"Giving Myself Grace"

As a child, I had a lot of energy. I ran and played and talked constantly, my voice often far louder than necessary to be heard. My mind wandered during Mass, and I had trouble sitting still to do activities. After figuring out how to leverage my weight against door frames, I would literally climb the walls. My mother, who up to that point had only had daughters, would joke that she didn’t need a boy because she had me. 

Starting school was a huge adjustment for me. I wanted to be there, was fascinated by what we were learning, but I had a hard time living up to the behavioral expectations. I would interrupt the teacher, whisper to myself or others during lessons, and try to answer all the questions leaving none for anyone else. I couldn’t sit still, wiggling around constantly, sometimes getting up without permission. Simply put, the standard structure of students sitting at desks, listening to the teacher talk, and only responding when called on was hard for me.

My kindergarten classroom had a behavior chart with 4 colors on it and a clip for each student; everyone started each day at blue, and with each instance of bad behavior, your clip was moved to green, then yellow, then red. At the end of the day, the TA would mark down your color on a calendar to show your parents, and for the first few months, I left the classroom every day with a little red dot in the corner of that day's box, having inevitably messed up at several points during the day. 

Since my mother was a teacher at my school, I would go to her classroom after school and show her the calendar. While I’m sure she found it concerning, she was rarely angry about it. Many other people would have placed blame somewhere, either with my teacher for being too strict or with me for not behaving, but Mama taught me to approach it differently. It was a mentality she instilled in me from a very young age: everyone has struggles, but with hard work and trial and error, we can all find methods that work best for us. Mama accepted me the way I was, but also helped me learn how to adjust to the world as it was. 

Most helpfully of all, I learned to read. My mind latched onto the symbols and began to decode them faster than the teacher could teach them to the class. The pieces clicked into place, and suddenly a whole new world was before me. I spent hours at a time devouring book after book, perhaps the first time I had ever stayed put for more than a few minutes in my entire life. 

This is in no way to say that I was suddenly the perfect student, or that keeping up such a behavior pattern was easy at all. While I could sit still for hours curled up in a corner with a book, I still fidgeted in class. My interruptions were greatly reduced but never quite went away. I would hum under my breath during tests, often unaware it was happening. I still can’t quite keep myself from constant commentary while watching TV, much to the chagrin of others who may be watching with me, and to this day it is a constant, conscious effort not to dominate classroom discussions. I sometimes still fail, receiving polite requests from teachers that I let others talk. 

But in spite of all this trouble, which often leaves me frustrated and angry at myself, I have also discovered strengths. It was the other side of the coin of Mama’s philosophy—We all have strengths, and we can find them with trial and error, then lean into them, to become our best selves (and overcome the struggles). My passion for consuming books and absorbing information helped me excel academically, especially in arenas that required memorization and recall of large amounts of information. Outside of school, and with Mama’s support, I found joy in theatre and music, where my loud voice and constant energy were seen as a skill, rather than an annoyance. I’ll never forget the moment, in the middle of an ordinary rehearsal for my very first community theatre production, when the director looked at the whole cast and told them that they all needed to be as loud as me. Suddenly, my struggle was a strength, something I’m sure Mama had known all along. 

Many people decry the way we organize our society, and especially the structure of our education system, as restrictive and punishing to those who don’t fit into narrow expectations. There is probably something to that; human society is imperfect and there is always room for improvement. We could all stand to give ourselves and each other a little more grace. But in the absence of a sudden grand revolution, we must all live in the world as it is now. If we can all focus on building our strengths and finding the right methods for our struggles, we may find we can do more than we (and everyone else) ever thought possible.