Force of Nature - Updated
*I’ve updated this chapter - love to hear your thoughts!
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Force Of Nature
To say a person is a force of nature means the person is a very strong personality or character. In short, a person that is full of energy, unstoppable, and unforgettable. This is either a blessing or a curse or maybe both.
I am told, my birth was filmed for a documentary on natural childbirth.
I was a stunt baby, a stand in for another baby, who perhaps was having second thoughts about whatever they agreed to learn “down here” and decided to check out early.
The documentary crew had been following another woman for her entire pregnancy and in the last moment, well things, sadly, moved into a not so “natural” birth and so they asked my mom, giving birth to her sixth baby if they could film her from the waist down. They also offered her money and with six mouths to feed, she said;
“Sure, film whatever you want.”
I clearly had no issues dropping onto this reality and came flying into this world with lights, cameras and action, ready to rumble.
When I gave birth to my own children, within seconds of their arrival, they showed me exactly who they would be this turn of their play in this reality, and I clearly arrived letting everyone in my life know exactly who I intended to be. First impressions really do reveal a lot about a person.
I was called a Force of Nature from the moment I was born and it stuck.
Unstoppable and unforgettable.
Strong personality- Check
Full of energy – check
Tenacious and unwilling to yield – check.
Being this way is a double edged sword. People usually love your honesty and authentic way of being, your curiosity and willingness to dig deep into any subject. Until you exhaust them, because the world is wrapped in nuance and nothing is ever black and white and so the quest for the “answer” is never over.
No one truly loves a force of nature. We are destructive by definition and need to be tempered and controlled as early as possible, lest we destroy the carefully crafted narrative this world has built.
From day one, I just refuse to play the game according to the rules.
I always asked the right question at the wrong time. I questioned everything.
Why do I have to eat this? Why do I have to go to sleep now? Why do I have to wear that dress?
And as I grew up and began to see the hypocrisy and injustice in the world, I questioned that too. Always at the most inappropriate moment.
Like when I asked the Priest why he was wearing a dress but other men couldn’t?
Or the pastor at my friends church, why only people at his church got to go to heaven, if, in fact, everyone is praying to the same God?
When I was eight years old, in the midst of a deeply traumatic experience that would shape my entire existence in this reality, my Dad gave me a book.
The Art of War by Sun Tzu.
Who gives an eight year old that book?
Someone who new I needed the skills of a General if I was going to survive the war I was waging with this life.
Resilience is another adjective given to those of us called “A force of nature” by our third grade teachers.
Something that has probably saved me from falling deep into the dark side of my soul, as, even now at 53, I am still questioning everything. Poking holes in the blinders most people wear just to survive this world.
And as my babies are now teenagers, I feel my parents pain and frustration as I just wish one time, they would accept the sentence I promised myself I would never utter to them.
“Because I said so.”
Even as the words leave my lips, I know they will be met with the defiance of a teenager who knows everything.
Most of the time they surprise me with their wisdom, actually.
And so, yes. I embraced my calling and am passing it on to my spawns. Because right now, the world needs them to be unstoppable, tenacious, unyielding and willing to speak up and ask the hard questions.
They need to brave enough to rip off the blinders and see it all, the good, the bad, the ugly and most importantly the beautiful.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be satisfied with an answer and I think that’s the point of this journey. We are explorers after all, in a world that would prefer we just accept the
“Because I said so”
As horrific as they can sometimes be, the forces of nature may bring chaos at the start, but afterwards, there is usually a lot more clarity and calm.
Force of Nature - Updated
Your post resonates deeply with me. I went to a Good News Club in my neighborhood where they would tell us Bible stories. If you memorized the verses they gave as homework you would get an extra cookie the next week. They offered a bus on Sundays to go to their non denominational Christian church so I went. There was something about being there that made the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. As an adult I recognize that as my hypocrisy meter. I was between 8-9 at the time. They told us that churches that prayed to statues were wrong because they were not praying to Jesus. Hmmm. Then when they were talking about sending missionaries out into the world to teach everyone about Jesus I raised my hand and asked what would happen to those children in China who didn’t believe in Jesus when they died. They told me they would not go to Heaven. I told them that my Jesus would not do that. I never went back.