Becoming Well With Liz Tafadzwa

Hello BW tribe. How has your week been going? If it hasn’t been great be encouraged to know that this too shall pass and if it’s going great be fully present for all of it. To my new readers, welcome! You are already loved here and to my regular readers welcome back tribe.

When was the last time you felt you were operating from a place of authenticity? Is your social media reflective of who you are? Most importantly are you the same person on and offline? Can we discern what your values and beliefs are from having a 15-minute conversation with you, or we are left confused about your values based on your words and mindset?  Are you real or pretentious in your relationships? Can three people who know you say the same thing about your personality if they never met each other? Are you stable? These are questions that you are I wrestle with from time to time. We crave to be authentic but are afraid to embrace it because of the risk of rejection, abandonment, or disapproval. When trauma is added to the mix, it significantly reduces our chances of showing up as our authentic selves.  

It’s only this summer(2024) did I discover the link between dysfunction and inauthenticity. I said this in my last post, but the most authentic people you and I know are often the healthiest people and the most inauthentic people are always unhealthy to some level. Authentic does not mean perfect. It just means you are the same person to everyone and you are not afraid of losing people because of your authenticity. It’s embracing your complexity. If you like a certain fashion style, you wear that and if you like certain books, TV shows, or music genres you like that and don’t feel pressured to like what everyone else likes. If you prefer to spend most of your time indoors you don’t feel the pressure to cave in and pretend to be an outdoorsy person to try fit in.

 Authentic people stand out because pretense is the norm across the human race. We think social media is the originator of the culture of fakeness, but when I hear the stories of my grandmothers and their friends, I am quickly reminded that we are more alike as humans than we are different.  Authentic people strike you positively and they are often memorable because they are hard to manipulate or take advantage of. They are also not needy and can stand on their two feet when necessary without rallying other people to do everything with them. They are incredibly self-assured and their inner security tends to intimidate dysfunctional and insecure people. They are undoubtedly intriguing and even though they are often misunderstood they carry potent influence. Authentic people also acknowledge and own what they are good at and accept where they are weak without carrying any shame. 

When you are mentally or emotionally unhealthy you are not going to be yourself. I can confirm this from personal experience. I am sure when you have gone to visit an ill friend, family member, partner, colleague, or even yourself, they often say “they feel more like themselves” when they are back to health. When they are still recovering they say, “I am starting to feel more like myself.” Soul sickness suppresses who you really are. You abandon your real personality because you want to be liked and approved by people who you don’t even like themselves and you hide your gifts because you don’t want to appear boastful. 

You dress in clothes you feel uncomfortable wearing and force yourself to watch TV shows you are not interested in and read books that don’t resonate with you because you want to appear relevant and moving with the times. You shrink yourself when you are around a certain race because you believe you are below them because of your skin color while treating those who look like you poorly because you think poorly of yourself. You wear yourself out trying to do something you are not gifted in because you think the one you got is insignificant and won’t give you the attention and affirmation you crave. I know what I am saying is a lot of people’s reality and to be honest, is my reality sometimes. 

Naturally, speaking is a gift God gave me, and those closest to me and who have seen me in my authentic state also define me as a leader. I am still unearthing the latter, but speaking is not something I ever saw as distinct because I have always been an outspoken person since I was a child(maybe a little too much). The childhood stories my parents, grandmothers, aunts, and uncles tell me sometimes make me cringe because I have no idea where I dared to call out grown people lol. When people started accusing me of being a chatterbox or too assertive I started to associate speaking with shame and tried to be a quiet person for a long time. That left me as an angry teenager who had lost a big part of herself.

 I also struggle to operate in environments where there is pretense, role-playing, and dancing around a problem that everyone knows is there, but would rather not talk about to maintain false peace. I was and still am the one who often calls out dysfunction, gets straight to the problem and faces it head-on. As a result, growing up my family and friends described and expected me to be an extrovert. Speaking out was not very difficult for me so they assumed I would thrive by being constantly around people. It didn’t help that I didn’t love myself growing up paired with low self-esteem so I gave in to that expectation for over a decade. That put me on the path to play along with being an “extrovert.” I was always anxious if I had spent the day around large crowds and in times of crisis and conflict everyone looked to me to speak up for the group. I did not enjoy back-to-back friendship group gatherings and jumping straight into a family gathering that I had to cook and host. Towards the end of my high school career, I was starting to entertain the thought that maybe I was an introvert because I could not understand the inner conflict I was experiencing. It was still hard to admit because in my sick mind I thought if i accepted that I was an introvert, it meant disappointing people who I desparately needed approval from.  

