Читать книгу Heart, Sass & Soul - Greta Solomon - Страница 9

Introduction

When my mother was a young girl, she played the piano. And when her family moved, they took her beloved piano with them. But it wouldn’t fit in the entrance to their new flat. They tried every which way to get that hunk of wood up the stairs, but it wouldn’t budge. And in that moment, her piano playing life ended—it just didn’t fit. Fast forward to around twenty years later and she was determined that her children would play the piano. Each of us duly went to lessons, but we never found the magic that she had experienced. That was her path, not ours, and we could never replicate the love and joy she felt for the music of the keys.

The path to self-love is difficult to navigate if it is littered with thwarted dreams and silenced music. It’s no longer made-to-measure Valentino. Instead, it’s more hand-me-down from an aunt two sizes too big, or from that whippet-thin cousin whose thigh is the size of your wrist. It doesn’t fit. It tugs. It pulls. It itches. It scratches.

We can also pick at our wounds, compulsively, like the urge to pick, pick, at a scab until the freeing feeling of getting it off is replaced by the wincing rawness of unhealed skin. This is when we can become susceptible to criticism. Throwaway comments, insensitive observations, and downright nastiness can fester, and if there’s no creative buffer, they can take hold. They can worm their way into your life, your psyche, your experience. Like a piece of wood made gnarled and moldy, it can seem as though your self-expression is tangled. The unwanted thoughts, fearful tries, and inevitable failures that are par for the course when expressing yourself can seem like clear signs that it’s “game over.”