.
I only know how to do this in meditation, slowly letting her see that I am safe. That she is safe. That we are safe. That we are the same. That she no longer needs to be the small mouse that turns into the scary erupting volcano.
If you’ve ever felt like you’ve been living as the mouse, know that you’re not alone. This space is for us to remember who we really are, to come home to ourselves, and to learn that safety can live inside us.
Author’s Note:
If this letter resonated with you, know that you’re not alone. So many of us have learned to shrink ourselves to feel safe, and yet, the real healing begins when we start to come home to who we truly are. This is the work I do as a coach, helping women slow down, reconnect with themselves, and rediscover their wholeness.
If you’d like to keep exploring this journey together, subscribe to this Substack and share it with someone who might need these words today.