Diary of A Recovering Independent Woman
Tales of a “Lonely Girl”
I remember I was 5, and I was going to school for the first time. I had so many expectations of starting school. My mother says I was excited to go to school, though, I cannot remember that excitement. I do, however, remember walking in to the classroom and the feelings that washed over me were….dread, fear, and the idea that this would be torture. Yes, at 5, these were the thoughts and feelings I experienced as I walked in to the place I apparently had been looking forward to.
Up until this point in my life I had been at home with my mother and two siblings. We had a routine and life, as I remember it, was both happy and challenged. We were together every day and I had learned to live in an environment where I was provided for and given the space to enjoy my life at whatever level my parents provided.
Kindergarten was the most stand-out moment in my life of repressing my emotions. You see, those big scary feelings I had didn’t go away with my frequent appearance at school. I didn’t need time to adjust. There was a reason for my fears, and as I went to school, I would learn why I felt dread and a fear of torture. The teacher had, unbeknownst to us, had a reputation for extreme punishment and isolation of students. I would find out that year that I would make her list of students to punish and humiliate. I was taught at home that you did not question authority, and so when I would cry at the kitchen table coloring a worksheet from school and my mother would ask what was wrong, I had no answer. I couldn’t tell her I was being tortured by my teacher. I wasn’t misbehaving or that would have been told to my parents. I was just being isolated and punished for reasons I had no idea. It continued and my outbursts got worse and worse. I refused to go in to the classroom at all and one day, in desperation, I ran out of the building back to the car after my parents had tried to drop me off. My parents punished me pretty severely. I was told that if I cried, I would be punished from now on. And so, after receiving said severe punishment, I did my best to not cry, but the torture continued. I learned at this young age, that I was alone in handling both my emotions, and any dreaded, difficult, or even unsafe situation.
And so, I built many stories around me and buried ideas of who I must be to have parents who wouldn’t help me, or defend me, or protect me. I became a very lonely girl. And after reading this story you may feel a number of things, because this story is factual, and it reminds us of the moments in our lives we also felt alone, misunderstood, abandoned, in danger, and unprotected when we should have been thriving and happy.
In the outside, my life would have looked incredibly normal. I had friends, I went to sleepovers, I participated in school events, and I was thought of as a very “outgoing” person. But it was all an act. I secretly felt intimidated by new circumstances, unsure of where I stood in most relationships, and terrified of putting myself “out there” as it related to my gifts and abilities. I wanted closeness, but believed I would never have it. I wanted to share my true feelings, but those would often be used against me. And so, I closed myself up even more. I would be known as “unapproachable” or “intimidating” when in reality I was afraid and guarded.
The purpose of this backstory is to highlight how being a “lonely girl” became so solidified in my awareness that it began to shape me at a very early age. I don’t even know I was telling the lonely girl story until I became an “adult”. Looking over the thread of my life, it becomes very apparent that this story left its mark and dictated my experience, but the thing is until it comes to your consciousness, a story like this hides away and runs your life from the shadows.
I would encounter many unstable relationships, and repeatedly find myself isolated, abandoned, and delusioned about ever finding a safe friendship, work environment, or committed partnership. I became tough, defensive, and hyper independent. At that point it felt like it was the only thing I could trust….because being a lonely girl had become my self image. And so, guess what? I got to do everything on my own! I got to be a single mother. I got to be the sole provider. I got to hustle to make my life work and get ahead. I got to shoulder other people’s emotions and neglect my own. And because my “boss babeness” was through the roof, I got to partner with many men who loved to hire me to help them launch their dreams and energetically hold them up (this was before my private coaching days), only to find myself struggling in every area, especially in meeting my own needs. These men were seen by others as powerful, important, influential, and they would love bomb me into working for them and then make every effort to get me to give everything for their cause. And I did, for a while, until I started having panic attacks driving to my corner office with a view. You see, being the lonely girl got me a lot of attention, but none of it actually supported my life.
The lonely girl identity I had become, forced me to seek validation over and over and over again so that I confused some kind of financial gain with my worth. All of my independence lead me to repeated experiences of being…..alone. And because the story proved me right about myself the vicious cycle continued for decades. Allowing this story to run my life, forced me to settle in to a toxic marriage that I would go on to endure for 20 years, constantly making excuses that it was “getting better” when in reality, I was allowing the lonely girl story to justify my low self image and self worth. In 2019, I finally faced my lonely girl story. I remember very clearly the night I sat with tears steaming down my face and wrote in my journal that I was giving up this story. I was tired of shallow friendships that led to nothing. I was tired of living in a house as a roommate to someone I couldn’t even talk to about the things that mattered so much to me (including my feelings), and I was tired of pushing and forcing my life in every other area. I surrendered. I surrendered the story that had isolated and traumatized me for years.
Things didn’t change immediately. Which is what everyone hopes will happen. But things did begin to change organically and naturally (as they should). Within a year I had finally exited the life-sucking relationship, and that was the straw that began to undo years of a story so carefully woven, that I could finally come back to myself. And this entire story, all the way back to 5 years old has been methodically undone, so that while I can remember as much as I can remember, I don’t have the emotional pain attached to the story and it no longer lives in me. I have found my way out of that story, ever so slowly, into a new idea or self image.
Four and a half years ago I did a 180 in my life and started out on a new path. It left quite a ripple and was not at all accepted by those closest to me (in proximity, not relationship). But, with the support of just a few people, I set out to rewrite my story. So now, as I have steadied myself, my life too has become a beautiful picture of support, love, and substance. I quit expecting people to disappoint me. I quit accepting scraps in relationships. I quit shouldering other people’s hurts. I quit taking responsibility for other people’s experiences. I quit sacrificing myself in order to be valid or approved of. I quit denying myself of real love and care. And one day, in a moment of deep, profound awareness I FELT my own belonging. It wasn’t in a relationship, a course I was teaching, or a circumstance in my life, instead, I had a true happening of belonging inside of me. I felt and knew I belonged right here, right where I Am. And in knowing that belonging, I let go of any hints that the lonely girl was still running the show. I am not alone. The more I meditated on that knowing the more my outer world began to reflect this back to me.
I have the love of a very good man who has bandaged up every hurt and loved away so many of my perceived deficiencies. He has helped me love myself back to life! I now have some wonderful deep friendships that I didn’t have just four short years ago. And as I root myself in to a new geographic location, I am finding that God has carefully gone before me and placed some people here for me so that I would know, God has never left me. I was never alone. I was being watched, protected, and kept even in my lowest places. He was there all the time.
That lonely girl story serves as protection until it becomes our captor. I often see how women imprison themselves in stories like these, and build their entire life in a cage. If you find this to be true in your life, let me be the one to remind you that the key is in your hand. When you decide to change the story, you will be free.
If you’ve been a slave to (or even find yourself actively telling) a “lonely girl” story, I pray you find your way to a new self image-one that is worthy of love and support. If you are a woman who is looking for a place to grow her own consciousness and dissolve stories like this one, I invite you to my Women of Principle community specifically designed to nurture you through the dissolution of old stories that have negatively impacted your life, so that you become brand new, and enjoy a life of abundant, loving, ease, beautiful relationship, and fulfillment like you’ve only ever dreamed!
https://bio.site/JodiClaire