watch what you say

"You are deaf, dumb and non-beautiful." These are the words spoken by my third grade teacher, Sister Lucien. Though they've stuck with me over the years they weren't exactly meant for me, they were said to one of my best friends, "K". 

Can you imagine telling an eight year old child these terrible things?? Never mind the fact that these unspeakable insults came straight from our Catholic school's trusted NUN teacher (that every kid was terrified of).
Well my friend, K, grew up believing partly that she was dumb and partly that she was ugly, (she knew she wasn't deaf and that she just had a little trouble paying attention). And it all stemmed from that one particularly unfortunate day.  K struggles to this very day, at almost thirty-five years of age, with her self confidence. She is very intelligent and absolutely beautiful but her ego was shattered and she never fully recovered.

And that is proof of just how fragile a young child's mind really is. I am not, of course, speaking of every child in the world - just a few that I know personally. Me, being one of them. I had my own life-shifting sentence said to me when I was the same age only mine came from a neighborhood friend. She had no idea the impact of her words at the time, and neither did I.  We were children.

My downward spiral began when I was standing with friends on the corner of my street and I remarked about how my grandmother told me that I was too skinny and needed to put some meat on my bones. I said it nonchalantly just making conversation. A neighborhood friend, two years my senior, quickly put me in my place, "You're so conceited!" I asked what the hell THAT meant (again, I was about eight years old). She explained to me that "skinny" = beautiful, perfect, awesome, what everyone wanted to be, etc. And by referring to myself as skinny, I was basically bragging about how awesome I was. I was mortified. The very last thing I wanted to do was to brag about myself! I thought I was merely relaying a grandma chat. I had no idea I should be ashamed by it. Ashamed. That is the perfect word for it. From that very day forward I would NEVER pay myself a compliment for fear of being "conceited". Somehow her lesson rubber cemented itself way in the back of my ever-expanding mind. I quickly referred to myself as fat and ugly so I would fit in with the cool crowd. Maybe I didn't believe it at first, but by sixth grade I believed it with all of my heart. 

I went through my teens and some of my twenties literally thinking that I was just a hideous blob and not really worth anyone's time or effort. I can assure you now that while I'm not skinny I am not and never was a "blob". Overweight, yes. Up or down 20 lbs all the time. But not a worthless blob. And I pray that I am not offending anyone by using the word "blob" - I would never refer to an overweight person in that cruel manner. Only myself. It has taken me YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAARRRRRSSSSSSSSSS to finally learn that I'm not a grotesque monster. And that it's OKAY to say that my hair looks good today or that my eyes are a pretty color ... or any other mundane self-compliment. My self-esteem spent nearly twenty years buried. My husband and friends have worked HARD to rectify that. {Thanks, guys!} 

It is just amazing to me how we can say one phrase to a child and it can end up being the one that he/she dwells on, staying with them forever, causing a life-long struggle. How do we prevent it from happening to our own children? I didn't tell my mother about my life-changing conversation because at the time I didn't realize there was anything wrong with it. I only learned that twenty years later. Self-esteem and confidence are EVERYTHING. Without confidence we don't move forward. We just stick. Without self-esteem we don't live life, we just turn the pages in our calendars. I will do everything in my power to make sure my daughter knows that she is beautiful and worth the sun and moon. I want her to have the courage to pursue any dream, no matter how silly, no matter how scary. She will learn from my mistakes. And my misfortune.