You are enough, part 2 // you are too much
Art by Miho HiranoAre you one of those vibrant souls who’s been punished for being “too much”.
This too-muchness could rhyme with any felt-sense of being unacceptable in your authenticity. Whether you were given this message just once as a child and had to internalize it to survive, or have had it told to you many times throughout your life, it’ll have left its psychic-somatic imprint.
With me, it was the repeated refrain from parents, teachers, friends, partners of: “Why can’t you just be normal?”
(For those of you who know about astrology, my natal moon is in Aquarius. My soul clearly decided on “weirdo” when she was picking out her space-time capsule wardrobe for this human incarnation.)
“Why can’t you just be normal?” (or WCYJBN) would usually be leveled in my direction when I displayed a sense of fullness and delight in myself, free from the shackles of external validation.
Often, WCYJBN was followed by something along the lines of “who do you think you are?/ you should be ashamed of yourself.”
My deviant joy in my own Being was jarring to the people around me who were disconnected to their own inherent richness.
Understandably so. In a culture that promotes Self-alienation as a way of fitting in, of being “normal,” to have someone do the opposite was deeply uncomfortable; dangerous, even.
I didn’t yet have the tools to metabolize + transmute the poison of shaming and false projections. So I became an aggressive student of how to keep that pesky “too muchness” inside me locked up in a dank cellar and fed on grimy gruel in the vain hope that she would just die already, and I’d finally be left alone to be normal and safely liked by everyone.
But no, she didn’t die. Souls don’t die that easily.
Instead, with the help of her loving and loyal more-than-human allies, she set up an infernal hue and cry through my psyche + body. Enter OCD, chronic, debilitating autoimmune imbalances + breakdowns until finally, I had to stop, listen and surrender.
And here’s the paradox that emerged: this irrepressible too-muchness of my Soul, the part of me that was/is so distasteful to others, is actually the portal into I Am Enough.
Oh, hurrah.
Turns out, the parts of us that we fear and want to hide the most are the very parts that contain the treasure we need to unearth.
Now, imagine if you will, a world where we’re all rooted in, and rising from, our own unique medicine and flavour of I Am Enough.
From this place, we unapologetically sing the beautifully weird songs of our souls, without being attached to approval and validation. Our nervous systems aren’t puffed out (hyper-aroused) or collapsed inwards (hypo-aroused) - both ways of seeking validation through co-dependent energy exchanges. Instead, we abide in a felt connection to something vast, mysterious and loving, knowing that this isn’t separate from our Self.
In fact, co-dependent behaviour becomes a distant memory, because being rooted in I Am Enough automatically transmutes that.
From this place, we are present to joy + grief, pain + pleasure as part of our soul’s regenerative permaculture garden.
Imagine what this would do to prevailing (and decaying) systems + structures that require us to be genetically modified to believe the lie that we aren’t enough, that require us to deny the brilliance of our light + shadow and “just be normal”?
The first step towards that is to gently, curiously, go towards the delightfully dangerous too-muchness of your Self - the part of you that you’re afraid of people seeing and knowing about you.