Can You Be True To Yourself?

Some days and weeks of therapy sessions seem to have a theme. This is one I often visit with my clients: Can you be true to yourself? Can you do what needs doing, even if others will be disappointed?

While growing up, girls are often socialized to put other’s needs ahead of their own. This behavior is rewarded for girls, while boys are more often socialized to go after what they want.

This leads to a discussion around a related concept. In “Untamed” by Glennon Doyle says, “Every time you’re given a chance between disappointing someone else and disappointing yourself, your duty is to disappoint someone else. Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint, as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.”

One day this concept suddenly reminded me of a song - no, I realized it was this poem. “The Invitation,” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. It had been a while since I read it, and I think it reflects some of the feelings of this pandemic time we are in right now, or maybe amid all the grief these emotions are closer to the surface. I have posted it below with a link to Oriah’s website. Let me know, can you disappoint another to be true to yourself? Do life’s challenges have you shrinking, or will you “stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back?”

The Invitation

by: Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know 
if you will risk 
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are 
squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you 
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know 
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone 
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

By Oriah “Mountain Dreamer” House from her book, THE INVITATION © 1999. Published by HarperONE, San Francisco. All rights reserved. Presented with permission of the author. www.oriah.org