whispered wind and cracked cement

Keep it soft.

Keep it digestible.

Stay grateful.

Stay sweet.

Those make you good.

But what is the truth isn’t soft?

What if your experiences are hard for others to digest when they don’t know how to put them in their frame of reference?

What if you can be grateful and still share the hard?

What is being real and authentic is what makes you good.  Or however you want to define that word.

I think being real and authentic is much more valuable than keeping things “palatable” for others.

I don’t mean that anyone ought to use that as an excuse for being demeaning or speaking unjustly. 

But sometimes the focus is so much on how you sound that people don’t listen to what you’re saying.

Dispel the lie that people – and especially women and children – must sound good, soft, sweet, happy, and “in line” with how people want them to behave before they are listened to.

It’s exhausting.

You first have a hard experience, gut-wrenching, but then you have to sound kind, gentle, and positive to be taken seriously.

It’s disgusting.  Heartbreaking.  Unbelievable.  And all to real.

You are allowed to speak when you don’t have all the words yet.  When you haven’t processed all your emotions.  When you don’t feel perfectly calm or kind or when you’re naming unfair things that happened to you.

And if others can’t tolerate what you have to offer, that’s not your problem.

You are allowed to feel.  To hurt.  To speak.  And to express it.

You’re not weird if you aren’t in a mood to speak gently when you’re still hurting from the pain that you didn’t deserve.

Someone telling you to heal before you yell for help after you’ve been stabbed is ridiculous.   But sometimes people don’t want to hear the uncomfortable.  They want you to frame your experiences in a way that they can feel okay with.

That’s all it is.

Speak in a way that makes them feel good, comfortable, that they don’t need to hear what is really the matter.  And someone who they like?  Is someone who speaks sweet.  Innocent.  Nicely.

But that is experiencing life the way they want you to.  That is often a way they keep silent, in-line, or accepting abuse.

There is always a time and place to speak kindly and softly.

And there is a time to speak your experiences whatever they are – without being told you are telling your story the wrong way.