Why Not Me?

When I look back at my whole life I am actually impressed and amazed that I accomplished as many things as I did. It helps that I came from a supportive family and that I’m cis-gendered and white, but when I look at the other thing that made a huge difference it was my ability to always say “Why not me? Someone needs to do it. Why not me?”

My Clifton Strengths report says that “self assurance” is in my top 5 and that doesn’t surprise me one bit. I remember countless occasions, raising my hand to volunteer before my brain could jump in with reasons why I couldn’t. I volunteered to be a weatherman at the SNL studio tour. I volunteered to go first down the zipline. I volunteered to be on of the people to play volleyball alongside Team Canada at volleyball camp. I volunteered to play piano in front of a bunch of people I had met 5 minutes prior. Then there was the going to South Korea without knowing where I was going, the write a book because of course I can, the do wedding photography because obviously we’ve been doing photography for a year so that makes sense, etc.

I realize though, that someone with a fat body might consider that they CAN’T do it because of their body (because the world makes them think so), but for me that just wasn’t an option. If I saw someone doing it, that meant that I could do it too. That was, however, until 2018.

I remember a past mentor warning me about rising too quickly because when you get to the top there’s nowhere to go but down. I didn’t believe him until I found myself preening like a damn peacock in the boudoir industry, my inner child pleased with the adoration that I only wished I had received when I was younger, but that makes for a faulty foundation. Standing precariously on the top of this mountain that I told myself I had just scaled, with followers and colleagues applauding me along the way, the pressure became insurmountable. I questioned everything. I took 0 risk. Because I allowed myself to be built up by the words of others, it meant I was just as easily brought down by them. So when I started looking into leadership development where everything says “successful people are disciplined in their weight” and when was the last time you saw a fat female on the cover of SUCCESS magazine? And I cried to my husband - “I’m never going to become that influential because of how I look.”

And he looked at me with wide eyes.
This was not the Teri he knew.
This was not the Teri I knew.
And he must have been listening to me over the years because he said:

”Don’t you always say that if someone like you doesn’t exist in those spaces that’s exactly why you need to be in those spaces?”

Ya know, it’s quite the pain in the ass when someone uses your own words against you - but I knew he (I?) was right. What happened to the girl that used to say “Why not me?”

She had become dependent on other people watching her.
She had become obsessed with maintaining her status at the top of this fictional mountain instead of growing and climbing a new one.
She had lost sight of what she was here to do in the first place.
She made it all about her.

But thankfully, I had a wise support system around me that knew enough to kick my ass but do it gently so I would learn my lesson the hard way. I stopped feeding into the accolades, likes, and followers and started telling myself everyday that I was doing a good job and that it’s easy to do a good job when your only job is to show up.

There’s still a bit of resistance to me taking chances on myself as boldly as I used to, but I just accept it for what it is and then reason with that part of my brain to keeping asking:

”Why not me?”

And usually, there’s no response aside from:

”Yah. Why not you? Let’s go.”