In a Rhythm All Your Own

Greetings from me!

Hello!

Today, let me share a story about "speaking."

I was born and raised in Okinawa, to a Japanese mother and an American father.

When I was born, my mother had become successful in business and was devoting her time to expanding it.

As for the languages flying around our home in those days, my father and his friends spoke English, my mother and the people she worked with spoke Japanese, and the maids and babysitters who worked in our home at the time, as well as our neighbors, also spoke Japanese, but with a strong Okinawan dialect.

What still stays with me is the feeling that the harder I tried to make sense of those three different sounds flying around me, the more I was left behind. Everyone at home was always busy, either debating something or pressed for time, and no one paid attention to me, so I think I was trying to keep up with the words on my own.

Yet even though I was so aware of words, I was apparently very late to start speaking.
Even after I turned two, I hardly spoke at all.
I am told that I felt frustrated and angry at not being able to express myself, and that I was a child who cried a lot.
Crying was my "form" of communication.
"Cry Baby" was the very first nickname I was ever given.

And so, little by little, rather than being with people, I came to play alone in the garden, spending my time in nature among fallen leaves and flowers. The sounds that nature made there became a new bass note for me, worn out as I was by the sounds of different languages and different opinions clashing inside our home.
From there, I gradually began to speak, first Japanese and then English.

The other day, I told this story from long ago to my niece, who lives in America.
She is in the middle of raising her first child.
Her son Ricky, who is one and a half, is truly adorable, and I am always glued to the photos she sends me.

At a recent checkup, Ricky was found to be talking later than usual for his age, and she was advised to have him seen by a speech therapist.
She was feeling anxious.
Seeing her like that, for some reason I remembered myself as I was back then.
And I thought, this is an opportunity for my own cleaning, and I cleaned on my experience back then and on what I feel now.

I was surprised at how strongly it came up in my awareness that my mother was so busy with work, and that the one who looked after me was a maid.
Before I could even form an opinion about it, such as that I disliked it or that it could not be helped, whenever I think about myself, whenever I wonder why I cried so much back then, the thought "My mother was busy, and many languages were always flying around the house" comes up right away. I have been cleaning on the fact that this is still inside me.

And what I came to see
was that I no longer need to wait for someone to pay attention to me.
No matter how busy work gets, I have myself. I always have a home where I can rest (an inner home).
Even if Cry Baby Betty is slow to talk, I am right there with her.
How lucky I am, I thought.
Because I can take care of myself, everything is OK.
Ricky and I each have our own rhythm.

The rhythm we are born with should never be handed over to someone else's judgment, no matter what. Everything begins with a safe environment in which that rhythm can be lived with peace of mind, given by parents and caretakers, and by me to myself.
Whether medical support is needed or not comes after that.
As long as we can return to our own rhythm, we ourselves should, by nature, know ourselves, or our children, better than anyone.

Let us love ourselves.

Let us allow ourselves to do as we please, as freely as we like, inside our inner home.

Only when, within that, our feet and hands begin to move naturally, without sensing any boundary between inside and outside, can we live in this world with peace of mind, more than any permission from others telling us, "It's okay."

Freedom and art all begin, always, in the inner world.
From the moment we speak our own words inside, their echo, however small, resonates outward.
Yet more often than not, do we not refuse to let ourselves give voice to who we are, even to ourselves?
Nothing is created from clenching, shrinking, forcing into shape, denial, or sacrifice.

Be you!
Be who you are.

Let us be a home, our very own self, where that child can play in safety.

Be free!
Let us be free.

Let us stretch our inner room enough for that child to move around freely.

Being soft is safer, in all sorts of ways.

I love you!

B

(2020/12/23)