Did you ever think that the different groups of people in your life were like tribes?
Tribes support various aspects of us. When I go away to retreats an instant tribe forms. We are together for an allotted amount of time then we go back to our lives among other tribes.
At work, I have a tribe of co-workers, some of whom I have been with for 20+ years.
Extended families are tribes. We become more aware of this around the holidays.
We have roles within our tribes that are specific to that tribe. This can account for why I feel that I am a totally different person among one group of people as opposed to with another.
I began to think about another tribe in my life recently when I got in email contact with a person that I had not heard from for thirty years. I will call this the visually impaired tribe. When you are talking to someone within this tribe there is a lot of shared experience and understanding.
I wrote a blog entry about my mother’s book “A Time to Speak”. This entry spoke very negatively about my experience growing up. This surprises some of my closest friends.
Among the visually impaired I think it may be common to reject the traits that we have in common with other visually impaired people in favor of trying to prove ourselves to the world.
My parents gave me great gifts; however, at a fairly young age, age 14 at the latest, I had begun to reject my family and the visually impaired tribe. I needed to prove myself to the world. I needed to develop my own identity away from that particular tribe. I ignored the need to develop my identity within it. Who is Vera Holly who is visually impaired?
What do I mean by visually impaired?
Well, for starters, I don’t drive. That puts me in a distinct group in the place where I live. I use computer all day and the first question I am always asked is, how do you do all of the computer stuff you do and not see so well? My answer is that if I can get it close enough I can see it. I manage and the rest of the time I fake it. Part of the reason I did not identify with my visually impaired tribe was that I was spending so much time and energy faking it.
I remember when I was a child laughing and eating and playing games with my parents and sisters and maybe aunts and uncles and none of us really related to the fact that we didn’t see well because we were together in a different way. But, I turned against this sharing because I was pretending that I did not have a visual problem. I read a lot. I took my schoolwork seriously.
When I was reading my mother’s book I was reminded that one of the reasons that I took my schoolwork so seriously was that I had learned to do so from her. I am thankful for this gift.
As I have grown older I have sought authenticity.
I am not happy with the habit of faking it.
Faking it amounts to not speaking up for what I need. For example, not insisting that someone tell me what is in the menu that is posted on the wall behind the counter in a fast food style restaurant or not admitting that I cannot see or identify the person behind the wheel in the car beside me.
Faking it means that I am pretending to be a member of a tribe that I am not part of.
The visually impaired tribe has taught me the ability to persevere and to be my own person. In times of real need this has seemed to be my authentic self.
It is an aspect of my authentic self. Each tribe in my life has given me a different aspect of that self.