The Truth About Untruths

I don't know how we get this far believing these untruths, really. I mean, there are lots of them. We heard them all throughout our First Half and it shaped what we believed for ourselves, but they are not true. Not true!

One of my favorites: you can't have it all. Why the fuck not? Who said? Why are we made to believe we should want anything less, that we should settle for half the pie? One thing's for sure -- if you believe you can't have it all, don't deserve it all, shouldn't want it all, you sure as hell won't get it all. I am not saying that life is kumbaya-happy or even that we can have it all. But it takes authors of self-help 'key to success' type of books titled You Can Have It All to make us dare wonder: what if I can? I am starting to dare.

Another one is: things happen for a reason. No they don't! There is no reason babies get leukemia, innocent men go to jail, animals are abandoned and our AC shuts down in July. It's random. It is totally random that I get to live in a prosperous free country while another woman born on the same day in the same year as I is getting gang-raped in the Sudan. And even if there is a force like karma, reincarnation or The Law of Attraction at work, it doesn't matter. It only matters what you do with the things that happen. And, they don't happen to us; they happen around us. We are not that important.

Your soul mate is out there. Uh-uh. Not true. Lots and lots of us like to think so, because truly bonding with another is what every one of us secretly wants, even the fiercely independent. But there is no soul mate 'out there', and thinking there is is like waiting for Godot. There are many, many soul mates and they are all around us. We only know this when we really want to, dare to, and choose to invest in another soul who also chooses to invest in us. Kind of like Namaste. When we choose, for some reason, to honor the divine in another specifically, we create a soul mate. Sure, you could argue for compatibility and its role in defining soul mates - I don't dismiss it - but we create them, not 'find' them. They don't suddenly show up for a reason (see above).

Now, one other untruth is a personal peeve that might be shared by other women who have breast fed a baby. Breastfeeding is a beautiful bonding experience between mother and infant. Why didn't anyone tell me that breastfeeding can feel like someone is pulling your nipple off with pliers? Sorry, but with my skin and sensitivity, breastfeeding my baby girl was a unique form of torture. Not every mother's experience, I know, and it did become, with practice and patience, a beautiful experience. That is why I stuck it out. But for god's sake, when you see these lovely, gauzy photos of a mother peacefully and adoringly holding a baby to her breast, you can easily feel grossly inadequate for wanting to howl in pain when your cherub latches on and you think you are going to pass out. I am just saying, it is a gorgeous way for a mother and child to come together, but someone just needs to say it can hurt. A lot.

The moral of this story? Question the things you hold as truths. And tell other people.