A note from Karen.
Listen to Karen’s note
The Name I Carried for 60 Years
When does a label become a mirror?
When I was six years old, my dad gave me a nickname.
“Stumpy.”
I don’t remember the first time he said it. I don’t remember where we were or what I was wearing. I don’t even know whether he thought it was funny or affectionate.
What I do remember is knowing what it meant. I was short. And somehow, in my six-year-old mind, I understood that being short wasn’t a good thing.
So I did what children do with the words grown-ups give them. I believed him.
The funny thing is, I don’t remember my father sitting me down and telling me there was something wrong with my body. I’m quite certain that conversation never happened.
It didn’t have to. One little word did the work.
“Stumpy.”
And eventually it became more than a nickname. It became a mirror.
I would stand next to other girls and notice their legs. I would try on clothes and notice how they looked on me compared with how I thought they were supposed to look. I would see photographs of myself and immediately look at my body.
Too short. Too heavy. Not shaped right.
I don’t think anyone was standing beside me saying those things. By then, they didn’t have to. I had learned how to say them to myself.
And that may be the strangest thing about labels. Eventually, the person who gave you the label doesn’t even have to be in the room. You carry it for them.
For years, I thought the woman I saw in the mirror was simply what I looked like.
I didn’t realize I was also seeing everything I had learned to believe about what I looked like.
There is a difference. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, about how easily a description becomes an identity.
The shy one. The difficult one. The pretty one. The smart one. The chubby one. The irresponsible one. The good daughter. The one who can’t handle money. The one who always takes care of everybody else. The old one.
Sometimes the labels are cruel. Sometimes they’re meant lovingly.
Sometimes they’re handed to us so casually that the person saying them forgets the conversation before the day is over. But we don’t.
We tuck the word somewhere inside ourselves. And then we begin collecting evidence that proves it was true.
The Law of Reflection
That’s what I have started thinking of as the Law of Reflection.
We don’t always see ourselves as we are. Sometimes we see ourselves through what we’ve been taught to believe about ourselves.
And if you look into that reflection for long enough, eventually you stop seeing the label at all. You just see you.
That’s the part I’m beginning to question.
Because I’m 66 years old now. My father is no longer here. That six-year-old little girl is certainly no longer standing in front of him.
And yet, every once in a while, I can still look in a mirror and see her interpretation of that one little word.
Sixty years is a very long time to answer to a name nobody is calling you anymore.
So lately, I’m trying something different.
When I catch myself looking in the mirror and immediately searching for what’s wrong, I try to notice the thought before I believe it.
Is that actually what I see?
Or is that what I learned to see?
I’m discovering those are two very different questions. Maybe we don’t have to argue with every old label. Maybe we don’t have to prove it wrong. Maybe we can simply stop answering to it.
Because the mirror was never really the problem. It was only reflecting the picture I brought to it.
And I think I’m finally ready to bring it a different one.
See it. Remember it. Become it.
Karen
