02 My Light – Spot 6
Community: I belong
And when we come together with our rough edges and our handbrakes off, friction happens. Different points of view. Different needs. And it gets really hard where things go wrong. Where somebody makes a mistake. Where I am disappointed.
Monday morning, the office. The project has gone wrong. An error in the costing that has cost us a client. And I know exactly who made it.
I go over to his desk. In front of everyone. “How could that happen? That was your job. A beginner’s mistake like that simply cannot happen.”
He goes red. Says nothing at first. Then he mumbles something about time pressure. I wave it away. “Excuses. Look more carefully next time.” He nods. Doesn’t say another word all day.
And the others? They look away and keep typing. Don’t stand out. Don’t be the next one. I have made my point. And I was right, after all – the mistake was his. And still, I have just lost.
Because what does he do with the next mistake? He hides it for as long as he can. He doesn’t come to me any more when something is stuck. Soon nobody will.
Guilt and shame turn people into hiders. Anyone who gets cut down keeps their head down and gets out of the line of fire.
And bit by bit the whole working relationship gets sick. Whispering behind backs. Blame passed around like a hot potato. Everyone covers themselves, nobody risks anything any more. No creativity. No innovation. Standstill.
Nothing grows that way. Nothing gets better. I won the exchange – and lost the collaboration. There is another way. But for that I have to put something down.
Until now I have always armed myself for a conversation like that. Lining up my arguments, hardening myself, putting the armour on. As if before a battle. But I don’t want to win a battle. I want us to get better together.
So I take the armour off. And I no longer sit opposite you, on the other side of the table. I come round. I sit down next to you.
The problem is no longer between us. It is in front of us. We both look at it together.
And before I judge, I ask. What happened there? How did it come about? I listen, honestly. Maybe there was time pressure. Maybe a piece of information was missing. Maybe something in our process isn’t right.
It could be that I am wrong.
And something else helps me to look without shaming anyone. Behind almost every weakness there is a strength. It is often the same quality – only seen from the other side.
My colleague, the one who made the mistake, is the fastest in the team. His workload puts everyone else in the shade. His speed is his talent. And sometimes it is also his mistake.
Another one always has her thoughts somewhere else. In return she often has the most creative ideas. Anyone who takes forever usually works the most thoroughly. Anyone who doesn’t get their hands dirty may be good at inspiring others and delegating.
This is not sugar-coating. The weakness stays a weakness. But when I see the strength behind it, I see a different person in front of me.
Not “you failure”, but: this is where your power lies – and this is where it costs us money and nerves. Let’s get your abilities into a good balance.
But the most important thing is the sentences themselves. And mostly I say exactly the wrong ones.
I don’t dare admit that there is something I can’t do. So I muddle on and make a mess. When three sentences would have been so simple.I don’t know. I need help. I would like to try it.
My attempt goes wrong. I cover it up and somehow carry on, instead of saying:It didn’t work, but I learned a lot. How would you see it? Can you show me how it’s done?
A colleague does it differently from me. Instead of coordinating our approaches, I stubbornly work against him. When I could say:I see it differently. Can we talk? This is how it leaves me. This matters to me. Let’s carry on together.
And the hardest one: I have made a mess. I cover it up, I push it onto somebody else – until it blows up in all our faces. How much smaller the damage would have been with five honest sentences.Yes, it was me. I take responsibility. I’m sorry. What can I do better?
All these sentences have one thing in common. For a moment they make me look small and attackable. And that is exactly why they stick in my throat. When the opposite is true. They are not a weakness. They open the door.
Of course it takes courage. I am the first to drop my guard. But that is exactly what changes everything. Because when I show myself, the next person dares to as well. Suddenly everyone is allowed to not know something, to need help, to get it wrong.
That is how a team that holds together comes about. Not one where everybody hides their mistakes. One where we get better together.
I write these door-opening sentences into my DoD. I read them again and again. So that they come to me in the heat of the moment – and not only afterwards.
But why is all this so hard for me? Why does an accusation come more easily than a request for help? Because underneath it all lies the oldest need of all. I want to belong.
For a child that is vital for survival. Anyone who falls out of the family is lost. So the child learns what it has to do in order to belong.
And mostly it learns: if you are good. If you function. If you show no weakness. Then you belong. Belonging in exchange for good behaviour.
That is still sitting in me today. If I show weakness, the old alarm goes off: any second now you won’t belong any more.
So I adapt. I become the woman I think is wanted. I say yes where I think no. I laugh at jokes I don’t find funny. I hide whatever doesn’t fit the picture.
But adapting is not belonging. It is the opposite. If I adapt, only my mask belongs. Not me. That is why I am lonely in the middle of other people.
