I am writing 31 fighting scarcity. I will be collecting them all at the starting point. I hope you join me this month. 

I have sort of a big personality. A big face that has repeatedly described as good for a cartoon characted. A voice so loud my sisters invented a shorthand where they just turned an imaginary dial down and I knew I was talking too loud. I had to teach it to my carpool mate yesterday. I was just excited. All of my feelings are big. Happy, sad, frustrated, I experience all of these in the extreme.

Until I turned about 26 I was often told that I would grow out of this trait. That one day I would grow up and settle down, and I would smile and think of the women who came before me. My great-great Aunt Ruth who remained a big personality for 103 years, my Grandma France always the life of the party, my Grammy Michael who preferred all things  mauve and had her whole house decorated accordingly. Big personality runs through my veins. I am not growing out of it.

The more I grow comfortable in my own skin in fact the bigger I seem to grow. There is no way to deal with my feelings but to feel them all the way through them. Sometimes that happens out loud. Sometimes in the copy room when a co-worker asks if I am okay. Sometimes in small group. And I am learning that that is okay. That it is an authentic way to live, and most importantly that my bigness, my wholeness, my feelings don’t push out anyone else’s. There is enough room for everyone to feel everything they need. There is enough room for me to be my whole self. 

The lie scarcity tells me is that in order to leave room for other people I need to shrink myself. I need to be less of who I am or else there won’t be enough room. But that is a lie from the pit.

The truth is that free people free people. People who are their whole selves (whether reserved or over the top) only invite other people to be their whole selves too. There is NO SUCH THING as not enough room for us all to be ourselves. There is space for you, as much space as you were designed to take up.

You don’t have to shrink yourself; the world needs all of you.