The Mark of Authenticity

Nature shows us how to live genuinely

Whew. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve written anything! My last Substack hit your inbox a little more than a year ago, and while I intended to be consistent, life circumstances got the best of me, and I’ve been hunkered down, just trying to survive the day-to-day. The state of our country and some significant challenging family dynamics had me feeling buried in a deep hole for several months. Thankfully, due to some therapeutic help, I was able to break through the murky darkness (I’ll write more about this soon).

This week, I find myself thinking about authenticity. Let me explain.

Having spent several decades in the closet, I know what it feels like to live a life that is disingenuous. Coming out at fifty was a freeing experience that exhilarated me on many levels. When I retired from my career as an operations director in healthcare, I immersed myself in the writing world. My first step into this new realm found me joining Medium and writing short essays, followed by pitching and selling personal stories to digital magazines. Like many writers, I aspired to write and publish a memoir. When I finally finished (and edited) my manuscript last August, I was thrilled, relieved, and strangely content.

I spent a couple of years writing my book and took countless webinars about querying, finding an agent, and selling my work. Though I did spend the month of September querying agents, there was a feeling of unease resonating in my soul. Like a program running silently in the background of my laptop, I sensed a vague buzz that I couldn’t comprehend until I got quiet and listened. As someone with ADHD, that’s hard for me to do, especially when stressful life circumstances are swirling around me!

In the quiet, I identified something that changed everything.

As I reflected, I realized that writing my book was enough. In the beginning, I was driven to document my experiences so I could publish my story. My goal was set, and I could envision a grand book launch followed by positive reader reviews. But, in the silence, I saw that completing my book was something I needed to do FOR ME.

Once I realized this, the publishing goal evaporated like marine mist on a sunny morning.

As I’ve pondered authenticity this week, I’ve come to believe that one of the marks of being genuine is having the ability and willingness to change. Previously, I thought that being authentic meant being the way we’ve always been, or being the person we were born to be. I believed my personality type was static. I thought that who I was was set in stone, like a statue.

Now, I wholeheartedly believe that being authentic means mimicking nature.

Look outside, and you’ll see that our natural world is ever-changing, consistently growing. A tree blooms in the spring, bringing new growth and an increasingly stable root system. If a tree never grew, never bloomed, and didn’t sink its roots deep into the earth, we’d believe it was dead.

This, for me, is a beautiful picture of what embracing authenticity looks like.

Welcoming the change. Celebrating when the hardship of winter causes our leaves to fall, trusting that spring will give way to vibrant growth. We can give ourselves permission to change our goals, knowing that our goals, first and foremost, are there to serve us. When we allow ourselves to grow and change, we unlock the freedom to live. Not survive. Not scrape by. Not tolerate whatever is happening until we can arrive at some future state of being. But rather, to live with wild intention and anticipation.

I’m nearly sixty-seven (or 6-7 as I tell my six-year-old grandson, who is obsessed with that phrase), and I fully realize my time here is short. When my oldest son was a wrestler in high school, we’d yell from the stands, “Short time, Garrison! Short time!” This common cheer meant the time to act was running out, and he needed to make a move. I’m yelling that to myself now, reminding myself that whatever I want to do, and whomever I want to be, I need to make a move because time is short.

Thanks for reading.

Next time: I’ll be sharing about my life-changing experience with ketamine therapy.

Until then,

Kim Kelly