A miscreation story. Growing up, I was not aware that what I…
By: Hope Eaton
Tags: Self, Change Your Life, Mindset, Personal Development, Transformation

Growing up, I was not aware that what I was being told I believed about myself, others, and the world was not “the truth.” I trusted the adults around me to tell me what the world was and what my place was in it.

I learned to be quiet, diligent, and studious as these were traits that were admired and for which I would receive validation. I learned that it was best if I pleased people. I was most valued when I achieved academically. I learned that girls were inferior to boys, and I wished with all of my might that I had been born male. I also learned to deny my intuition.

Throughout my childhood and into my early adulthood, I was told by my Mom that my brother and I shared the same father. Each birthday I would question it because I had a sense that this was not true, but my Mom would smile and deny it, telling me that I was silly. When I did blood-typing in high school Biology, I worked out that with her blood-type, mine and my brother’s that there was no way we had the same biological father. She told me that I must have done the exercise wrong. Anyone that knew me then knows that I would not make errors like that on my schoolwork. I was miss try-hard, people pleaser, perfector.

Still, I let it go, and I shoved my intuition down as far as I could, denying what it was trying to tell me and instead choosing to believe my Mom’s truth. I grew to believe that this intuitive knowledge was dangerous, deceitful, and would keep me from receiving love. I boxed it up and put it away so that it could no longer harm me.

Birthdays became something I dreaded as the kernel of doubt of my paternity would linger — trying to escape from the box I put it in. What became true for me was that I could not trust myself. I could not trust my dreams of who I wanted to become and what I wanted to accomplish, the person I would be in partnership with another, or the mother I longed to be.

Denying my gut took a toll on me, and I would spend any free time numbing myself binge drinking and avoiding looking myself in the mirror. The more my inner knowing tried to come out, the more I pressed it down, drinking more and more and giving up my childhood dream of becoming a doctor.

My roommates tried to stage interventions, I was called neurotic by some, and I continued to try to destroy that part of myself that kept screaming to be heard.

When I was 23, my Mom finally admitted that what my intuition had told me, what I chose to try to hide, was true. My brother and I did have different biological fathers. The relief of that moment was, however, quickly subsumed by another story that I came to believe was true: the fact that I was a conceived out of wedlock meant that I should be shamed and that if anyone knew they would love me less. I did not create this story, but it was passed to me from my Mom. 20+ years later, looking back, I can see that she was trying to protect her reputation and her relationship with my step-father. My mere existence was shameful, and I was unworthy and unloveable. I could not stand tall and own my origin story. Instead, I had to hide it for fear of being cast aside by the man that raised me and my Mom too.

This became the defining narrative for me years. I could not let anyone get to know me, or they would reject me. I was a mistake, and aberration, a shameful result of an evening that got out of hand. And I mustn’t let anyone know.

Part of my sharing this story here, now, is to bring it into the light to let it go. I have done so much mind, body, heart and soul work to be able to sit here now at my keyboard and claim that I am worthy, that I am loved, that I am perfectly imperfect. Yet this story was still in me, lurking to rise any time I made a mistake, was cross with my children, did not return a friend’s call. It was a dark kernel hiding in the shadows causing me to be ever vigilant of it proving to be true. Exposed to the light, I find that it is withering and the hypervigilance easing, as I write a new creation story for myself about the person I am becoming.