What Makes Us Human
‘‘Our flaws are what makes us human, if we can accept them as part of who we are, they really don’t even have to be an issue.’’
- Ellen DeGeneres
The past couple of months has been a rollercoaster of the good, the hard and the emotive. It has been myself navigating a new relationship (the good) and also fully stepping into the space of living with intention, navigating change and revisiting painful points in my grief journey. It has not always been graceful, tidy or smooth and upon reflection has got me pondering - What exactly makes us human?
In 10 years of being a defence partner and carer I learnt the art of looking neat, like I had ALL of my ducks and that of my late husbands in a row, that things were fine, juggling all of the missiles we were dealing with on a day to day basis and still smiling outwardly whilst crumbling inside. I never felt so disconnected, alone and sad in my life. Trying to maintain societal expectations, trying to ‘fit’ in with normality when our reality was anything but and protecting the man I loved.
The past 3 years of healing and living with grief has been a welcome reprieve of messiness, freedom and a full body sigh as if I FINALLY had a good enough reason to be anything less than perfect. Why do feel we need to have something so traumatic and soul stretching to occur in order to show our humanity in its entirety?
I’ve realised that what makes us human is exactly that - the messiness, the chaotic times, our mistakes, us colouring outside of the lines, the answering of the door in slippers with not one inch of makeup in sight. The ability to show our struggles, our joys, our pain, to be vulnerable in showing up ‘less’ than what others expect because it makes them (not us) uncomfortable when all we want is to be seen, accepted, supported & loved.
Maybe if I had felt I could have shown everyone that my ducks were hanging off the fast moving clothes line completely losing their shit I would have felt less alone. There is some epic power in being able to show up authentically and to be accepted without judgement in any moment. To be allowed to be human. To allow YOURSELF to be human. And to surround yourself with a community and relationships who support that and will ride that rollercoaster with you.
As Ram Dass so eloquently put it:
‘‘We are all just walking each other home.’’
I am grateful in my community i hold dear that have loved me in amongst all of the mess and never told me I had to be anything different. That i was justified in showing up as much I was able to and that was ok. Everybody should feel so free to be human.
The past few months have been a blessing in finding someone who embraces me in my entirety, for allowing myself to trust my choices and voice again even if its not perfect and for holding space for others to be met where they are at. To live in this beautiful experience of being what makes us human. Now thats pretty epic x