Thread by @iproposethis

Have you ever heard a song lyric that legitimately changed the way you see the world?

Mine is from Olive Hearts by @thebowerbirds.

"Cheers to the miles it took to get here.
Cheers to the the nerve it takes to forget who we are."

It's not the whole song, it's those lines.

I grew up with an idea of who I was, what my value was, & what I could do....

I never won anything, never made a team or a special choir or anything. I was just not special aside from, according to others, being very pretty, and later, "sexy".

There was NO part of me that questioned that. I loved to sing, but never believed I "deserved" to be on stage...

I loved to write, but inside my head when I wrote, I heard a voice saying, "who do you think you are expecting others would like this?"

"Who do you think you are?" was like a curse, a reverse-mantra. It was with me every step I took. Shame & the voices of boys I grew up with...

When I wrote a draft of a novel in 2007, the entire process was shame-inducing. I figured everyone would hate it, and my mom was the first one to let me know it sucked.

It probably did. How could it not, really?

And that affirmed for me what I knew - my job was to be pretty.

Then I heard that song. I didn't hear all the lyrics, just those lines.

It was revolutionary. I could forget who I thought I was. I could do a different thing. So I did.

"Cheers to the miles it took to get here.
Cheers to the the nerve it takes to forget who we are.

Seems so ridiculous to have a song affect you like that, but it did.

I really, really had to work hard to shed the garbage (I'm still doing it) but I started writing, finished the book, got a writing job, editing jobs, etc, slowly weaned my identity away from beauty.