At a recent event, a throwaway joke about me by a guy triggered a familiar, old sting of being made to feel like a ‘Too Much Woman’. I felt a mild flash of embarrassment, maybe even shame, blended with guilt and a vague feeling of ‘wrongness’… that me being me was somehow inconvenient and disturbing. A bit much… a bit too intense… a bit ‘full on’.
… Or was that actually just my curiosity, my passion, my desire for illumination?
The comment maybe said more about the discomfort of the person who made it, but my default response was a sense that I should ‘pipe down a bit’ and make myself smaller. That I should adapt to the needs of The Other. Keep things smooth.
Reality check & relief
An instant later, though, I remembered ‘The Too Much Woman’, this wonderful poem by Ev’Yan Whitney, and relaxed back into myself, my perfect self, just as I am.
READ IT HERE (…and fist pump your ‘hell-yeahs’).
Thankfully that’s what happens when you finally find people – including other ‘Too Much’ women (eh, that’s all of us, apparently?) – who are whole enough to let you be yourself, in all your richness and depth and breadth. Full-spectrum human.
When you’ve been on a journey of healing and growth, retrieving ALL of your lost parts, bringing them together in a glorious, whole, unique expression and embodiment of You.
You remember that it’s ok to be fully You.
That it’s vital, in fact.
You weren’t too much, actually…
Gratefully I am nowadays well-surrounded by people who are ‘able for me’, and who love me as I am. And, more importantly, I love all of me. Even the annoying ‘bad’ bits and the vulnerable bits. They are what make me a whole person. Which, as Brené Brown has pointed out, doesn’t always go down well in society. “I’m dangerous I love myself so much”, says she, on The Call To Courage on Netflix.
Yep, loving oneself is quite revolutionary. It gives you access to your full power, and makes you way less easily manipulated into buying crap and doing endless stuff in an attempt to fix what was never broken to begin with. You stop working your ass off to feel worthy. And you stop complying willy-nilly to the wishes of others, in order to feel temporary approval or belonging.
~ You belong, at home, in yourself. Your Whole Self.
~ You know, love and trust your true self, deeply and fiercely.
~ You stop feeling you are somehow the problem, and realise the truth that…
IT’S NOT YOU WHO WERE TOO MUCH: IT’S THEY WHO WERE NOT ABLE FOR YOUR WHOLENESS.
When you become whole
And after processing the grief of having believed that for all those years, and all the sorrow and suffering that caused, you regain your full power. You contact the righteous anger within, and find ways to express it – appropriate, and not so appropriate. ‘Too much’ anger, sometimes.
Ev’Yan Whitney’s words are healing and vital and, for many of us, such a giant fucking relief to read!!!
To all the women out there who recognise themselves in this very awesome poem, you are, quite clearly, not too much: it is they who are not yet able for your full splendour.
Your wholeness and fullness triggers the parts of others that were shamed or not celebrated, that are yearning to be seen and expressed. Their wounds and hurts and envy and frustrated desires have hardened into judgment, cynicism, doubt, and fragile conformity. They crave to be whole – we all do, but it takes courage to crack your heart open to all of yourself, and to be seen, in your wholeness.
Keep being A Lot
To all the women and men who have helped me love the disowned, ‘too much’ parts of me, melted my defences and welcomed me in my wholeness, celebrated my uniqueness, and given me permission to be more myself; I thank you from the depths of my soul for having done this for yourself first, and in doing so given me permission to be ‘A Lot’, too.
Find a tribe that celebrates your full, messy perfect glory, and please continue being A LOT! – A lot more truly you ✺
As each of us alchemises our rejected aspects to become more whole, we give each other permission to be Real. To recover our true nature and unique essence, in all its might and awesomeness.