I look at my colleague again. The red face. The lowered eyes. The way he makes himself small. And suddenly I know that face. It is mine. Back then. Small, caught out, not good enough.
And my tone of voice earlier? That wasn’t me. That was my mother. Out of my mouth. That is how it gets passed on. Mother to daughter. Boss to colleague. Rucksack after rucksack, one generation to the next.
It stops in one place only. When somebody takes the rucksack off and says: not with me. Not any more. And somebody is watching me do it. More closely than anyone else. My daughter.
She will copy me. My words. My actions. Not what I preach – what I live. So I start with myself. I make the difference. A new era begins with me.
I stop pointing the finger at other people.
I don’t have to wait long for the proof. The living room, in the evening. My daughter is playing with her little sister. The little one trips into her tower. Everything falls over. By accident.
She spins round. “Can’t you be careful?! Don’t make such a fuss!” Sharp. From above. A tone like a blade.
I freeze. I know those words. I know that tone. That is not my daughter talking. That is me. Out of her mouth. A hundred times I have told her to be kind to her sister. A hundred times. It changed nothing.
Children don’t do what we say. They do what we do. She reads me like an open book. And copies. So I look closely. Do I say one thing – and do another?
I demand good marks. And tell laughing stories about what a terrible pupil I was. I forbid cigarettes and alcohol. And boast to guests about my wild nights.
I say you don’t steal. And I don’t go back when the cashier has got it wrong. Talking and living. Two completely different things. I want to change that. What I say, I want to live as well.
Does that mean I have to be the perfect mother now? Get everything right, never slip, always set the good example?
No. I put that pressure down. There is no such thing as the perfect mother. I am imperfect and I make mistakes, like every other mother.
On the contrary: that is exactly what my daughter may see. That I sometimes don’t know what to do either. That I make mistakes – and own them.
Not everything, of course. Some things are none of a child’s business, some need time and maturity. But my mistakes she may see. That way she learns that you don’t have to be perfect to be worth something. She learns it because I live it in front of her.
I write a sentence on a piece of paper. I put it where I will see it every day.
I want to be the mother I wished for myself as a child.
Because I can’t give my child what I don’t have myself. Only when I am good enough for myself can I pass it on.
And if I don’t have children? Then every word here still applies. Because there is one child I am always a mother to. My inner child. And here I recognise how my parents treated me – and how I treat myself today.
But I want to be honest. I haven’t always managed it. I have raised my voice. I have said and done things I regret today. That is part of the truth too. I can’t undo it. However much I would like to.
Now the shame could grab me.What kind of a mother are you.And nail me to the floor. But shame doesn’t make me a better mother. It only makes me smaller. It paralyses.
So I accept it. No glossing over, no pushing away. Looking at it. Because only what I look at can I change.
I can’t change anything as long as I don’t see it and accept it.
I take my DoD and write down this morning’s scene. We want to leave, my daughter is dawdling. I get impatient, I push, I snap at her. She jumps, and in her fright she drops the cup. Broken china, juice, everywhere. Now we really are late.
And now, with some distance, I see it clearly. I was the one who was running late. My daughter could do nothing about it. She is a child. In the here and now. She doesn’t understand time management yet. I am the grown-up. My responsibility. Next time we leave earlier. Relaxed.
There is one line I draw. And I promise never to cross it. No hand raised to a child. No shouting, no humiliating, no showing up, no love withheld.
Because that is exactly what destroys what I am painstakingly rebuilding in myself. Self-worth. I know today how much strength it costs to get it back, step by step.
But violence is not only the loud kind. There is the quiet kind too. The kind that leaves no marks on the skin. Only inside.
A child senses every day whether it is enough. And some learn early:I am not the way they want me. They are always cleverer. They talk about other people full of admiration – never about me.
My daughter should never have to think that. She is good enough. Not because she behaves. Not because she functions. Simply because she exists.
Good enough even when she screams. When she doesn’t finish her food, makes a mess of herself, is cheeky. When she brings home bad marks, breaks something, contradicts me and goes her own way.
I tell her that. And more importantly: I show her. Every day. Outside I can’t protect her. In the playground, among other children, things are sometimes cruel. Laughed at, shut out. That is hard.
At home this holds: you belong. Whatever happens outside. Whatever you bring home. Even if I haven’t done it so well up to now. Even if she has taken a fair bit from me. I am starting today. It is never too late.
And I give myself the same. My worth doesn’t hang on any condition either. Not on the house, the job, the flawless appearance. I am good enough. Exactly like her.
I stop pulling my child about. Stop trying to bring her into line. Stop making her fit. Instead I build something. A connection that holds. That nourishes and strengthens.
