{"id":1022,"date":"2025-06-02T06:55:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T06:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/?p=1022"},"modified":"2025-06-04T20:26:43","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T20:26:43","slug":"when-truth-disturbs-the-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/?p=1022","title":{"rendered":"When Truth Disturbs the Peace; Speak It Anyway"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Reflection on Colette, Legacy, and the Courage to Choose Yourself<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some women walk the well-worn paths\u2014and then there are women like Colette.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A writer, performer, and sensualist who defied convention, Colette lived boldly, curiously, and unapologetically. Her pen carved space for truths many women were too afraid to name, and her characters\u2014so often mirrors of herself\u2014pushed against the edges of polite society with poise and ferocity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her novel The Vagabond<\/em> isn\u2019t just literature\u2014it\u2019s a reckoning. Through Ren\u00e9e N\u00e9r\u00e9, a woman who leaves a faithless husband and makes her living on the stage, Colette explores a question that still presses against the walls of my own heart: How do I remain true to myself in a world that would prefer me silenced or softened?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ren\u00e9e\u2019s refusal to be \u201ckept,\u201d to be rescued or reduced, echoes a restlessness I know well. Like her, I\u2019ve stared down the comfort of what\u2019s expected and chosen the ache of the unknown. Not because it\u2019s easier, but because it\u2019s mine. Because freedom\u2014absolute freedom\u2014requires choosing selfhood over safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then there\u2019s Gigi<\/em>\u2014young, observant, being groomed to play a role for which society has written a script. But in the end, she rewrites that script, choosing love and partnership on her terms. That moment of claiming her agency is one I recognize in my bones. Like Gigi, I have unlearned the rules written for me and decided to become the author of my own story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Colette once wrote, \u201cYou do not go from one happiness to another, you make your happiness. And sometimes it\u2019s a lonely business.\u201d<\/em> I have found this to be achingly true. Telling my story\u2014unplugged, unfiltered, and in my voice\u2014has not always made me likable. But it has made me whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the heartbeat behind Love Me<\/em>\u2014a collection born from lived experience, from burning bridges to save myself, from rebuilding without apology, from releasing the burden of pleasing and performing. Love Me<\/em> is not just a title; it\u2019s a dare to myself. To stop waiting for permission. To name what hurt, what shaped me, and what I now choose. To speak from the inside out, without softening my truth for someone else\u2019s comfort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s power in claiming your narrative without apology. There\u2019s power in saying:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is who I am. I will not shrink. I will not mask my truth to make you comfortable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Colette, I am a woman shaped by experience and sharpened by introspection. Like Ren\u00e9e, I am a vagabond of the soul\u2014unsettled not by dissatisfaction, but by curiosity, longing, and a desire to know life on my terms. Like Gigi, I am no longer being prepared for a life that pleases others\u2014I am preparing to live my own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But claiming yourself comes at a cost, especially when truth interrupts the illusion of a family\u2019s carefully managed silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When a long-held secret\u2014especially one involving abuse, addiction, or trauma\u2014is unearthed, it often triggers psychological seismic shifts not just for the individual who reveals it, but across the entire family system. These shifts can be uncomfortable, threatening, and in some cases, relationship-altering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In families like mine, silence was the mortar that held the illusion of harmony together. My father\u2014charming to some, chaotic to others\u2014was an alcoholic. When the poison was in his veins, he could be cruel, especially to my mother. He died young, just thirty, of cancer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was my hero\u2014and still is. But, like all heroes \u2014and really, all of us \u2014he was flawed. That doesn\u2019t take away my love for him. I\u2019ve learned I can hold two conflicting truths about my father and still love him deeply. I can acknowledge the harm and also honor his goodness. I can carry his memory\u2014and his legacy\u2014forward with complexity, not erasure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It took nearly twenty years before my mother finally spoke her truth. Not in anger. Not with bitterness. Just with clarity. I had offered her the space\u2014one I wish someone had offered her sooner. But the truth is disruptive. It doesn\u2019t tiptoe in. It arrives like a tremor, shaking what was once buried beneath layers of protection, denial, and fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When her story in S.H.E. Share Heal Empower, Volume One<\/em>, came out, it wasn\u2019t her voice they turned on. It was mine. They blamed me for giving her the microphone, for \u201cconvincing\u201d her, for disrupting the myth we\u2019d all been taught to protect. They said I did it for attention. For gain. As if truth had to be justified, as if healing were a crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What they didn\u2019t understand is this: I didn\u2019t invent the pain. I inherited it. And by speaking it aloud, I refused to pass it on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some family members stopped speaking to me. Oddly, they still talked to my mother, whose story they may quietly have resented her for sharing but never challenged her outright, only me – I became the scapegoat, the breaker of spells, the one who pointed to the cracks in the stained glass and said, \u201cWe are allowed to see this clearly despite their denial.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But clarity has a cost. And courage has consequences. Still, I would do it again because I\u2019ve learned that not everyone wants freedom. Some prefer the familiarity of silence, even if it stifles them. But I made a choice: not to be loved for who I pretend to be, but to be known for who I truly am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in the wreckage of broken silence, I found something that felt like peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This fall, I\u2019ll spend forty days in Paris. A pilgrimage of sorts\u2014not just to learn the language, but to live in it. To follow Colette\u2019s footsteps, sip from the well of creative unrest, and write without constraint. To honor the voice I\u2019ve fought so hard to reclaim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because if I\u2019ve learned anything from Colette, from my own unraveling, and the long road back to self, it\u2019s this: “There is no shame in the wanderer\u2019s path. Only truth. Only beauty. Only becoming.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Reflection on Colette, Legacy, and the Courage to Choose Yourself Some women walk the well-worn paths\u2014and then there are women like Colette. A writer, performer, and sensualist who defied convention, Colette lived boldly, curiously, and unapologetically. Her pen carved space for truths many women were too afraid to name, and her characters\u2014so often mirrors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,56,57,27,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-empowerment","category-history","category-personal-reflective-narrative","category-reflection","category-women-of-strength"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1022"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1032,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022\/revisions\/1032"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}