Following on my list of writing prompts, the one for today is Authenticity.

This is such an interesting subject. Something at once so simple and so hard, and so important for self-direction and consent.

I’m going to start by describing what authenticity means to me. To me, authenticity is the most honest and true expression of something. What is on the inside, is what is expressed on the outside. What is true and honest for someone, is said and is made known. That is what it means to be authentic. For me, authenticity sits along other words such as integrity, honest, true. For me, authenticity is about an honest and clear, direct expression of self.

It is obscured by coping strategies, stress responses, people pleasing/accommodating behaviours, or any other self-concealing things. One of the most tragic aspects of trauma is how it can scare and rob us of authentic expression. In some situations, this behaviour can be necessary for coping and even survival. Due to oppressive and discriminatory environments, discreet and explicit threats of all types of harm and violence, authenticity can be so damaged and compromised, not just in individuals but in the culture and environment as a whole. There are so many circumstances in which authenticity is broken. And in those places, and in that knowing, I still believe it can survive, that it is possible, that it can make it’s way. That there has to be a way.

Authentic expression to me is what is made known when a person has given themselves permission to, and continues to commit to, braving it as their truest version of them-self, with their bare self, intentions, ways and purpose made visible and freely expressed.

It is also the absolute centre point and guiding anchor for self-direction and meaningful consent. It is what gives the ‘self’ in self-direction meaning, and from which we can hear a ‘yes, no or maybe’ of consent. There is plenty in our world and culture to make us fearful and confuse us away from this centre point, and cause us to lose alignment with ourselves and therefore blur or mask our honest authentic expression. There are circumstances in which it may feel impossible and life threatening to be honest, true and free in our expression of ourselves.

But when we lose ourselves in this way, we also lose our lives. We lose ourselves, and everything after that is a mess because it’s based on a misleading and false sense of things.

How can you experience or engage in consensual living and relationships, if your way of being is wobbling all over the place when it comes to authenticity?

In order for something to be meaningful consensual, it must be an informed choice, freely given. If someone is behaving inauthentically, for what ever reason – is hiding, concealing, their real heart, centre of self, their true alignment and expression, then how can another come to then in a consensual way? They can’t see what it is they are really doing, in order to make an informed choice. And the choice isn’t freely given, if it’s been somewhat controlled by the presentation of information that is designed or limited in some way to sway through withholding.

It is true, that for many people it can be difficult to even locate this authentic centre. The dominant culture in which we live serves to separate us from our selves in many macro and micro ways throughout our lives from the earliest days. We’ve been grown in a soil of interpersonal and institutional violence against the self and authentic expression, where full range of emotional and other expressions of self are curtailed, limited, and loaded in various ways. This makes our engagement with our self and the world around us feel dangerous or alluring, influenced and biased in ways that lead us away from authenticity and can trigger experiences of stress and result in the adoption of coping strategies mentioned above.

And the dominant cultural resistance/erasure of the natural phenomena of lifelong learning, change, growth and evolution can stifle and limit us to a single version of ourselves, again cramping our authentic expression lest it in some way disrupt our lives or endanger relationships and foundations.

However, and this all being said. We can return to ourselves. We can find ourselves. We can work and and practice expressing ourselves. We can take risks. We can try, and practice, and work towards a new normal where authenticity feels natural and normal, and part of life. Where it just feels like us, integrated, and whole and free. Where we feel free and wouldn’t want to hide away ever again, because we love and treasure authenticity so much and know what the cost is of anything else, and all we can imagine is a world in which authenticity is in all the places and is the baseline for love and relationships. All we want is to feel the heat of that burning soul fire, that authentic heart and self.