About 10 or so years ago, a close friend and I had as our catchphrase, ‘I don’t need validation, I am validating Me’. I cannot help but smile as I reflect on our pride as we paraded around singing our theme tune to ourselves and anyone who dared cross our path. Our catchphrase was at some point replaced with a line from the Destiny’s Child song “Independent Woman” – ‘I depend on Me’ (said with raised eyebrow and hand gesture – hmm, actually maybe I just made that up, but you get my drift!). We’d been burnt by so many who crossed our path, from family, friends, lovers to work colleagues and somewhere along the line we had decided to develop thick skin and freeze out anyone whom we felt could potentially hurt us.
What I now know many years later is that having that catchphrase was my attempt to protect myself from the pain of longing for validation, that somehow never came in my youth. And on those rare moments when it did come, never recognising it through my lenses of low self-worth and that feeling of being eternally flawed. More
OutTales around the Fire 