Shrinking to Belong

When I think back on my childhood, my truest sense of myself was as a free spirit — a child of the woods, at one with tree spirits and nature fairies.

Let loose in the fragrant, earthy Maine woods, I had no thought of anything other than gliding, becoming part of the mysterious atmosphere that held me. When I looked at the Lady Slipper on the forest floor, I saw an elegant pink high heel shoe decorated with blue flowers. Was it real, or simply my imagination embellishing what I saw? Either way, I was enchanted and completely myself.

Elsewhere — at home, in school — my spirit was held in check, tightly enfolded within me as I learned to disappear little by little to belong to a world that didn’t quite make sense.

My beautiful gray cat, completely indifferent to the unspoken rules and regulations that held my spirit in check, was my muse. She broke all the rules when she curled up in my arms and allowed me to feed her with a doll’s baby bottle.

Glancing my way, I heard my mother say, “Have you ever seen a wild Maine cat do that?” asking anyone who happened to be listening. My father who sat silently eating his breakfast made no response. I sat nearby, in a world of my own, offering breakfast to my four-legged companion. “Look how she lets Dorothy do that!”

My mother’s surprise was perplexing to me. I wasn’t “doing” anything. Fluffy came to me because she wanted to. Her surprise — and my father’s silence — made me uneasy. As though I was the one responsible for answering her, explaining. As if I had done something to achieve this seeming miracle.

Fluffy and I were what we were. That’s it. That’s all. Neither of us made any effort to make it so.

I learned to put Fluffy down when my mother was around.

To be less visible in my affection. To belong in the way the room required. We communed elsewhere, in my bedroom when my sister wasn’t around, outside beneath a tree in the quiet.

Inside our house, I learned to disappear, to play it small, to be seen but not heard in order not to bring attention to myself. But out in the woods, climbing rocks beneath the leafy canopy, drawing pictures in the dirt, playing marbles on the pine floor outside our school, I was free.

Even now, when I catch myself shrinking to belong, I think of the Maine woods — of polliwogs and Lady Slippers and a gray cat who did not ask me to be anything other than what I was.

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Thank you for reading.

If this reflection resonates, you may find a companion in my book The Wisdom Within— a collection of short reflections for women navigating transition, caregiving, and the inward work of becoming. It’s offered as a place to pause, reflect, and listen more deeply. (Signed copies are available when ordering via the Aging Abundantly website.)

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