“What you are authentically is alright. It’s the shame that kills you. Believing that you are unworthy of love and belonging or that who you are authentically is a sin or is wrong, is deadly.”

—Laverne Cox

I wanted to use this post to get away from the subject of moral injury for a little bit, yet still keep things related to research and preparing for the upcoming Summer Research Symposium at CSUMB. I have been given a tremendous honor and privilege to deliver an oral presentation at the symposium this Friday, which is both really exciting and slightly terrifying. Also, I am excited to report that I will be heading on a flight to Ft. Worth, Texas to visit Brite Divinity School’s “Soul Repair Center” on Monday, where I will have the honor of interviewing the Rev. Dr. Rita Brock, one of the authors of the book, Soul Repair. With my mind on so many different moving parts—on what I still have yet to finish up, edit, and perfect, and all that I have to anticipate about how this event will go—I got to thinking about how honestly I am right were I need to be at this point and time in preparing for presenting my research.

As Malachi reminded me in one of his blog posts a couple of weeks go, making mistakes is a very essential and important part of the research process. Speaking from my own personal experience, I am a person that very much doesn’t like to fail.

In other words, I am afraid of failing and letting others see my flaws.

When I was in elementary school, I struggled greatly with my writing. At the time, I didn’t much appreciate all that writing has to offer, due to my negative associations with it. I would write as hard as I could, smudging graphite into lined paper, as I etched my responses to the boring prompts into existence. Thinking I did my best, I was always met with surprise with all of the things I had to fix with my writing: incomplete thoughts, run-on sentences, different grammatical issues, and, the most difficult aspect, the lack of an authentic voice.

My writing, I began to see, was a flaw of mine. And that’s how I learned to face it.

My teacher for both fifth and sixth grade was so instrumental in the development of my writing. After building such a negative association with writing, my teacher picked up on what I needed to really fix about writing: I had to learn to write with passion instead of with this built up negativity. My teacher, after going over one of my previous essays with me, sat me down at got me to view writing from a very different lens:

“Alex, what you’re missing here is that you don’t seem to have something you like to write about. Do you have something you like to write about? How about your violin music; can you try to write an essay about that?”

I immediately got inspired and began to write, and write, and write, AND WRITE! all about what I knew about music. I had so much fun with this essay that it completely transformed how I looked at my own writing. I started to infuse what I had to say about something into my own authentic writing voice and style, and thus learned to overcome my struggle with writing. Six years down the line, I found myself scoring a 5 on the AP Literature exam my senior year of high school. To this day, writing has been one of my greatest triumphs. And it absolutely required me to fail before I found what I was missing.

Sometimes we learn from our flaws.

With other things in my own life, I’ve had to reframe how I view aspects of who I am. For me, one of the things I’ve had to wrestle with is my sensitivity. When I was little, I was constantly hounded for being a sensitive boy. I would often be told things like “boys don’t cry,” “boys don’t hang around their mothers,” and other things from concerned relatives and other adults. I was known for wearing my heart on my sleeve and I always saw this as a reason to be ashamed of who I am.

This led to me feeling a lot of insecurity growing up, as I constantly felted judged up against this gender stereotype that I didn’t seem to fit. This naturally led to my being bullied a lot when I was younger for being “soft.” Yet my being sensitive has opened the door for me to be truly caring with people, especially in difficult and trying moments of their lives. It has opened the door for people to trust me in being authentically vulnerable. I have been given a true gift in being privileged to experience the lives of people around me. And I wouldn’t trade this gift for the world.

Sometimes, our flaws become our biggest strengths.

With my research, I have been very worried about making mistakes and failing. This isn’t the mentality to be fostering about research! From my past, I have become equipped and ready to make mistakes and to grow from failure. I shouldn’t look fearfully at research.

Making mistakes and living authentically into who we are are deeply important parts to living an honest human experience. But in order to live honestly, we must be prepared to fail. We must be prepared to challenge ourselves to counter what people may think or say, as well as our own misconceptions. We must live fully into our “flaws,” embracing our whole selves, especially when our flaws turn out to not be flaws after all.

I challenge you to be open to experiencing failure. I give you permission to fail, and to fail horridly! No matter who you are or what you have come to see as a negative aspect of who you are, your experience matters. Embracing flaws must also be part of that experience.

For your own response: what is a time that you’ve struggled with failure? What is one of your own “flaws” that you’ve had to wrestle with?

May you find peace in the stressful weeks ahead. I know you’ll do wonderfully 🙂