Elizabeth says most of her life was pretending.
Her mother raised her to be like herself, quiet and reserved. Elizabeth called her mother a queen, fitting for her temperament.
Her mother never laughed out loud or talked about certain topics considered taboo that most people feel free to talk about today. That reserved nature often led to Elizabeth bottling up the emotions, trauma and stress throughout her life.
Elizabeth could never show anger or hurt; she always hid it. Even when her mother was diagnosed with late-stage cancer, Elizabeth said they didn’t talk about it. She and her mother both pretended she would get up out of the hospital bed and walk out the same way she walked in.
“We never spoke about anything,” Elizabeth said.
Now, Elizabeth said she speaks up, laughs out loud and always says the truth. She hadn’t learned to share her thoughts or let go of anything until recently. She said she looks back on the years she bottled everything up and feels she wasted them.
But Elizabeth has finally found her outlet in kindness. She learned to let go of feeling like she had to hide herself and has reversed that by making a best friend in the lady’s bathroom or on a short elevator ride. When she walks down the street, she gives a passing stranger a smile.
She hopes with each encounter she leaves something positive behind. Making even a passing interaction into a meaningful one is something she lives by.
Elizabeth held a pink, torn envelope with her elegantly cursive handwriting sprawled in black ink in every direction. She came prepared, as she had been taught to be, to talk about letting go.
“The last thing I wrote down was, ‘It’s important to let go of hurtful feelings, the mental and physical pain as much as you can and I know I’ll never let go of my family and friends,’” she said.
