On jealousy, and claiming where I came from
I wonder what it's like to know your family will catch you, hold you and regard you as sacred, even in a struggle...
On jealousy, and claiming where I came from.
Recently I was scrolling through a distant colleague's website, per a nudge from a client of mine. As I read through their “about me” page, I was struck with this pang in my gut… her website was beautiful and her list of trainings, apprenticeships, education and impact soooo long. It's rare that another person's success will evoke jealousy in me. Perhaps that's my own ambition, knowing I can do anything I put my mind to.
But this… this one thing wasn't something I could build on my own. This one line sent jolts of grief and sadness through my system. It read, “I come from a long lineage of healers, witches and powerful women…”
Of course she did.
Of course she did.
Scouring this woman's website reminded me of advice a colleague gave to me a few years back when I was edging upon burnout, getting divorced and coming out.
She said, “Madison, you should just take a year off. Trust the universe, the money will come through.”
What was never said between us was the millions of dollars and familial support that would be there to catch her if needed. Even if I had been in contact with my family at that time, they had never offered me a helping hand outside the laptop they put on a credit card for me when I went to college. I never heard the end of that “gift,” even after graduation five years later. (Gifts in my family were more like pay-day loans– a trap).
I wonder what it's like to know your family will catch you, hold you and regard you as sacred, even in a struggle. I have spent years wondering what that embodied trust feels like, searching for a taste of something… anything, really, that would give me a semblance of security deeper than I could build with the grit of my own ambition.
I am jealous, it's true. I'm jealous, and I'm glad.
I am jealous because I am 32, and I'm just now discovering what ease feels like in my body. I am just now learning what it feels like to not be tolerated, but appreciated in my own home. I am just now learning that the punishing eye isn't watching my every move. I am just learning that my stability, success, and security isn't entirely up to me.
I'm glad because I am softening, and in this softening, I am grieving.
And in this grieving, I'm finally understanding what it was I was missing all those years I went searching.
I don't say any of this because I desire others to have less. I delight in others' success. I can celebrate friends who had a stable childhood, who can pass that generational gift on to their children. It IS a gift. Having privilege isn't wrong. I, too, have privileges and understand that as a white, cis, thin woman, my life is still in many ways so much easier than others.
The jealousy and grief I feel is less a critique on privilege, and more a healthy response to the acknowledgement that it was hard, (so fucking hard) and no amount of gratitude for what I've created from my pain will satiate the longing that it had been different.
Feeling this grief is my healthy, adult self finally understanding and validating my younger self who frequently asked, “isn't it supposed to be better than this?”
Yes, yes it was. And she knew… I knew.
As I feel my jealousy, longing and grief all the way through, I am struck by my resilience, and the resilience of many of those I sit with on a weekly basis in client sessions. Those folks out here alongside me, emerging from impossible circumstances– building wealth, stability, sanity, paying for our own education, paying thousands in therapy and healing, having absolutely no familial guidance or inheritance, no parent to call, and instead have spent a decade or more attending to familial trauma, abuse and instability, alchemizing it all into art and service.
We are creating a fortress of our lives in the midst.
We are grieving lives we hoped for yet never received and are finally giving to ourselves.
We are blooming where the conditions were once not conducive to life.
If that's you, too, I honor and see the uphill climb you've been on. It isn't easy, and while gratitude might come for you, as it has for me, you don't have to override the pang of jealousy or grief.
May it remind you that it was supposed to be better. And, perhaps it still can be. <3
From where I guardian the goodness,
Madison
