Good Things - Trust, Bravery, and Friendship

It's amazing how much space keeping secrets takes up.It's mysterious and kind of miraculous how letting go of hurt and anger, and being honest creates space for good.Writing the Gomeshied post two weeks ago forced me to confront a lot of issues I'd pushed down and avoided, and opened up my understanding of other hurts that I had compartmentalized and excused. By exposing and examining the feelings that one event pushed up, the weight I'd been carrying for so long needed to be offloaded. It's like bad Spiderman - the black eventually seeped into everything, and something needed to give.It was an emotional week for many reasons - we put our house up for sale, report card time has come, one check-up turned into a flurry of specialist appointments. (Everything is fine so far!) I fielded angry emails and texts about my posts. Two months of gossip was taking its toll on me.BUT.It's as though the moment I made the decision to stop caring about what people think, the rest of the weight I've been carrying eased. There is sadness now, but the stress and anger and disappointment I felt is so much less.A big part of that is how supportive my family - husband, kids, parents, sister, brother-in-law and brother have been. Being honest with them has opened doors that I'd closed - so that's one positive thing to come out of all of this.And now so many more good things are pouring in - a shortlisting for a writing contest, a new home, the opportunity to work on another musical, and I have the emotional space I need to write.Elizabeth Gilbert says in Big Magic that Creativity is always there, waiting for us. I have come to realize that positivity is always there, too. And yes, things have been difficult, but I had worried so much about being perfect - a perfect friend, mentor, what have you - that I'd lost sight of what actually makes me, me.Brene Brown talks about being enough. My vice-principal addressed the same thing in a meeting the other day. People who know me, know I am good and kind, and good and kind enough. Gossip is meaningless, no matter who is spreading it.Brene Brown also has a way of defining trust in friendship that I like. Her acronym BRAVING, pictured above, was an eye-opener for me in many ways. At the time, I used it as a measurement tool for the friendship that was causing me so much grief, but over the past few months, I've used it to test my self-trust, my friendship with me, and that's what has made me grab onto the broken bootstraps of my self-respect and stand up for myself.I have such a fantastic and demanding support system. Friends far and wide have been so patient and ass-kicking and annoyed and wonderful while I've worked through this failure - and boy, have I failed. I failed spectacularly. I thought I could make a difference, and I was wrong. I did my best to make things right, and I couldn't.I stopped trusting myself, and starting trusting what others thought. I don't need to worry about that anymore. I've got this.I leave you with two brief poems by https://twitter.com/nayyirahwaheed These are from her book, Salt, and posted to her Twitter.