Being a Person of Dignity

While at the hospital these past 3 weeks I have had more than one occasion when I have had to rip the head off a nurse or a doctor or a social worker or someone from the insurance company. I feel as if I have spent the better part of this month arguing with someone and advocating for my husband. Even on discharge I had to get in someone’s face. Thankfully we now just deal with the Cancer Institute where everyone is nice because their patients are really sick.

I was complaining about it to Michael when one of the aides came into the room. I’m always nice to the aides and the techs because they are always humoring Michael and joking with him and respecting him (he wore his Vietnam Vet hat most of the time and one guy called him a hero…it made my eyes water). She said to me, “You’re very assertive, I’ve heard you, but you conduct yourself with dignity and fight for him with a fierceness I’ve never seen before.”

I have to admit that some of the medical staff might quibble about the dignity part but I think I’ve maintained it (not easily…sometimes the Bronx kid was coming out BIGTIME but I would pull back on the reigns).

So here’s the “Person of Dignity” post:

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Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit. ~ e.e. cummings

I’ve done a lot of strange things in my life due to my screwy upbringing, low self-esteem, relationship dependency/addiction, chaos in my life, confusion and reacting etc.

One of the most helpful things that anyone ever said to me was: “You are a woman of grace and dignity. Act like it.” Really? I didn’t know that. No one had ever said that to me before. My family liked to say things like I was clumsy, dopey, crazy, strange etc. No one ever used words like grace and dignity to describe me.

My foster/adoptive family never had a nice word to say about me. They said things like I was an accident waiting to happen, I was smart but I had no common sense, I thought I was “special” because I wanted to be educated. Not only were they quick to point out my flaws but they even took compliments and twisted them so that I was painfully aware of what was still wrong with me.

I felt tremendous rejection and abandonment by my birth mother and my inner mantra had been, for years, if your own mother does not want you, how bad is that? The answer: really really bad. A lot of my friends had screwy parents but not one had one that had just walked away. And it wasn’t that my mother JUST gave me up for adoption like other adoptees I knew…most of them had parents who were young and didn’t keep the baby and gave them up to a better life….me? my mother forgot about me, up in foster care the Bronx…like hmmm, where did I leave that child? Forgot about me and making a decision about me for 7 years. That’s all…just 7 years…

It took a long, long time to even begin to be comfortable with positive self-talk. Every time I would affirm something, the inner “buts” from my family would chime in. I would say to myself, “I am okay and I matter.” and then I would hear “but not to the people who are supposed to love you.” or “I am smart.” and I would hear “but you have no common sense.” So I had to find new things that could not be invalidated by the abandoned foster child that lived in my head.

When my first husband cheated on me, I was convinced it was because there was something wrong with me. When he abused me I was sure it was because I had a big mouth. I remember my adoptive siblings saying that my adoptive mother wouldn’t go after me if I just learned to SHUT UP. So it was my fault, everything was my fault.

So when someone told me that I had GRACE and DIGNITY, “I am a woman of grace and dignity” it was hard for me to say it but I practiced and eventually it became an affirmation of mine. Over the years whenever I would find myself slipping back into dysfunctional or sloppy behavior I would remind myself that I was a woman of grace and dignity.

But I was not primed to be a woman of grace and dignity. The chaos in my life refected the chaos inside. The things that people said about me had become the things I said about myself and it needed to stop. I needed to slowly and clearly say positive things about myself.

Living life with dignity takes some discipline and some thought. It comes from doing A LOT of observation and choosing the right thing instead of the thing that might scratch the itch or be really fun in the moment.

I had to learn, again by observation, to sit back and watch what I did and when I did it. And to OWN that. To not be in denial about some of my own less-than-dignified behavior. I had to learn to stop doing things that did not make me feel good about myself.

Whenever I tried to break out of the scapegoat/no good mold that others had cast me in, the outsiders would say “Get back where you belong.” in a thousand different ways. Whenever we try to change what we project to the world, there are those, who do not have our best interests at heart (no matter what they say), who want us to CHANGE BACK. To be the scapegoat, the loser, the f-up, the screwball, the ne’er do well that they know and tolerate. Whenever we try to be something different their words and/or behaviors try to make us change back.

We also have these “get back where you belong” voice in our own heads. For me, being a woman of grace and dignity was uncomfortable and strange. But I would “act as if” and really do well about 90 percent of the time. Then I would just have some kind of mental or physical breakdown and act out and act out against all that being a woman of grace and dignity would entail.

Back to the drawing board. I would look at this behavior, the self-destructive and self-sabotaging behavior and try to get to the root of it. I had trouble getting this rebellious part of me in line. But part of my trouble was that I kept rejecting those parts of me that wanted to act out and often DID act out. The more I rejected them, the louder they became.

Luckily I kept trying and kept working on the parts of me that gave me trouble and did not comport with being a woman of grace and dignity. I had to love these parts of me and realize they were there, acting out and acting the fool, because of not being loved enough and because they needed attention. I had to welcome the rebellious parts into the new fold and use the rebellion for good…not evil (lol).

But it’s true. As I talked about in defense mechanisms, many of our less-than-wonderful parts are there for our protection but have grown unwieldy because we’ve needed so much protection. Instead of banishing the parts, moderate them.

I still need a rebellious part but I need it to work FOR me and not against me. I need to know when to let it rip and when to keep it in check. Observation. Preparation. Cultivation. Sometimes you just gotta say FU. And that is whenI bring out my inner guttersnipe. :) But most of the time I keep it in check.

I think about what I do. I observe what I do and sometimes I have to choose between being a woman of grace and dignity and having a rip roaring good time. It’s not that I don’t have a good time, I do. But I never lose my head and I most certainly never lose my dignity. Anymore.

But it was a process…and it was a process that involved bucking the sentiments of the outside world and parts of me that was, for some reason, pretty fond of the rebellious f-up that I could be a lot of the time.

Embrace all your parts and deny none. For the parts of you that are acting less than dignified, love yourself until you do. Tell yourself, “That’s not like me, next time I’ll do better by….[fill it in here].”

By observing your behavior and thinking about the ways in which your less-than-perfect behavior has protected you and by assuring yourself that you don’t need that protection now, you can continue to live your life with dignity and aplomb.

BE GOOD TO YOURSELF.

SPEAK WELL OF YOURSELF.

TONE DOWN THE SELF-DESTRUCTIVE PARTS.