Learning to See in Color

It’s interesting to be writing in a journal. It has been years since I’ve done this… Journals of my past are an interesting view into a woman who wanted to look perfect on paper. More often than not the entries were made with the knowledge that my posterity would read what I had written and judge my life based off of this.

So often I was not real with what I wrote and by this I mean that I rarely shared what was inside of me. Any struggle was mostly perceived through the lens of me needing to do more, try harder to overcome. I don’t know that I ever wrote of serious personal, inward struggles or even the struggles with my relationships. Again, perfection was what mattered and when I wrote I could try to paint that picture. 

What is so sad to me is that the parts of my journals that were real in any way and showed real parts of me were cut out or burned because I never wanted my kids to know the truth of who I was. 

Circa 2003.

My poor kids. 

So much of my parenting came from a place of fear. I had developed within myself such a loathing of who I had been as a teenager that I did all I could to keep my own kids from travelling down a path that looked anything like mine. I envisioned the day when they were adults and hoped that they would stay close to me and we would have/maintain that “picture perfect Mormon family”. 

So. much. pressure. Pressure that ultimately has released and brought me to this point.

This point. 

I wrote this just over three years ago, nearing the end of what would become my final relationship with a man who had become deeply unhealthy for me. I was preparing to walk further into the darkness that healing would require—and eventually into the spectrum of color I had been taught to forget. Looking back now, I can see that I didn't simply have beliefs. I had a relationship with those beliefs—and with the person I believed I needed to be.

For most of my life, I lived in the box I had been taught to live in. I believed I had choices, but many of those choices existed within boundaries created by authorities I had been taught to trust. I lived believing I needed to construct an entire life around the appearance of being “right.” That pressure to be perfect, which turned me into my own harshest judge, created an internal hell for me. Even the space that should have been the safest place to tell the truth, my journal, became another place where I censored myself. And that censorship didn't just stay on the page, it rippled into every area of my life.

When I came to the point where I became willing to face the hell that was consuming me, I discovered that it was possible for me to cast new stones in my river of life that would create different ripples. Where once I had been my own critical judge, I began learning how to become my own loving parent.

Circa 1993.

A loving parent doesn't demand perfection. She doesn't shame a child for getting something wrong or abandon her when she makes a mistake. She stays. She listens. She teaches. She helps her find her way. And I was learning to do that for myself.

Looking back, it is incredible what can happen in three short years. I barely recognize the woman I was then. At that time in my life I had reached the point where I could not ignore the questions stirring inside of me. I had to ask myself: do I remain on the well-worn path so many before have created for me to follow, or, do I forge a new one?

Standing at this divide brings to my mind the well known poem, “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. Like so many high school students, I was required to memorize this poem when I was a Senior and recite it in front of my classmates. For myself, the imprint of “roads not taken” and those making all the difference in one’s life has stayed with me all these years. I didn't know when I stood in front of my classmates reciting that poem that one day I would find myself standing at a fork in my own life. I never imagined I would become a trailblazer, walking into terrain that was foreign, unknown and, at times, terrifying. 

Now, from further down that trail, I can see things I couldn't see when I first began. I see now how my upbringing and culture taught me to live in a world of black and white. Over and over, I was taught the logic of good/bad, either/or, if/then, “this” will lead to “that.” As a sixteen-year-old, I received what can only be described as a prayer blessing over my life. This was a practice we anticipated within my culture, and I believed this blessing was uniquely important to my life. I studied it closely for years. Strung throughout it were continuous themes of: If you do this, then this will happen. Later, when I was set apart as a teacher within my culture, I continued emphasizing the safety of those black-and-white lines. 

When I stood at the crossroads of “two paths” that were very different, I didn't realize how much I would learn about my own thinking. I was naively confident in my early steps, quickly discovering that I had a natural tendency to look for authority outside myself.

Men. Gurus. Anyone who appeared to have that flair of “knowing.”

I was an easy follower.

They were comfortable to me. They seemed to be the ones who knew how to lead me; however, time would continue to teach me that people should not be placed on pedestals. It became vital for me to become anchored within myself. This isn’t to say that others cannot teach me, they can, and they do, but I am learning to keep humans where they belong: on earth.

Me in 2026 on my recent sabbatical.

The further I traveled into unknown spaces, the more room I had to expand. I began seeing the world through a more colorful lens. And when I began to see with more color, I suddenly began remembering pieces of myself I had long ago buried. Color has always mattered to me. As a child I always loved the rainbow. To me, it represents the beauty of a world that doesn't have to be reduced to one color—or two.

Living outside the black-and-white lines has given me plenty of opportunities to practice being comfortable with uncertainty. Time and again, I will think I've found “the answer,” only to realize I've placed myself back inside the box—just with a different authority.

I am learning not to trade one authority for another. The more I stepped outside the boundaries I had been given, the more I realized that life wasn't asking me to find another box. It was asking me to learn how to navigate new territory. And that has been a process.

I have had to make choices, experiment, pay attention to when I begin outsourcing my authority, and learn to self-correct. I've become curious about myself, and that curiosity continues to serve me. The concept of thinking for myself and trusting my own discernment was once foreign. I felt like a traveler in a land where I didn't speak the language. But I'm learning the language now.

The key is practice.

I don't need another set of rules telling me which road is right. I need to listen—to myself, to my experiences, and to the questions that refuse to leave me alone—and discern which direction is mine.

For most of my life, I thought my job was to find the right answers. Now I understand that part of becoming my own person is learning to ask my own questions. 

I am allowed to pause.

I am allowed to look around.

I am allowed to change direction.

I am allowed to not know.

And perhaps most importantly, I am learning to trust that somewhere inside me is a knowing that doesn't need someone else to hand me the map. I don't need another authority to tell me which way to go. I am learning to listen for my own direction.

And that, for me, has been the beginning of coming back hoME to me.