I’m The Kind Of Girl Who Gets Stung By A Bee and Smiles So Others Don’t Feel Uncomfortable

Smiling & Angry Monster Pumpkins carved with my kids

I’m not a girl anymore, but I distinctly remember in 5th grade getting stung by a bee and some teacher’s aide saying, with wonder and admiration, “Even when you get stung by a bee you’re smiling.”

Years later an older man in my photography class remarked – “You seem so nice, it’s really surprising that you make art like this,” pointing to my dark photos of disturbed family triads.

I wish I could find those moments in my life and return as an adult narrator and say, “Listen lady, listen old man - I’m not smiling because I’m happy and I’m definitely not nice.  I’m someone who has been sculpted to be overly concerned about the way I’m making people feel and to put the way they are feeling over my experience.  And I didn’t become that way because its true to who I am, or because I wanted to.  I became that way so I could SURVIVE.

What have you done so you could survive your family and your life experience? 

How much of you is YOU you and how much of you is the YOU you were asked or told explicitly to be? 

To me these are two of the most essential questions of someone’s therapy and are often deeply linked to the pain that drives us to therapy in the first place.

What is VERY exciting about living in a world turned upside down by a pandemic is the liberation we are all feeling to cast off these lies, these ways we were told to be that aren’t authentic.  Because I can tell you the truth for me is that I don’t only want it to be about helping others, how others feel and what they need – I want it to be about ME! How I feel and what help I need! And the funny thing is that the more I act that way by sharing my feelings in my writing, the more people tell me how much it’s helping them.