I Understood the Assignment
A Hug and A Mug
Hi, Hello, Friends! 🤓
ICU Talks is a Charlotte-based nonprofit that’s doing something real in our community. They create spaces for people to talk about mental health without shame, and they back that up with actual resources, if you need it. This week they had an event that was moth-style, meaning you get up, no notes, five minutes, and you tell your story. If you’re local or just want to know they exist: icutalks.org.
“Wait, it’s a competition?!”
“You can’t have notes?!”
I found out when I got there. ICU Talks, moth-style, judges and score cards and a winner at the end. I had shown up with my travelers notebook with one page of very short points, a ginger chew I didn’t eat, and “stay in the room” written on my hand in black sharpie marker with a little heart underneath because I needed the reminder visible.
I didn’t show up to win anything.
I showed up admittely mostly because Kim asked me to, and because somewhere in the last year of safety-building and resourcing and learning what parts even are, I had decided that this story doesn’t get to stay only inside me anymore.
I showed up because in little and big ways these two women have built safety with me and helped me feel included slowly into their spaces and community.
I didn’t over prepare, I didn’t watch 38 videos about what a moth-style event is. I didn’t keep it a secret, but I also didn’t overshare. I shared with those who are safe.
So I got on the stool. Under the lights. In front of actual humans.
My voice shook. I paused closed my eyes because I felt scared. I said the words anyway. I kept going, with my eyes closed.
”I was not nurtured as a baby. And if you were to ask my mom about it, she would deliver it in a very sacrificial way, as if it was nothing. As if my greatest wound was nothing."
I told them about being conceived in violence. My mom sent me to daycare at four weeks old because she had to work. It wasn't even legal yet, six weeks is the minimum. She's never told it as a wound. She tells it as sacrifice, as survival, as what a struggling single mom had to do. And both things can be true. She did what she had to do. And I missed something crucial in those first weeks that I didn't have words for until much later.
About 37 years of cycling through every version of abuse and self-destruction before I finally landed on the thing I was supposed to learn, which was embarrassingly simple and also the hardest thing I’ve ever done:
Stay in the room.
I wrote it on my hand because I had never been on that stage before and I needed something to orient me if I started to leave my body and mind. I’ve been leaving rooms my whole life without knowing I was doing it. Dissociation doesn’t feel like leaving. It feels like nothing, which is the point. You don’t know you’re gone until someone hands you a map back and you realize you haven’t been in your own body in decades.
When I stepped off that stage, I whispered to myself that I already won.
Because I did it. Voice shaking, pauses and all. And I did it while staying in the room the whole fucking time. In that specific room, in that specific body, on that specific night.
My two teens in the audience listening, the people I feel most seen and most terrified by, sitting in the audience while I said out loud where I came from.
This photo makes me cry. Because it was my children’s view, they took this photo. I couldn’t even see in the audience because of the lights and I just stayed with myself, not the audience.
But, I made sure beforehand that I knew where they would be sitting. I needed to know where my people would be, even if I couldn’t see them, that way I knew they were there.
Kim: "We would like to just honor the vulnerability, the inspiration, the courage that….. Lauren…"
ME “ Shut the fuck up, NO WAY.. I won..”
The prize was a hug. Kim announced that before anyone even spoke. We're a nonprofit, that's all we got. I laughed when she said it. Except as it turns out, being hugged over and over that night was everything.
Not the mug they gave me at the end, not the judges’ decision, not any of it.
I didn’t even rush to pull away! I stayed IN THE HUG.
Also, the mug is really fucking cool and I have already been using it for my hot tea!
I wasn’t alone. I told part of my story. I stayed. That’s the win.
I understood the assignment.
I am not my past.
I am the story.
I choose to keep writing.
💌 Thank you for meeting me here, friends!
A la Luna, 🌙
Lauren 🪻🍀
I have been working on a creative little project over at [freckledlore.com]
She is a work-in-progress just like I am. I hope to meet you there. 🤓