WE ARE IMPRINTED by our childhood. It not only forms who we are, it informs who we are. There is no escaping our birth and ensuing nurturing. We are formed and then our families spend the next 18 years informing us as to how we should live. Every move we make, every decision flows from that original schema of concrete and supplied information.
Attempting to identify this data from our childhood can illuminate who you are as an adult. The treasured early child-self may look different from what you perceive yourself to be now. For good or bad, characteristics have developed and matured over time. Like an aging tree, you have grown tall, but you may also exhibit some burls. Here and there your grain grows in a deformed manner. There are missing branches and knots where there was once attachment. But the best news is that you have continued to develop.
For example, if you ask a young child if they are a singer, dancer, or artist, they will say “Yes!” Most hopeful parents see their children as a budding Beyonce, Martha Graham, or Frida Kahlo. However, as the young prodigy develops, others may imply their gifts are not so special. Over time, negative feedback leaves a mark and eventually the child, teen, adult decides they are not good at this occupation and quits. They may believe, and even say, “I can’t sing.” The performing arts branch of their tree has fallen off.
This illustrates one of a myriad ways growth in life can be stunted by trauma. The accumulated injuries and viruses of living can feel overwhelming in our adulthood. In response we burrow in and armor up, convinced the adult personality “deformities” we’ve accumulated over time are what we are stuck with.
In this manner we are similar to trees whose imperfections – due to weather, viruses, or abnormal cell development – are manifested by growths on their trunk, branches, and roots. In extreme conditions, subterranean burls can even form and grow new trees. If we extrapolate this stress response to human beings, it’s clear external forces have the potential to warp our growth as well.
As with trees, stress can cause humans “emotional burls,” which looks like a warped facsimile of what was once normal feeling or being. Our brains allow us to evaluate negative input. We are capable of misinterpretation, blame assignment, feeling pain, and becoming stuck in repetitive unhealthy thinking that may seduce us into believing this new malformed thing about us is real. Worse, we may now believe it is a part of who we are and then choose to keep and carry this baggage with us as we bump along the path of life. We become like the apostle Paul seeing (ourselves) through a glass darkly.
This new opinion of ourselves has exponential power. The next time we are confused or beaten down, we take this new normal and go through the process again – but from this altered starting point. We attach these bruises on our soul to all of our new experiences. What is real and true gets very distilled.
Trees don’t possess the power to rid themselves of scars, knots, and burls, but we do. Let us attempt to reclaim the purity of our youthful nature – peel off the bark, transplant the shoots, and sand down the burl. How else can we find the clarity of who we are now as a function of who we were at birth when we were all singers, dancers, and artists?
We need to tell ourselves a new story – tease out our youthful hopes and dreams before anyone tainted them. Try to remember how you were when you were little and perfect. Start there. Use the past as a tool to launch a new narrative of your life. Even out the knots and make something beautiful out of who we have become.
We hold an advantage over trees! We can write a new life story for ourselves today. We can write another one tomorrow. We can make every day a new day full of opportunity to be happy with who you are and the life you are living.