Uproot toxic word legacies and embrace your full self.

Did you grow up as I did, with the expression, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me?”

At first, this refrain seems to make good sense. If their words are having an effect, then it must be our fault for letting the harmless words affect us.

Well, 50 years later, I can say that words do matter – and that what is said to us, or about us, has a tremendous impact. Especially when we are young.

I remember when I was in the 1st grade and the other girls teased me. They said that my short Afro made me look like a boy, they said I was too tall and “talked white.”

I felt terrible when I heard the words those girls said. These words went into my skin, affected my eyes, my mind, and changed how I saw myself. Now I could only see myself as NOT pretty. I became ashamed of being smart, tall and powerful.

When I came home and told my mom what the other girls said, she replied, “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you.”

I do not remember her saying words that would have healed, like, “My dear you are beautiful and I love the way you speak.”

Yes, my mom taught me to enunciate, to speak clearly, study hard and get straight A’s. She told me that I should not care what those girls thought.

But I did. I knew that the words were searing into my mind, my body, affecting and poisoning my sight, my mind, and that my mother did not know the antidote. In fact, she continued to poison me, as I grew to be 5’8″ to her 5’3″.

When we went shopping for shoes, my mom used to get frustrated. She would say, “Your feet are so big.” She told me my hands were too big and not ladylike.

I wanted to believe that, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” And yet, these words did hurt.

The poet, civil rights activist and memoirist Maya Angelou said that

“Words are things.
You must be careful,
careful about calling people out of their names, using racial pejoratives
and sexual pejoratives and all that ignorance,
don’t do that.
Someday we’ll be able to measure the power of words.
I think they are things
I think they get on the walls
they get in your wallpaper
they get in your rugs
in your upholstery
in your clothes
and finally Into you.”

When I listen to Maya Angelou speak about words being things, I believe that she knew what my mother did not know, that words shape us.

Words helped me to dismember myself. To break myself down.

Those words from my childhood took root, and made an easy resting place for adulthood insecurities, like imposter syndrome, to flourish and impede my development.

Maya says that someday we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think that we already can measure their power in the ways that we repeat phrases to ourselves like,

Who do you think you are?
No one wants to hear that.
That’ll never work.

Critiques like this soak into our skin, our bones, our skulls and re-emerge when we face new challenges, raise our children, and strive to reach our potential.

Now, decades later, I understand the paradox – how much my mom loved me, how much she wanted me to succeed, to go further than she ever dreamed, and yet, she also used words that diminished me. It is hard to accept these contradictions.

But what happens when I face it? When I stop wanting my mom to be the one that showed me how marvelous I am?

What happens when I allow Maya Angelou to be one of the people who reminds me how MUCH I am, who allows me to embrace the largeness of myself and accept that I may be too much for some people, but I have the right, the responsibility, the pleasure, the blessing to be my full self.

I am as much a part of Maya Angelou’s lineage as I am my mother’s. When I read Maya’s work so many years ago, she was giving me permission and inspiration to write and love my story, my journey, my poetry, myself.

What does it feel like to embrace the polarities of who you are without self-hatred, but rather deep compassion?

I looked up the origins of the sticks and stones phrase and the first account was in 1862, in the Christian Recorder, an African American publication. No doubt, it was meant to be a talisman, a protection against racist speech.

And yet, this “spell” is ineffective.

How can we detoxify ourselves from the poison of words that have taken root in our bodies? I have a teacher who says we are wounded in community and we must be healed in community.

I believe this to be true. I have had many moving experiences in which friends, clients, and others mirror back to me the beauty and joy of what they see when I live and embody my full self. Their words are a healing and transforming force.

Words are things and words shape us.

Nourishing words from my trusted community help to heal me, rebirth me, and deeply inhabit the value of my unique and quirky perspectives. Slowly, I release the compulsion to fit in, and accept my powerful distinctness.

Who do you turn to for that mirroring? What words will put you back together? What words help you reconnect with yourself?

What can emerge in the spaciousness of accepting that words are things and words shape us? I am deeply committed to being a word sorcerer, to spelling my future, and healing the community as the community has been healing me. Join me.

If you need support to uproot toxic word legacies, reach out for a free coaching consultation.