Sticks and stones
may break my bones,
but words will never hurt me.
Photo source: Eureka!
How many of us heard that little rhyme or even recited it ourselves when we were growing up? I know I recited it, even if it was to myself. But do you want to hear something that I’ve learned over the years about that little children’s rhyme?
It’s a lie.
This rhyme was usually chanted when someone said something negative about us. We wanted to show we were tough, that their words didn’t hurt, so we chanted it loud and clear.
Sticks and stones
may break my bones,
but words will never hurt me.
Words can hurt, and the wounds can go deep.
I used to joke that when I hit puberty, puberty hit back. I gained a bunch of weight. It didn’t help that I was from “the wrong side of the tracks,” the poor part of town, and that most of my gifted and talented classmates lived in the middle-class subdivisions in town. I had gone to the closest thing my hometown had to an inner-city elementary school, and while I ended up in the gifted and talented classes, most of my former classmates ended up in other classes. I felt isolated, and it didn’t help that I was shy and introverted.
Different.
My years in middle school were the worst of my life. I was bullied for being overweight. I was bullied for being lower class. I was bullied for being smart.
But that’s not where the hurtful words ended.
I decided in fifth grade that I wanted to play violin. My parents got me lessons that they really couldn’t afford, my grandmother bought me a violin that I have to this day. But the one thing I hated to do was practice.
I know my mother meant well, but she was the one who badgered me the most. I can’t tell you how many times I heard lectures on the parable of the talents. For those who aren’t familiar with this story, it’s one that Jesus told about a rich man who was leaving the country on business and entrusted three of his servants with a certain amount of money each while he was gone. The first servant was given five talents, the second two talents, and the third one talent. The first and the second servants each went out, invested the money, and doubled the amount their master had given them.
The third servant, on the other hand, buried the talent entrusted to him, because he knew the character of his master, who was a ruthless and shrewd man. When the master returned, he called the servants in for an accounting of what they did with the money. The first two servants showed their master that they had doubled the master’s money, for which they were praised and given more responsibility. The third reported that because he knew the character of the master, he had buried the money entrusted to him and returned it to the master just as it had been given to him. The master became angry and scolded the servant, telling him he could have at least left it with a moneylender where it would have gained some interest. He took the money away from the servant, gave it to the first servant, and threw the servant who had buried the money out into the street.
Guess who my mom compared me to because I didn’t practice?
Don’t get me wrong. My parents were loving and supportive, but this comparison hurt. This, along with the bullying at school, sent me one message loud and clear.
I wasn’t enough.
Not skinny enough, not cool enough, not rich enough, not dumb enough, not good enough.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that the words were sinking deep into my psyche, so deep that they altered me, altered the risk-taker I had been when I was very young. You see, my parents told me a story that when I was about two years old, they took me to a park to play. This park had age-appropriate playground equipment, but my little risk-taker self was drawn to the 12-foot slide. By the time my parents realized what I was doing, I was halfway up the ladder. Panicked, my mother followed me up the ladder but wasn’t quick enough to catch me before I threw myself down the slide. My dad, seeing my mom wasn’t going to be able to grab me, raced to the bottom of the slide to catch me. I threw myself down the slide and into my dad’s relieved, waiting arms.
Truthfully, I don’t remember doing this, but it was such a vivid memory for my parents that as I grew older, especially into my teen and young adult years, they audibly wondered where that little adventurer had gone. My answer at the time was, “I don’t know,” and it took me years to learn that the risk-taker had been buried under a lifetime of hurtful words.
I was buried beneath the lie that I wasn’t enough, and it has taken years for me to realize that it was a lie.
As a part of starting my new business, I took a workshop offered in one of the groups I joined on Facebook and won a drawing that included a free 30-minute session with the coach who had taught the workshop. We talked about what I was doing to get the word out about my business, and she asked why I wasn’t being consistent. I answered that it was my lack of self-discipline. We talked for a bit more about my desires for the business, what I was doing, then she said a couple of things I found incredibly profound. First, she told me that what she was hearing from me was that I was qualified to be doing what I wanted to do with the business. Then she told me that what I wasn’t lacking was self-discipline, but self-belief. I wasn’t the one who believed that I was qualified enough.
I believed the lie that I’d been telling myself for decades, that I was not enough. Here’s the thing – and this is a lesson it’s taken me this long to learn – the words we hear and tell ourselves become what we believe about ourselves. Those words don’t have to originate with us. They usually originate outside us, like they did with me. They come in two types: words of affirmation and words of defamation. We get to choose what we believe.
And I’ve been believing a lie.
I am enough.
This is the truth.
I am enough.
This is my new mantra, my new reworking of myself. It might take a while for it to sink in, since I’ve believed the opposite for so long. That’s why I’m going to take some of the final words of that coach during that coaching session to heart. She told me, “Borrow my belief in you until you believe in yourself.”
Thanks, Debra. I’m going to do just that.
I am enough.
Sticks and stones
may break my bones,
But I’m no longer going to let words hurt me.
I am enough.