Warts & All

When I was visiting New York City last week, I had dinner with a childhood friend and his wife.  Peter’s picture actually appears in my memoir at the beginning of Chapter Five.   We are  both about four years old, and are wearing our skating outfits,  with roller skates on our feet.  I look scared, since I was always afraid of falling.  Over dinner he and I were sharing childhood stories, which both of our partners found quite interesting.  He hadn’t known how much trouble I got into as a kid, and there was much I hadn’t known about his problems either.  It struck me how much ‘bad stuff’ we keep to ourselves, something I, for one, learned to do at a very early age because to tell the whole truth had already proved dangerous.  After all, I had almost gotten kicked out of junior high for doing just that. On our flight back, I thought about the writing of my memoir, “Little Nancy: The Journey Home” and how much of the process was about whole truth telling for me. No more secrets.  Most of us share stories about our lives with new friends, but we usually share the positive memories, and rarely the painful ones. At least that’s been true for me over the years.  Now I often share other stories too, ones that are much less comfortable, because I think they give a fuller picture of the real me.  If I am going to find intimacy with a new friend, and have an ongoing relationship with that person, I don’t believe it will work if I only share the acceptable parts of my life.  When I was a teenager I used to sit on my hands because I thought my little stubby fingers were ugly and was ashamed of them.  I sat on stories about my past too.  It took years for me to learn to slowly reveal myself, warts and all, to women I thought might become close friends.  Slowly is an important word here. I’m not suggesting we dump our darkest secrets on anyone, but rather that we not take such care to hide them either.  Because I’ve followed this path myself, I can’t think of anything I’ve said or done in my past that I still feel ashamed of anymore.  My shoulders no longer carry the weight of those hidden truths, and let me tell you, that has been quite a relief.