Being You

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be authentically YOU…authentically me…what that truth is…where it lies…and why.

My mother has always told me that I march to the beat of my own drum, and I always have. While I agree with her, and it’s one of the things I appreciate about myself for better or for worse, I think it is more of an interpretive dance than it is a march. And I just genuinely do not know any other way. I don’t know any other dance.

While I consider it both a blessing and a curse, I’ve had times where I’ve tuned into other people’s drums, and I let their beat drown out my own. The cost was high. It meant not keeping tempo with my own deeply-resonating drum beat. It meant my dance lost its originality. I was interpreting someone else’s music. And I know wholeheartedly that this is something some struggle with more than others.

I’ll drop the drum analogy for a moment to say exactly what I mean. I mean the time my hair was so platinum it was the color of my skin. The time I didn’t tell a story because I worried about how he would react. The moment I considered not chasing my dream role because it would mean disappointing someone I cared about. The time I made this blog live and almost froze in terror. In those moments I gave up my dance to the power of someone else’s drum.  I let them have the potential to squash what I knew to be my truth when all along the power was in mine.

No matter how strongly rooted you are in your own interpretive dance, I’m positive you’ve had those moments too. My hope is that they have been merely stanzas, instead of becoming your entire song. However, if you’re living an inauthentic life. Or having a day that just doesn’t resonate with your heart and you know it…get around people who are.

Something about watching people we love to dance their own dance and beat the shit out of their own drum…somewhere in that experience we feel the permission to do the same. And the beautiful part of their originality is that it exists within us, too.

Often, the best mirrors are those we deeply trust and love.  They are the ones who will help you dance your own dance. They’ll hear your drum louder, and more beautiful, than you do. The trick is to trust what they are listening to. Until you hear that for yourself.

This post is also from Maxie McCoy who write Ilo Inspired. Its a great post for people who being away from home are trying to figure out who they are and how to be who they are!