Be the Worm
It was the day after a storm. The ground still damp. You could smell the memory of the rain reborn as asphalt steam. A long, fat worm glistened in the sun as she slowly crept her way across my driveway. Her wet shadow trailed behind. She had a long way to go to get back to soil. Still, she seemed in no hurry, scooting millimeter by millimeter across the coarse concrete before her moisture dried up and with it, her life.
I saw her before I got into the car. I had a brief thought to pick her up and move her to the grass but didn’t want to feel the squirmy wet body in my hands. In a hurry, I hoped the tire wouldn’t hit her, knowing it was likely. At the bottom of my driveway, I saw two halves of her writhing in pain as I drove into the street. Why did I do that?
Returning home, I walked past half a worm cooked into the concrete. No sign of the other half. I had seen her. I had the instinct to help. Discomfort and hurry took over.
Inside, I found my daughter stepping over the metal hammock leg on our back porch for the hundredth time. Big steps for her little legs. She took her time going back and forth, trying not to trip. After a couple of minutes, I started cheering her on, and then she started clapping after each attempt. She has the instinctual determination of the worm, calmly inching her way closer. Never getting discouraged after tripping. No awareness of failure. Just the next attempt, and the next.
I love how sure of herself she is. Why does that feel so fragile, so fleeting? Like something the world is already lining up to take from her.
We talk a lot about growth mindset in school, but our culture doesn’t reward it. It rewards performance. It rewards polish. Students receive a final grade at the end of a unit with no acknowledgement of where they started and how far they came. When the growth mindset doesn’t reach the scheduled milestone, we are rewarded with shame. That shame is a current. Patient, invisible, relentless. It doesn’t announce itself. It just pulls. At some point, you stop noticing you’re no longer on the bank, you’re downstream in the rapids convinced the current is you.
How can I, with generational training in perfectionism and people pleasing, teach my girl that she doesn’t have to be perfect to be liked? It’s even okay not to be liked. In fact, she will be more free if she doesn’t care about that external validation. She can like herself and be in control of which thoughts she gives weight to, without needing anyone else for that.
Not realizing she was answering this worry, my mom sent me a video of winter Olympian Eileen Gu. In an interview, an inspired reporter asked Gu, “Do you think before you speak? Because you respond so quickly with articulate and insightful responses.” Gu lit up. She explained that she spends a lot of time in her head, observing her thoughts, actively training her mind, the way you’d train a muscle. Noting that our minds are flexible, not stagnant. They can be influenced. And we can do the influencing.
“You are capable of becoming who you want to be!” she exclaimed. She articulated the idea of mindfulness that I’d been circling. The ability to watch yourself think. To notice when an emotion is trying to write the whole story and choose whether to let it. That video showed me what it looks like when the shame current doesn’t win. A 22-year-old who never stopped moving at her own pace. I want that for my daughter. I want it, still, for myself. Not that I’m a LaVona Fay Golden trying to train my Tonya Harding into being the best athlete. But, it is rare to see a young woman excited to become a student of her own mind.
Growing up, I was not taught to be student of my mind. To get out of the river of thoughts and feelings and observe them from the bank. I’m starting to see the costs of learning this late. Swimming desperately to the bank before my daughter is old enough to watch me get swept downstream.
This is something I’m working on in therapy, spotting when my thoughts and feelings take the steering wheel and attempt to write a narrative that might not be true. Observe the first thought: I’m the only one holding this all together. Inhale…2…3…4… I don’t remember being so quick to anger before having a kid. I’m still in that 2-year window of hormones trying to get back to normal. After that, I might have to reconcile that I have become someone who is quick to anger. Hold...2…3…4… When something goes wrong, I am supposed to pause and question if my first thought is the right narrative. Exhale…2…3…4… My daughter is the rock that breaks the current. She gets the best me. Hold…2…3…4… The next person downstream gets what’s left.
My daughter twirls in her dino onesie. No music. Just her giving into the song in her heart. I study her leg muscles as she spins, her tiny bare feet step into my memory.
She still has that original certainty. The worm’s unhurried confidence. I want her to always be this free. I want to protect her from the external pressures that make her question her intuition. Pressures that turn this natural default of singing and dancing into a hurried woman. I want to pull myself out of the river so that when she looks up, she sees someone who knows how.
Inhale…maybe, there is a way for me to fend off the societal forces of being a “good” worker, a “good” mother that keep dunking me into the river of my thoughts. A way for me to navigate the rapids of getting shoes on, diaper changed, daycare bags ready, dogs fed, work tasks done, house maintained, being a thoughtful partner, relearning boundaries, finding time for exercise and self-care. Exhale... maybe I can start trusting my instincts and pull myself back onto that damn bank.
Before I take her down with me.
Inhale…maybe it’s okay that I’m learning it late, grasping desperately for a hanging limb to pull myself out of the water. Inhale…Yes, I am learning it late. Not too late. Exhale…
And she will learn it sooner.