When Peace Requires Me to Call the Truth a Problem

As a child I can remember thinking when I grow up all I want is peace, everything was always so chaotic, our days were so full, it seemed like we never got to just be and that is all I wanted. That’s the funny thing about childhood we think we have it all figured out and how we will do it so different; but, that is rarely the case isn’t it?

There is a particular kind of loneliness that comes from realizing peace was never really peace.

It was only available to me if I softened the truth, lowered my voice, swallowed my hurt, and apologized for the way reality sounded when it finally came out loud.

I had to apologize for yelling the truth just to have a pleasant, laughter-filled evening. That sentence alone tells me more than I wanted to know.

Because real peace does not require self-betrayal. Real peace does not ask me to call the truth a problem just because it made somebody uncomfortable. Real peace does not depend on how small I am willing to make myself to keep everyone else at ease.

I did not understand that.

I called it love, maturity, and strength. I believed I was the peace.

I knew who I was, but that did not make me immune to caring what other people thought of me.

Over time, every swallowed truth, every softened edge, every apology for the way reality sounded when it came out of my mouth became its own kind of erosion.

Making everyone else feel better about the truth eventually taught me how to abandon myself.

That is the part I did not see clearly until much later.

Self-abandonment rarely arrives all at once. It comes slowly. Quietly. Ego death after e go death. It comes in the form of making yourself more digestible, more agreeable, less direct, less intense, less you.

And somewhere inside all of that, something beautiful started to transform.

Because the truth is, I had always lived at one extreme or the other. Too much or not enough. Too loud or too agreeable. Too honest or too polished. I could chameleon my way through almost any room, dressing imposter syndrome up like something charming, trying to become whoever the people around me seemed to need.

But that was never the whole truth of me.

That Northern fire, Southern grit, woman-of-integrity self I was raised to be may have spent years feeling like the moth to somebody else’s flame.

She was not.

She was the flame.

And it was time I let her show.

I am confident now in the gifts I have, and I no longer suppress them to make other people comfortable.

In my early to mid-twenties, I remember realizing that just because I could understand how someone got where they were, or why they turned left instead of right, did not mean I had to tolerate the harm they caused once they got there. Just because I could empathize with why someone thought mistreatment was normal or acceptable did not mean I had to make room for it in my own life.

That very hard lesson would not begin to be implemented until well into my thirties.

That was the disconnect in my brain for years.

I could understand almost anything, and because I could understand it, I kept letting it stay.

I kept translating disrespect into pain I could forgive.
I kept calling my empathy wisdom, even when it was costing me myself.

But peace that requires me to betray myself is not peace.

It is performance worthy of a county fair ribbon.
It is fear with better manners.
It is survival dressed up in faded blue jean and a t-shirt.

I am not interested in living there anymore.

I raised my boys and my bonus daughter on mantras, not rules. Some I was passing down and some I implemented on my own. Those that were being passed down were all the sudden coming through from a different point of perspective. So, it was time to stop preaching them and start living them.

First up:

“To thine own self be true.”

That sounds pretty stitched on a pillow or written on a wall, but living it is a whole different storm. Living it means telling the truth even when your voice shakes. Living it means disappointing people who only liked the version of you that stayed convenient. Living it means choosing integrity over image, even when it costs you the room, the building, and the only community you have ever known.

That is not easy work.

But it is holy work.

It is the kind of storm so chaotic you think it will dismantle your entire belief system and force you to start over from scratch. And for the stubborn ones, it often does. We keep recreating that storm wether concious or not until it has decimated the life we built, because so much of our lives were spent trying to avoid every possible negative outcome. Every hurricane has a beginning, a calm, and an end. And what comes after that kind of destruction is rebirth. Rebuilding. Community. Trust. And maybe the holiest part of all, a restored faith in yourself and in unconditional love.

And when I look at myself now, I do not see a woman who failed because she felt too much or loved too hard.

I see a woman who kept finding empathy when bitterness would have been easier. One who remained committed to the promises she made, fought for everything she wanted, and stayed true to herself when everybody around her had an opinion about what she should tolerate, what she should excuse, and when she should finally walk away.

I see a woman who was not free of her own actions, but one who still showed up when she wanted to run and kept loving anyway. A woman learning to show herself the same kindness, grace, and forgiveness she has always given so freely to others. A woman who did not run when real healing began, even when it came in like floodwater. A woman who was not perfect, but was real.

That matters to me now.

For too long, I only knew how to see myself through the eyes of people who had already decided I was too much, too emotional, too hard to hold, too inconvenient once truth started asking something of them.

I do not do that anymore.
I do not insult that woman anymore.

I see a woman who loves with integrity, shows up honestly, keeps her word, and stays soft when she was given every chance to harden.

And maybe that is the lesson.

Not that I should have loved less.

Not that I should have cared less.
Not that I should have silenced myself sooner.

The lesson is that peace built on self-abandonment is not peace at all.

“To thine own self be true.”
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3 (Polonius to Laertes)

Peanut