Do you take up space? Do you feel big in this world or small? 🪐

This response is to our Red Writing Hoods prompt for November 2024. I wanted to share it here too. 🫶🏻

Prompt: Do you take up space? Do you feel big in this world or small? When do you feel big versus small?

All images found on Pinterest but I couldn’t find the artist, so doing some digging.

Who the hell did I think I was asking this question?! Sometimes I feel small in a “the world doesn’t care about a chronically ill woman who wants to pursue her art and live in a cottage in this sexist hetero-normative capitalist society” way. But, sometimes I feel small in an “I can’t believe I get to take part in this incredibly vibrant world of variety and color and endless creativity and LOVE!” way. You can guess which one I’d prefer to keep in mind on a daily basis. So, I guess what I really think about the most nowadays is the question “Do you take up space?” 

I’ve been thinking a lot about taking up space since that became the through-line in most of my therapy sessions last year. The idea of “taking up space” wasn’t new to me. In fact, it was around this time I remembered my first therapist bringing it up to me. Sweet, gentle, understanding Pam. She let me know it was okay to ask questions, it was okay to take my place in this world, and it was okay to take up space in doing so. Yet, in the months following, once again, those ideas were slowly washed away as my natural, inevitable reminders crept in.

You should be quiet. 

You should be good. 

And above all, don’t be annoying. 

Don’t be “too much”. 

I didn’t really know how to exist in the in-between, so in trying to be perfect, I felt like I was washed away to nothing at all. I’m not made of stone and while a younger me may have felt like the main character of the story, now I just felt small. So back in a new therapist’s office several years, a diploma in hand, five moves, and one marriage later, I was reminded again that it was ok to take up space. I was reminded that putting each of these thought spirals through the refiner’s fire made me small but mighty.  “You matter” she’d said, with intensity in her eyes, almost scaring me into saying those words back to her.