From Kelly to YELLY

I used to be very good at hiding. I believed in every cell in my big-boned body that I was Too Much and Too Loud, yet somehow not enough and undeserving of anything beautiful.

It seemed like everyone else in the world had excellent ideas for how I should show up in the world, so I defaulted to them. Traumas will show you how to find safety, and mine was in people pleasing and predicting everyone’s needs so that I could meet them and never be left behind. Everyone told me who to be and I let them; I kept my feelings and wanting to myself because I believed I couldn’t trust them. 

I was a “good” person who was nice enough, but no one knew anything about who I was, what I thought, what I wanted--because I was just a cardboard cutout of a background character in a movie. I served and pleased others to keep myself safe, and to ensure that I’d never have to be on a first name basis with my own dreams or desires. I orchestrated and controlled and never let on that this wasn’t exactly what I wanted--this life of never saying “I want” or “Me first.” I thought I could keep going on like this forever until, one by one, the people around me started pulling away, tired of one-sided conversations and the echo chamber I’d become; slowly, then all at once, I was alone with myself. And I was terrified.

Instead of pleasing people, I started studying everyone around me who seemed happy; I became obsessed with watching them move through the world, then using my imagination to fill in the gaps. In my mind, I made up story after story about how these people got to be so lucky to have such shiny lives and incredible opportunities. But the fascination quickly turned into bitterness and anger because what made them more deserving of big, cool lives and not me? And how maddening is it that they get to pretend that it’s just so easy to want?

Fresh out of distractions, diversions, and made-up stories about what everyone else deserves, there was nothing left to do but be alone. With myself.

I had been writing journals, poems, and essays since I was a wee babe, but I’d been too busy pleasing and being petulant to pick up my pen. My entire career was teaching writing (!!!), but I hadn’t offered myself the same opportunity to write myself out of everyone else’s lives and into my own.

I started waking up a half hour earlier, picking one of the thoughts from the funnel cloud in my mind, and writing my way through what came up. I didn’t have any expectations for what would come out, or come next: I just showed up, wrote what needed to be written, then shut my journal and went to work. 

After a few weeks, that half hour turned into an hour, which then turned into another hour during my lunch, then recording voice memos during my commute; I couldn’t stop writing and I didn’t want to.

I won’t say that I felt like myself because, frankly, I didn’t know who she was; but I did know that I’d never felt more free.

I have been the person who has forgotten and avoided herself at all costs, and now I have become the person who lives her life with the windows open and Caps Lock on. I know how terrifying it is to look at your life and say, “Not this,” while being too scared to say, “I want something else” and put words to the feeling.

I’m here to hold the space for you to get curious about what you want and show you that you are *allowed* to want & have--that you are worthy of the life you can imagine for yourself. I’ll show you how to rediscover your imagination, your wanting, your voice, and live a life centered in and on yourself.

Casual Magic Writing
© 2021 Kells Yells LLC