Embrace Yourself

Me in 1987

I remember it like it was yesterday.

I was 8 or 9 years old, at the Via Rail station in Smithers, B.C. I was about to embark on an unaccompanied train journey with my best friend (a boy) who I had been visiting after my family had moved to Terrace, about 200 kms away. We were at the ticket counter with my best friend's mom, who was purchasing our fares to take us back to my new hometown where my mom would meet us at the rail station there.

"Your two boys are riding the train alone today! So exciting!" said the ticket agent.

I remember the sting of those words in my ears and the stab in my heart. It wasn't the first time I had been mistaken for a boy, but this time, it really stuck.

I'm not sure why I was often mistaken for the opposite gender, whether it was because I carried myself more like a tomboy, playing in the mud and climbing trees, or what. But as a child, I started to develop the feeling that I simply wasn't girly. As I reached the teenage years, I thought maybe it was because my hair had always been short as a kid. I have very thick, wavy/curly hair that was very unruly and tangly as a child, so for simplicity's sake, it was always cut into the classic 1980's bowl chop (otherwise non-affectionately remembered as "the mushroom cut").

Though I grew my hair out as I entered my teenage years, the feeling of being "ugly" and "boyish" never left me. I recall pages and pages of diary entries about how ugly and awkward I was; how I was a late bloomer and how I was teased by other girls for not being as "womanly" as them. Around the age of 14, my mid-back length hair just became too painfully heavy and I again started going shorter just to relieve the weight off my head and neck. I eventually cut it very short.

And then, it happened again.

Our church was hosting a visiting ministry team, and we were having a reception for them in the church basement. I approached my dad (the pastor) in the kitchen to ask him a question, and one of the male visitors said to my dad, "Oh, this must be your son!" I was 15, and I was crushed. I remember running back to our house and sitting on the steps bawling my eyes out. A kind woman named Lori saw what had happened and followed me. She tried to console me saying how silly that man must have been and that I was a beautiful young woman, but I was inconsolable. From that moment on, I just decided in my own head that I was ugly and would never be considered beautiful or feminine, especially by men.

Though God brought some small measure of healing to those wounds through my twenties, I still inwardly struggled with my self-esteem as a woman; with knowing who I was and what gave me my identity. I kept my hair short for most of that time period, again, simply because having too much of it was uncomfortable for me. But that nagging, "you're unattractive, undesirable, and unfeminine, and nobody will want to marry you" tape kept playing over and over in my head. It was amplified by a spiritual tangent I was drawn into in my mid-twenties that was very patriarchal and Victorian in nature. In that ideology, femininity was crammed into a very narrow-minded box -- long hair, dresses, and "submission" to authority, and especially male authority (and not in a healthy, Biblically balanced way). This view of femininity was quiet, prim and proper, and not fun or spunky or independent as I often could be. Being as I was still single and in my late-twenties, and now struggling with the idea that I was unmarried because I simply wasn't feminine or desirable enough, I decided once again to grow my hair out, thinking it would fix things. This fallacy was given weight by well meaning friends that told me how glad they were that I was finally growing my hair long, because "long hair is so feminine."

So grow my hair long, I did; and get married, I did. I embraced my thick curly hair to the point that it very much became part of my identity as a woman, but also as an artist. I was "the minstrel" with the beautiful long wavy locks. It was my image. It was the security blanket I now hid under. But that blanket sometimes weighed me down, both physically and emotionally, and under that blanket I was still carrying the hurts from my childhood and adolescence with me --- now even into my thirties.

When my ten year marriage ended and I was left sitting in the rubble of shattered dreams and a broken heart, I had a lot of healing to go through. During the pandemic lockdowns, I had a lot of time to process the reasons I stayed in a very unhealthy and destructive situation for far too long (some of those reasons stemming back to a misinformed view of "submission" I had developed in my twenties, as earlier mentioned). I began to process the hurt and low self-esteem I brought into my marriage; hurt that was even more intensified by being devalued for over a decade. I began too look at all the lies I had believed about myself for a long time. Lies like:

• You always have to keep the peace and do what others feel is best for you

• What's most important is pleasing others

• Don't rock the boat

• Take what you can get, because you don't deserve anything better

• You're not good enough and you never will be

• Your wishes don't matter, your desires don't matter, your opinions don't matter, your dreams don't matter, your gut instinct doesn't matter

As I began to heal, I began to see myself for who I really was -- created in God's image -- a bearer of His light and a unique person that has worth independent of others' opinions, preferences, or desires. As the healing came, my heart felt lighter. I started to feel like I wanted to cut my hair again -- this time, for a symbolic change that would reflect inner transformation. But I was too scared. It sounds crazy, but now in my 40s, that old insecurity and fear from my childhood still wanted me to live in fear of others opinions, and to not be free.

I started this blog last year as a tribute to my sister, Caroline, who was a free spirit if I ever knew one. She was not ever afraid to do anything -- from travelling solo, to sleeping on the beach, to hunting in the bush, to chopping her hair or changing her style whenever she felt like it. Last week, I said to myself, "Caroline wasn't afraid, why are you?"

So, after three years of wanting to do it, I did it. I finally let go. I let go of the long hair that had been driving me crazy and taking up so much of my energy in a busy season. But more importantly, I let go of four decades of hearing other people's voices defining me and my beauty. I let go of the inability to decide for myself what feels like "me" in whatever season I find myself; be it singleness; motherhood; the sandwich generation; or whatever phase life takes me through. Though I could feel sheepish and say, "Why did it take me so long to get here," the truth is that there are women in their sixties and seventies who still haven't truly loved and accepted themselves for who they are. How incredibly sad.

I walked out of the salon last Friday and felt like a million pounds had been lifted off of my shoulders, both physically (you should have seen the pile of hair on the floor!), and metaphorically. The weight was gone. I felt more like "me" and more beautiful than I have in a long time.

Only the the Lord defines me. I am not "Melissa with the long curly hair who is a people pleaser and accommodating and.....(insert timid descriptors here)." I am free to be me -- and that includes the foundational things like making decisions that other people might not like; standing up for myself; saying no; and not allowing myself to be taken advantage of. But it also includes fun things like being a little kooky sometimes -- talking to the birds as I walk; doing a crazy, spunky little dance and making funny faces; or singing my daily dialogue with my kids in a spontaneous silly tune. And having short hair, if that's what I feel like. It's not about the hair really, it's about knowing I am me because of my heart and my soul, not my outward appearance.

The title of this blog post is "Embrace Yourself." There is a double fold meaning in this title. Firstly, I want to encourage you to embrace (hug) the inner child within you that has been wounded in whatever way that has held you back. Perhaps you grew up as a child of divorce and have lived under the blanket of "rejection." Maybe you struggled with a learning disability and have seen yourself as "stupid." Or, you grew up with a dark history of abuse of some kind and have been cloaked your entire life with a shroud of "shame." Whatever you have been through, embrace that part of yourself that was hurt -- and allow God to embrace you with His healing, too. And then, when He brings you that healing, embrace (celebrate) who you really are in Him -- uniquely made; beautiful; a bearer of His divine creativity and fingerprint.

With love,

Melissa

"I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

  your works are wonderful, I know that full well." Psalm 139:14

My new crop. At this season of life -- being a busy single mom -- it fits me perfectly. Maybe one day I'll grow it out again. When I do, it will be because I want to, not because I feel I need to to be beautiful, feminine, or worthy.