A parable...

Once there was a young man who grew up in a smallish town. He was gentle, and creative, and imaginative, and felt out of place most of the time. He was an only child. He was not your typical boy. He didn't like sports. Most other boys made him feel self-conscious and uncomfortable. Not only because they were aggressive and a lot of times cruel, but also because they represented many things the young boy knew deep down he would never be. He was not aggressive. He was not a fighter. He just didn't know how to stand up for himself. He looked in the mirror and and all he saw was weakness and skinny, lanky arms and legs.

He would grow into a teenager and all of these issues and aspects of his life seemed to amplify up. He began to surround himself with like minded friends who just kept the mentality of "It just doesn't matter...you are YOU and I like you." and for them he was super grateful and began to grow more into himself. But being surrounded by those boys who were hyper-masculine, into sports, into girls, into sex and the bragging rights, into school and would mock the boy for being "artistic", being emotional, being sensitive was debilitating. They were just unkind. The young man was self-conscious and easily hurt.

There were times when he sensed that his parents just didn't know what to do about him. They would have discussions blaming each other about who's responsibility it was to teach their son how to MAN-UP and not be so sensitive. The father detached and continued to separate himself and be more involved in other activities...perhaps out of fear or just not knowing what to do about it...or even out of disagreement and wanting his son to grow into his own. It was never clear.

The summer between his sophomore and junior year, his parents decide that they can no longer be together. Blaming, trying to do the best for not only themselves, but also for their son. Mother felt unheard for such a long time. Father has been absent and off doing other activities...all under the premise of "for the good of the family" yet it still was being absent from the daily happenings of the family. Emotionally he has been gone for a long time. Mom needs emotional support elsewhere. She finds that support elsewhere. They decide to divorce and give their son the option of selecting who he wants to live with. The painful answer is clear to him. His father has always been the enforcer and not connected fully to his son. The mother has been the nurturer, the emotional connection her son needs. He decides to go and live with his mother and father is devastated, depressed, and unsure of what is next. His paternal grandparents are less than kind.

The child continues to grow in uncertainty and invests himself in the arts. Puberty throws so many issues into the mix. He tries to navigate through the cards he has been dealt with the only way he knows how. He surrounds himself with his circle of friends, who gratefully became his support system and his education and his opening to be a part of something. He learns the idea "Fake it to Make it." There are times when he feels inadequate around other guys in school. But you throw hormones in there and all of a sudden, the guys involved in sports are cocky, self assured, muscular, sweaty, and heroes and he begins to realize that they are beautiful and that he is attracted to them, but he can NEVER admit that because that means admitting other MAJOR issues. So he pushes all of this down and aside and tries to be successful in school. He wanted to get out of the state and get away. Just plain away.

He continues to grow. He adopts a mentality of work hard. Be Successful. Do whatever you can to follow your dreams. Build that resume and justify your potential. Live life to the fullest and achieve your goals. And he appears successful to those around him...but in the depths...he still feels inadequate. He is afraid of conflict. He cries alot. He remains sensitive and allows others to walk over him. He allows others to have power over his thoughts. He gets depressed. He is self-conscious and awkward and gawky and yet he comes to real life realizations about who he is at his core and he begins to explore this all, figuring out that for most of his childhood, the signs were always there. He has and always was attracted to men, not women. And he tried to deny this for so many years, yet the signs were all there.

So he comes out.

And then all the other stuff is pushed aside, but don't go away, and he deals with the present issues.

He continued to cry many times. He remained ultra sensitive and quickly began to realize that he is much more what society defines as feminine rather than masculine. And he filed that away. He unfairly superimposes the ideas of weakness, emotional, less than, tears and not being in total control as feminine aspects of his personality. And he realizes that it is unfair to do that...but yet that is where society has pushed him and others thought processes.

Jump ahead to now. He is dealing with all of the issues. He has lost the support line of his mother, for she has passed. He holds tightly to how much she grew into her own strength, who redefined for him the idea of inner strength, inner beauty, and that NO ONE has a right to treat others as less than and get away with it, and she had to learn the hard way through life's detours.  He is grateful for the growth and support of his relationship with his father, but it is just plain different than the connection he had with his mother. He has grown into a fairly successful young man, in society's perception, but still deep down feels inadequate and still feels weak.

He has met an amazing man in his life who teaches, actually pushes, him towards therapy and dealing with all he pushed aside and down deep. He has sadly become set in his ways and needs those sometimes not-so-gentle pushes to step outside of his comfort zone. He struggles to navigate through grief, depression, anxiety, and life. But he meets some terrific therapists who help him immensely and for them he will be eternally grateful.

He hears words like: Grace. Kindness. Loving yourself. Grow.
He hears them but can he implement them.

He hears an amazing podcast...the Good Life Project... and he grows to love it more and more. It is informative and personal for him so many times. It continues to ring lots of bells and whistles for him. He hears a podcast entitled "Loving Yourself" and the bells begin to ring in his ears so loudly that he can't turn it off and feels the need to get these words documented as quickly as possible.

The man being interviewed stated, " Coming out of the darkness of the suffering of life and learning to love yourself is the most important thing you might have never learned in life. Because if you cannot love yourself, how are you going to allow others to love you. You have to make yourself a pact...you have to look yourself in the mirror and make an agreement with who you see there that you are going to love yourself. You are going to grow in love and grow to love even the flaws you have always seen. You have to learn to appreciate the entire package or vow to work on those flaws and make them better. And this work, of learning to love yourself, has to begin from the inside and then move it outward."

So many times, this young man has had this prospect just reversed. He felt like he needed to be present for others, love others, hoping that they in turn would help him fix himself. And yet...that needed to come from within instead. Love yourself from the inside out.

He is a work in progress. He is figuring out how to give himself some grace and grow from there. He is going to keep reminding himself of this parable and keep moving forward and attempting to grow from there.