Why Authenticity is Important

3 : true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character

• is sincere and authentic with no pretensions

I find it interesting that the same word is defined both as “conforming to an original” (1b) and “true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character” (3). In essence we can be authentic, and as such, accepted, if we conform, but also if we’re true to ourselves. Is it any wonder the word is becoming as overused and meaningless as “organic”?

In order to clear the confusion and hopefully reinstate the valuable message the word was meant to convey, I’m going to share a story with you.

The Two Faces of Authenticity

A child was born into a family with a generations-long belief that asking for help was a weakness. Even the smallest success when achieved alone was revered, while a global success achieved by asking for help was to be scorned. She spent her early years learning to follow the family example,  seeking to be recognized for her independence and self-reliance.

Her father set the example by starting his own construction business after working for his own father for many years. He started on a shoestring, running the business out of their home. Within a couple of years, he was able to not only buy a bigger home in a nicer neighborhood, but rent a shop and hire employees to help him complete the steady flow of jobs he’d committed to and would continue to acquire through relationships and a reputation he built all on his own.

Watching her father, she learned to depend only on herself for her successes and failures. From her vantage point she couldn’t see that his business by design not only remained small, but was ill-suited to weather economic downturns. While similar companies had pooled their resources with others or taken advantage of other forms of assistance to expand and solidify their positions, he remained essentially a one-man show. Throughout his life, he’d work all day long, then bring home plans to work on after dinner so he could keep work flowing in.

She took the lessons passed down by her parents into adulthood; getting married, having a couple of

kids, finishing college, and getting divorced. Eventually, she was exactly like her father; a ton of responsibilities and the only one to make decisions or fulfill her obligations. She worked a full-time job and took clients on the side to make ends meet, adding to what amounted to another full-time job just raising her children. With more and more pressure on her to hold everything together, she reached the point where she’d either have to shut down her own needs or burn out and be unable to take care of her kids. Her experience and upbringing allowed her to see only one possible solution.

As children do, hers eventually grew up, leaving her with fewer obligations and time she had not learned to appreciate, nor had anyone to fill it with. One daughter moved away while the other remained for a few more years. Efforts to find a life of her own failed dismally because she lacked the social skills to form any meaningful bonds. She’d spent the first few decades of her life being independent…and alone. She went from place to place, person to person, never really establishing close friendships. It baffled her when she saw people she knew doing so over and over, seemingly with ease.

Before she moved away and got married, her oldest daughter gave her back a gift she didn’t even realize she’d lost sight of. She encouraged her mother to take a trip to Sedona to begin writing about her experiences losing her parents to suicide. In the 9 years it took to finish the first draft, the story continued to unfold until ultimately, she found her way back to humanity.

She’d always loved to write and had even written a story for her daughters when they were 5. But to actually write about the emotions she’d repressed for decades opened up a whole new world. Soon, after her return from Sedona, she started a blog and very slowly began sharing the feelings she’d started to unearth on her writing retreat.

Learning people were not only reading her words, but relating to them came as a huge shock to this woman so used to showing the world a solid, unbroken facade. She’d learned from her mother to keep the imperfect parts of her life well guarded and hidden behind masks and walls. What she learned from the feedback on her blog was the walls didn’t so much keep others out as prevent her from connecting with anyone on the outside of her personal fortress.

Though it didn’t happen over night, she found people starting to relate to her on a deeper level because she no longer maintained the facade of being perfect and unbroken. She started letting people see that her life, like theirs was full of challenges and there were times she wanted to run away and hide rather than face one more day when her world seemed to be in shambles. She learned many shared not only her uncertainty, but some of her most painful experiences as well.

Most important, she learned people appreciated her more when she was true to herself and not trying to be some impossibly perfect being. Her authentic self was the most attractive part of her, yet for most of her life, she’d stuffed it into a box and treated it like an embarrassment instead of an asset.