Two lessons I'm learning to unlearn.

I’ve lived a long time with a battle raging in my head. If I had to guess, I’d say that isn’t an uncommon thing for most people. I kind of think it’s just part of being human. But a big part of that battle is thanks to the two lessons I’m learning to unlearn.

Here they are:

1. To be “good,” you must be Consistent. Consistent. Even. Steady. Constant. Aren’t those all pretty nice words? Who doesn’t want to be considered steady and constant? Aren’t those the very same words we use to describe our heavenly Father? Aren’t those the kind of words we use to describe people we respect, look up to and seek to emulate?
   
   As an athlete for most of my life, those words were drilled into me from a very young age. In the sports world, consistency is paramount. I had a coach who would give me an efficiency rating after every game, a rating based on the consistency of my performance. I needed to be a consistent shooter. A consistent defender. I needed to be rebounding consistently. Showing up constantly. Playing steady. And performing evenly. Game in, game out.
   
   Consistency is held up as a standard of good parenting. How do you fix sleep issues in a child? Consistency. What do you do when your kid goes through a picky eater stage? Hold steady. What does a child need for good self-esteem? For you to be constant.
   
   Consistency is a lovely idea. One I have devoted a great deal of energy trying to achieve.

   
   I have tried so hard at times in my life that it makes my teeth clench just thinking about it. I spent four years of college basketball striving with every ounce of my being to grasp at this idea. Agonizing over my performances in every practice and game. Hours spent replaying mistakes, losing sleep trying to will myself into submission. When I did manage a stretch of consistent performance, I was rewarded with playing time. When the streak inevitably ended, I was punished either with words, a quick withdraw from the game and/or time on the bench.
   
   It’s just basketball. It was just a game. Yet at that time in my life, it was everything. And that big lesson, in those very formative years, formed a thought pattern that I’ve spent a long time grappling with. The shame and guilt of being unable to produce a constant performance seared this lesson into my mind: To be “good,” you must be Consistent. And I couldn’t do it.

“The moment in between what you once were, and who you are now becoming, is where the dance of life really takes place.” — Barbara De Angelis

2. It’s important to be a Cohesive person. Before I became the stay-at-home, homeschooling mama that I am now, and before I got into cooking (which I did before kids), I once worked in the world of marketing.
   
   And in those early days, I was brought up on the principles of good branding, cohesive marketing and making sure every element of a design works together. Once again, at a young, formative age, the idea that every part working together in a unified way is PARAMOUNT, was drilled into my receptive head.
   
   As I designed print materials, websites and later blogs, I labored to achieve the ultimate cohesive look and feel. I developed a critical eye that could pick apart inconsistencies in other brands, and flaws in disjointed marketing campaigns.
   
   When social media came along, the emphasis on a cohesive aesthetic skyrocketed, as the accounts with the “perfectly cohesive” grids took off like wildfire. The idea that it’s important to be Cohesive, was further cemented in my brain.
   
   The tricky thing…I couldn’t do it. Not in my design, not in my photography, not on my Instagram, and certainly not in real life. All the things I loved never seemed to fit together. All my different ideas looked a little wonky when I tried to put them next to one another. It became, well, a battle. A battle inside my head, and a battle for my heart.

I mean, there isn’t anything inherently wrong with the ideas of consistency and cohesiveness. Except when you allow them to limit who you are, as I have so very many times over the years.

Because the reality is, I am NOT Consistent. Never have been, never will be. It’s not how I was made. It’s taken me a long time to begin to accept that, and the voice in my head still criticizes me often. But at the end of the day, I’m just seasonal person. Someone who ebbs and flows, comes and goes, changes with the many seasons of life.

I’m slowly warming up more and more to this idea, and it is exciting and freeing to imagine a time when I might not beat myself up over it anymore.

And as far as being Cohesive goes, well, to be perfectly honest, I’m wrestling with that one as we speak. It’s kind of how we ended up here, not only writing this post, but doing it on a Substack account instead of over on my blog.

You see, much like the main character in the famed novel by Robert Louis Stevenson; there are two sides to who I am. Two sides that, much like Jekyll and Hyde, seem to be at war with one another. For me it’s not a respectable doctor and uncouth rogue, it’s Garden Lover and Outdoorsy Girl.

I love a good cottage garden, and I love a National Park. I have a David Austin catalog on the same shelf as my John Muir books. I read the Jane Austen canon every year, and English Creek (by Ivan Doig) is one of my all-time favorites. Hiking and fly-fishing ignite my soul, and so does growing all my own salsa ingredients, or a bouquet of English roses.

I love the prairie muffin vibe of a billowy dress in a bed of garden roses, but in reality, I wear mostly Patagonia. Emma is my favorite movie, and Wild Fly my favorite channel on YouTube. I self-published a cooking/gardening book a few years ago, and someday I hope to write one on fly-fishing.

And as silly as this all sounds, I have REALLY struggled with how to express myself over the years. Do I want to be outdoorsy, adventure mom? Or do I want to lean into homesteading, gardening farmer’s wife? In my creative work, do we go with an outdoorsy aesthetic, or keep it pretty and floral? I’ve been tugged back and forth many times, all the while feeling like a failure for my lack of unity and cohesion. There’s no way I could possibly be both…right!?

And that’s how we got here everybody. I guess I’m hoping that this Substack can be a place where I can just be ME. Inconsistent, ebbing and flowing, nuanced and complex. Just ME. And you can be YOU!

Because as silly as it sounds, it’s not always so easy to be yourself. The world around us celebrates so many qualities that aren’t only unrealistic for us as humans, but sometimes quite destructive and limiting. I have spent far too many years being limited by my own expectations of consistency and cohesiveness, and I’m guessing there’s a few of you out there who have done the same.

Despite what the Internet tells us, were are not a brand. We’re humans. Beautiful, nuanced, contradictory, changing and growing humans. Let’s just be ourselves, shall we?