Avoiding the Shadows, Our Own and Others

Like Sally, I loved w abandon n adoration. But like this Sally👇🏼 I only loved t Linus tht I approved of. He is so much more. I must learn t love him just as he is, try t accept he IS learning,tht change is hard n to figure out how to trust him w my whole heart again💔 #sweetbaboo pic.twitter.com/aR3ZTSXeMh

— lovely little red poet (@lovelylittlere1) September 12, 2019

I was in my therapist's office, citing a laundry list of the ways in which my eldest daughter was making me crazy. Exasperated, I concluded with, "this isn't who she is. I'm not sure what happened to her but this isn't her."

To which my therapist, mother of two formerly teenage girls, responded, with a wry smile, "But it is."

Gulp. 
Of course it is. My daughter is not just made up of parts I like or approve of. She is a whole person who will not always behave or believe or respond in ways that suit me. 

I should have known this, of course. My husband, the one whose fidelity to me I would have staked my life on, had already blown open the myth that people are entirely made up of parts we see. Parts we like. Parts we approve.

And it's not just others. I have parts of myself I keep hidden. Since I was a pre-teen, just learning that "pretty" was currency, I've assessed every situation in terms of where I fit in on the "pretty" scale. I loathe that in myself. What self-respecting feminist does this? Uh...this one. 

But it's only by being conscious of that in myself that has allowed me to challenge it. It is only pulling these shameful parts of myself from the shadows that has provided me the opportunity to acknowledge how shallow it is. What a ridiculous metric it is. And that, ultimately, it reflects neither my worth nor anyone else's.
Being conscious. How many of us are? How many more of us are oblivious to the ways in which we point at others and sneer for exactly the characteristics or behaviour we loathe in ourselves? 
I have a friend, a 12-stepper, who does this exercise whenever she finds herself obsessing about someone for a transgression or a personality trait she hates. She writes the person's name at the top of page of a sheet of paper. Then she lists everything about that person that she hates. Every. Single. Thing. It's soooooo satisfying, right? All the ways in which this person deserves scorn. 
And then...
And then she crosses out that person's name and replaces it with her own. And lo and behold, so many – sometimes all! – of those same traits are exactly what she doesn't want to see in herself.
Gulp again.
"Cad" is a Twitter friend of mine, a repentant cheater whose dedication to excavating his sins is admirable, though I worry his self-loathing is becoming a lifestyle. 
A recent post on his site speaks to what "Poet", another Twitter friend whose tweet is posted above refers to. This desire to avoid others' shadows, which, of course, is really about avoiding our own. We wouldn't be so frightened of others' darkness if it didn't remind us of our own.
Which reminds me of another thing I've noticed recently, when I consider my approach to healing from infidelity alongside the "once a cheater, always a cheater" camp's. What I've noticed is that those of us who can't find compassion for others might want to start with ourselves. Only when we can truly let ourselves off the hook for being duped, for being trusting, for being loyal, for being played, for being...human, can we learn to truly extend that same compassion to others, no matter what they've done. You are not required to feel compassion for someone who's betrayed you. And it's certainly normal to feel rage and disgust and vengeance and deep hurt. 
But, though it might seem counter-intuitive, being able to extend compassion for others' dark sides, for those parts of themselves they kept hidden out of shame or fear or lack of awareness, releases the shackles we wear. It frees us to love the flawed person seeking to be better, or to wish them well while choosing to not have them in our lives. Either way, we're liberated.
It took me  a lot of years to acknowledge and accept those parts of myself I'd relegated to the shadows. Even now, there are things that pop up – a bias I have, or an ill-considered opinion – that makes me cringe. And surely there will be more. But what freedom it is to notice those things about myself, to challenge myself on them, and to still know that I'm worthy of being loved, of being in this world. So is my daughter, whether or not I agree with or approve of things she does. And so is everyone else.