You Are Never Too Much

There are parts of ourselves we learn to quiet down.

Sometimes nobody even has to tell us to do it. We notice what makes other people uncomfortable. We learn what gets questioned, what needs explaining, and what might be easier if we just soften it a little. So we do. We make ourselves a little easier to understand.

I’ve been thinking about that today because there are parts of myself I’ve wondered if I needed to tone down.

My connection to the land. The rocks that somehow always end up in my pockets. The things I notice that other people might walk right by. The way intuition has always been part of how I move through the world. Even Appalachia itself.

For a while, I wondered if leaning too far into that part of myself would put me in a box. I didn’t want to become one thing. I didn’t want the art over here, the intuitive work over there, and Appalachia somewhere else entirely.

But today I caught myself wondering something different.

What if it isn’t a box at all? What if it’s me finally claiming who I am?

Because there’s a difference between allowing ourselves to grow and editing ourselves into something that’s more comfortable for everyone else. Growth expands us. Editing makes us smaller. And I think sometimes we can sit inside a cage we built ourselves and completely forget that the door has been open the whole time.

I’m beginning to understand that freedom isn’t necessarily about becoming somebody new. Sometimes it’s finally allowing all the pieces that were already there to belong together. For me, that’s the intuitive work and the art. It’s the land and the animals. It’s old things with stories attached to them. It’s Middle Island Creek and the rocks I bring home from it. It’s the strange lines and symbols that find their way onto paper. It’s noticing something everybody else walked past and stopping because, for whatever reason, I need to look closer.

Some of those things I understand immediately. Some of them I don’t. But I’ve stopped believing I need to explain every one of them before I’m allowed to claim it as part of who I am.

The art doesn’t have to be separate from the intuitive work. The intuitive work doesn’t have to be separate from my connection to the land. Appalachia isn’t something I have to carefully portion out so there’s not too much of it. They don’t have to live in separate boxes. Neither do I.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been learning all along. I don’t need to become less of myself to make the whole thing easier for someone else to understand. And there is a lot of freedom in finally knowing that.