I crouch down. To her eye level. I listen without judging straight away. I ask instead of ordering. I take her world seriously. The beetle on the path. The row at nursery. The little tower that has fallen over three times already.
For her that isn’t small. For her that is everything. And while I give her what I never had myself – I give it to the child in me as well. We grow together. And I don’t protect her from everything. However much I would like to.
She is struggling with her shoelace. My hand is already twitching towards it. I pull it back. I let her do it. She swears, she strains, the loop slips through her fingers three times. And then – the bow holds. Her face. That pride.
I would have stolen that from her. With my quick hand. I don’t clear every stone out of her way. Honestly: it isn’t that she can’t bear the difficulty. It is that I can’t bear watching her struggle.
But it is exactly in the struggling that she learns what will carry her all her life: I set myself a goal. I find a way. If the first one doesn’t work, the second one will. I can rely on myself.
I come back into the living room. My daughter, her sister, the toppled tower. This time I don’t walk over her. I go to her. “That was loud just then, wasn’t it? Come on, let’s build it up again together.”
Her look. Disbelieving at first. Then something in her lets go. She nods. And I know: that is exactly what I am giving her. Not my hardness. But how you get back up when something falls over.
That is how a child grows who doesn’t have to be afraid. One who knows her feelings instead of pushing them away. And if she can handle her fear, she breaks nothing. She builds. She finds ways that are better than violence.
One child after another. One generation after another. It starts with me.
And then there is one more thing I pass on to children without meaning to. My perfectionism.
It is catching. A child who grows up with a perfectionist learns early: what matters is not what I feel. What matters is what other people think.
That turns a child into one who wants to please everyone. Who is constantly comparing. Who has to prove herself over and over. Never enough. I want to break that. In me, and with that in her.
Fuckperfection.I would rather be emotionally successful.
For that I practise two small things. Every day. My daughter comes home from school. The door opens, and my efficiency fires off straight away. “Wash your hands! Shoes away! And straight on to your homework.”
No hello. No warm look. No “how was it?”. Only demands. Before she has even taken her rucksack off. What she hears is: function, and then I love you. Is that what I want? No, it isn’t.
So I turn it round. The door opens – and the first thing is a smile. “Good to have you home.” “What did you get up to today?”
The rest comes later. Hands, shoes, homework. All in its own time. The first moment counts. And that one should be love. Not a to-do list. The second exercise is tiny. A single word. And it changes everything.
I replace “you are” with “you have”.
Not: you are lazy. But: you haven’t done this piece of work yet. Not: you are bad at maths. But: you haven’t quite got the hang of it yet. Not: you are cheeky. But: that was cheeky just now.
Not: you are clumsy. But: the spoon slipped there. It sounds like splitting hairs. It isn’t. “You are” hits the whole child. “You have” hits only the behaviour – and that she can change.
If I tell a child often enough that she is all fingers and thumbs, she stops making any effort at all when she makes something. Why would she? With hands like that it will never work anyway.
The label becomes the truth. So I stop sticking labels on my child. Two tiny things. A smile at the door. One word I swap.
Both of them say: you are good. You belong. And if you stumble: get up. Put your crown back on. Carry on.
That is exactly what I would have needed as a child. That is exactly what I pass on now.
Closing
I take it off.
The armour. The masks. The smile I hid behind. Piece by piece. It is hard, my hands are shaking. But I take it off. And underneath there is no hole. No failure. No little girl who isn’t enough.
Underneath there is light. My light. It was there the whole time. I step forward. Out of cover. Into the arena. Here I am. Look at me. With everything I am. With everything I can do. No better. No worse.
Yes, it can go wrong. Yes, they can laugh. Point the finger at me. I do it anyway. Because I want to do it. Because the people in the cheap seats, the ones who only watch and judge – their voice doesn’t count any more.
What counts is who stands in the arena. And that is me now. And there is somebody who sees me. My daughter.
She doesn’t see a perfect mother. She sees one who falls down and gets back up. Who shakes and goes anyway. That is exactly what she needs. Not a hero. A human being.
She won’t hide her light. Because I am showing her: you don’t have to hide it. The rucksack I have carried, heavy and full – I am not passing it on. It ends with me.
She sets off light. That is my greatest gift.
I am not afraid of my fear any more. It is still there. Of course it is. But I don’t walk around it any more. I walk straight through. And on the other side there is no heap of rubble. There is something I have built.
I am learning to handle my fear. I break nothing. I build. A foundation of respect. For myself. For everyone.
No fear. Only respect.
I live with my whole heart. Connected to everything. And my inner child? Walks beside me now. I will never leave it alone again. It was me I was waiting for. I am good enough. I’m doing really well.