Shine

From very early on, I knew my eldest brother was the smart one. My mom told us. He was gifted. He was advanced beyond his peers. He was mature and capable and had gifts well beyond those of my middle brother and I. There were other niches for us to fill, but being intellectually gifted was taken.

My middle brother became the rogue, independent-thinking activist. I became the only girl, the artist, and the socialite. We owned our titles, our roles, until we left for college.

But not being the smart one is a truth I had accepted until very recently. As my kids get older, I think about the way my perceptions of who they are might drastically alter who they come to be. My mom decided for us very early on where our gifts lay and I was complicit in her story, and the limitations it established for me, until very recently.

Unpacking childhood is complicated because it's difficult to determine which narratives are yours and which are your parents. We wear them without even realizing they don't belong to us. We carry them through our interactions with others. We study a group of individuals in the room and look to fill a niche like the one we did in our own family because it's comfortable there; I know exactly the expression to put on display, precisely the self-deprecating joke to pair it with, to have an entire room bonding over my hilarity. I know how to fill that role and I do it without so much as a thought.

And the most earnest truth is that I have never minded being the peacemaker because it is a part of my nature. Yearning to put people at ease is something I feel intuitively. And so it is not with resentment that I reflect back on my early years, but with a deep sense of empathy for the little girl who was told over and over and over again about the brilliance of a sibling to the point that she stopped believing in her own merit or capabilities.

How much of that little girl's life was defined by trying to prove that she was good enough and smart enough and maybe she could never be number one but she could at least come in at a close second? 

I hope I am able to remain neutral in the coming years, to let my children define their own existence, and to build their own way forward. I hope I support them when they need it, but don't define them in the process. I want to be the biggest possible cheerleader to each of them, without preferentially picking one over the others.

There are infinitesimal ways to bring light to the world and a million ways to shine. Each of my kids will do this differently (they already do), but I hope one is never fed so much fuel that their brightness diminishes the radiance of the others.