Inhale, Exhale - WAKING UP - Summary of Carry On, Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life - Book Summary

Summary of Carry On, Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life - Book Summary (2016)

Part I. WAKING UP

Chapter 7. Inhale, Exhale

Reading is my inhale and writing is my exhale. If I am not reading and writing regularly, I begin to suffocate and tend to climb the nearest person like a frantic cat, clawing at the person’s eyeballs and perching on his head, desperate to find a breath of air. This is why my husband is supportive of my writing, because he is generally the nearest person. So Craig and I think it’s imperative for a girl to have a place to inhale and exhale. Some place safe to tell the truth.

We’re not often permitted to tell the truth in everyday life. There is a small set of words and reactions and pleasantries we are allowed to say, like, “I’m fine, and you?” But we are not supposed to say much of anything else, especially how we are really doing. We find out early that telling the whole truth makes people uncomfortable and is certainly not ladylike or likely to make us popular, so we learn to lie sweetly so that we can be loved. And when we figure out this system, we are split in two: the public self, who says the right things in order to belong, and the secret self, who thinks other things.

At one point I got so sick of listening to my self drone on to other women about little league and countertops and how fine I was, that I decided to kill my public self. The truth is that I am very rarely fine. I am usually so far behind fine that I couldn’t find fine with binoculars. Or so far past fine that I expect the birds to notice my superhuman joy and start speaking to me. Based on the successful Tess experiment, I told Craig I was going to start introducing my secret self to other moms at the playground and the mall. The introduction would sound something like this:

“Hi, I’m Glennon. I’m a recovering, well, everything, and most recently I’ve been struggling with isolation and intimacy with my husband and I’ve also been getting quite angry with my kids for no reason. I feel awful about these things. But yoga is helping. Also deep breaths and baths. How are you?”

If she answered honestly, great—new friend! And if she ran away, great too! At least we’d know right away that we didn’t match. I thought it was a brilliant, efficient plan.

But Sister said, “Please, honey, promise me you won’t do that. For the sake of your kids and the community.” She went on to explain that these types of things are not appropriate to share at the playground even if they’re true. Strangers trying to help their kids across the monkey bars don’t necessarily want to hear about my anxiety and ecstasy and confusion. She said that sometimes it’s right to filter what we are really thinking to protect ourselves and family from utter humiliation and just to keep society running smoothly. I asked her if “filter” meant “lie,” and she said yes, definitely.

Of course, Sister was right. I understand. But I still think it’s vital for a girl to share her truthful, secret self somewhere. In order to avoid going a little batty, she must have a place to say the things she is actually thinking when she is either saying appropriate things or saying nothing at all due to the filter/lying policy.

So it goes for a child, too, because the split between the secret self and the public self happens early and hard. Every little girl is told at some point that the world does not want to see the ugly, afraid, secret version of her. Sometimes the people who tell her this are advertisers, sometimes they’re people close to her, and sometimes they’re just her own demons.

And so she must be told by someone she trusts that this hiding is both necessary and unnecessary.

She must be taught that, in fact, some people will want and need to hear about her secret self as badly as they need to inhale. Because reading her truth will make them less afraid of their own secret selves. And she must be taught that telling her truth will make her less afraid too. Because maybe her secret self is actually her own personal prophet.

She also must be warned that her truth will undoubtedly make some people uneasy and angry, so she’ll need to share it strategically, perhaps through art, which God offers as a safe way to express joy and madness. And she’ll need a trusted person to help her find her medium, so she won’t feel that she has to hide or hold her breath any longer. Because when she exhales, she’ll discover that she’s created the space to inhale again, and that will keep her going.

And this, the importance of this lesson, is why I became a teacher.

Now I didn’t tell all of this to my students, because many were only three years old.

But sometimes, when I could see that one of my students was feeling really angry or left out, I would call her over to the writing table and write the words MAD or LEFT OUT in big red letters and read it to her with gusto. Sometimes I added lightning bolts and a frowny face. And occasionally her eyes would light up because she’d figured out that I have a mad, left-out secret self too—that it feels like lightning and frowns just like hers—and she would smile.

Usually, though, she’d look perplexed and start talking about how her dog peed on the family room carpet the night before. And I’d say, “Awesome. Wanna write about it?”