Six years later, at the age of 24 a year after I officially started therapy for the first time in my life, I finally and joyfully accepted that I am an introvert. It brought me tremendous freedom and peace and seeing a handful of people who have similar gifts to mine who are blatant introverts sealed the deal for me. I recall listening to a speech in my Philosophy class in, the winter semester of my sophomore year, and that TEDX speaker not only got a standing ovation but his speech has over 10 million views. The charming, old man was a serious introvert something he gracefully mentioned in his talk several times.

Martin Luther King Jr, Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela, Brene Brown, Sarah Jakes Roberts, and Mpoomy Ledwaba are examples of world-class speakers who were or are introverts. That helped me embrace how God uniquely wired me.  In addition, I felt God say to me “Yes I wired you this way and I also gave you xx gifts and it all works together if you just become and do what I called you to do. Release what you think the world wants you to show up as and be exactly who I made you to be. My creation does not need to be helped or tampered with, so stop it.” I have never looked back since that day. My junior year of college was the first full year where I began allowing myself to show up as me and it has been a hard journey. Not because it’s painful, but because I have to survive people’s disappointments, narratives, and expectations they had of me. However, the growing pains have also come with freedom. I no longer feel the need to be the loudest in the room, boss people around, or speak first. When I open my mouth people are drawn to listen because that’s the ability and anointing God gave me.

 For you it could be cooking, dancing, writing, singing,  serving, playing an instrument, fixing stuff, making money, drawing, fashion, coding, leading, designing, executing ideas, science, numbers, hair, makeup, panel beating, event planning, interior design,  etc. Whatever gift/s God gave you, they work best when they are not only refined but also combined with the different elements that make up YOU. No matter how weird a quirk you have feels, when you permit yourself to be who you were truly made to be, the best parts of you shine and you embrace the worst parts of you.

Just because healing and unlearning is hard does not mean you should give up. I have declined a lot of invites from the few friends I have on campus because I needed ME time. Through out my undergrad college career I haven’t joined certain clubs or classes that don’t align with my values, refine my gifts or skills I want to acquire regardless of whose joining. After more than a decade of singing, I left choir after a semester because the style of music did not resonate with me. I ate alone in the dining hall most of the time in my junior year even when I got numerous invites to join other people, but pretending so I could feel included was no longer an interest of mine. Weekends where I spend most of the time indoors refresh me and I feel ready for the week and those packed with meetings, concerts, and fulfillment of other unimportant obligations park me on the sidewalk of anxiety and restlessness.

 I will always love people and am good with them too, but since letting go of unhealthy and false mindsets and learning productive self-regulation exercises, I’m noticing that I show up in my relationships. I have years of unlearning, relearning, and learning ahead of me, but the progress I have made has taught me more than reading another book about trauma. My best friend of 15 years and I have a refreshing level of honesty, transparency, and permission to be ourselves in our friendship, my twin sister taught me how to set and stick to my boundaries and she affirms who God truly made me to be and the one who has seen me evolve from an incredibly dysfunctional and spiritually shallow individual to becoming healthy and burning aflame for God without being a dangerous religious fanatic. My relationship with my brother is one built on honesty, respect, and mutuality and my mother has learned to parent me with an approach that compliments my personality and I feel safe enough to be honest about my emotions and fears with her. There is no question I have that I can’t ask my Dad and his depth speaks to my soul and stimulates my thinking at levels I desire to be at.

I was this vulnerable today tribe because I wanted you to see the power of fighting for your spiritual, emotional, mental, and relational wellness. I will be 26 in exactly 2 months from today and I have learned a lot about life, myself, and humans. Getting older naturally makes you less judgemental, widens your perspective, humbles you, and forces you to be more reflective of the person you are becoming and the journey you have walked. What I now know for sure is you will never be as effective as you can be until you are authentic. We have all heard this, but God does not bless who you pretend to be. He blesses who you really are. I have seen this to be true in my own life. Anything I have ever done from a place of inauthenticity blew up in my face. This is what has also allowed me to remain true to God’s purpose for my life and my convictions. I want you to be able to do the same, but first, you have to be healthy.

  You deserve to show up as your authentic self, but wanting it without seeing the link with your wellness state will continue to leave you stuck and frustrated. I need you to fight to get healed and whole. It won’t happen automatically or overnight because you didn’t get sick in 2 days and I promise and guarantee you that it will be hard and lonely at times. I want to be very honest about that. It’s hard being sick and phony as much as it is hard getting healthy and authentic. Don’t fret about those who will reject you because you have decided to be authentic. Thank God for them because they were never your people, to begin with. Furthermore, those who God has called you to reach and help were never going to identify and find you if you remained sick and inauthentic. I love you and I will see you on the next one.