I’d just recorded a video about how not everyone will like our books and we can’t possibly please everyone—and I got a trade review that rubbed all my insecure places.
The reviewer clearly didn’t “get” the book and missed the whole point of it. She focused on strange pieces and made her assessment with what felt like only half the picture.
It threw me into a tailspin.
Have you ever noticed that when you think you’ve mastered some way of being human—when you think maybe you’ve wrestled with it enough to make some statement about it or even teach someone about it, the universe endeavors to prove you haven’t quite learned what you needed to learn? (My children show me this frequently.)
I’d just recorded a video about this. It’s like the universe said, “Okay. Challenge accepted.”
It took me a few days to get over this review. I kept hearing the reviewer’s words in my head when I sat down to write. Even though I knew they weren’t true. Even though I know that what other people think is not my business.
And then I read these words of Rose Marie Toussaint’s: “When we are rejected in the world we will recover only as we begin to realize that we must hold on to who we are and not be defeated by outside evaluations.”
You may not know who Rose Marie Toussaint is. She’s a physician who was the chief surgeon for the liver transplant center at Howard University Hospital. She was born in Haiti and came to the U.S. with her family when she was a teenager. She was a woman, born in 1956, who loved math and science and medicine at a time when women weren’t supposed to love math and science and medicine.
How much opposition and rejection do you imagine she faced as a Black woman in medicine during the 1970s and 1980s?
She meant those words she said, and she lived them.
Reading her words reminded me that I’ve been here before. I know who I am.
Sometimes we forget our song. We let those negative winds push us around and tell us a story that’s not true. We let them say, You don’t deserve happiness, this dream was too big, you are not good enough or worthy enough for any of it.
I get caught in that headspace sometimes. Many of us do.
The glib words of others can bring us low. They can make us forget our song, shake up the core of who we are. Holding on to who we are is not always easy.
But we must. We must hold on to who we are with aching, cramping fingers when we are rejected by the world.
We have multiple opportunities for those outside evaluations to come crashing in. I feel them in my mothering, my partnering, my writing, my publishing, my volunteering or not volunteering…on and on it goes.
The question is, will we hold on to who we are? Or will we be shaken by outside opinions and evaluations?
I hope we always stand strong.
Have a marvelous month of defeating those outside opinions. I’ll be fighting them right alongside you.
Here are some of my tricks for remembering who I am:
1. Take some time.
It’s okay to feel what you feel. These are words I’ve told my children over and over again. Our feelings are valid.
But.
But we don’t want to stay in the negative feelings for too long.
Sometimes outside opinions and evaluations hurt. Wherever and whomever they come from. They all have the same kind of sting.
It can be helpful to take some time away and reconnect with who you know you are. Let those outside evaluations run their course, and hold tight to what you know is true: You are magnificent just the way you are.
2. Lean on people.
The people who love you can remind you who you are and that you’re magnificent. Don’t push them away. Open up and talk. Let them love you.
My freshman year of high school, I was completely in love with my boyfriend, who was a junior—and absolutely gorgeous. We dated for about three months before he broke up with me. I was devastated with a capital D. I thought I would never make it through that breakup.
A good friend of mine made me a mix CD full of empowering songs that reminded me who I was and that I didn’t need a stupid boy who clearly didn’t know what he had when he had it. I listened to that tape over and over and over. She was my people. She reminded me I was amazing. (Also: there’s a young adult story in this. I’m working on putting it down on paper!)
3. Evaluate
I’m a big fan of evaluating. Everything can benefit from evaluations.
Ask questions like, Why does this bother me so much? The truth? It probably speaks to a pesky insecurity. Which means this is a growth opportunity.
And remember—the pain of this evaluation/disappointment/anger-inducing circumstance won’t last forever.
Onward!
