What does it really mean to be small?

Have you ever been told that you're being too small?

Recently, I have.

The comment (actually a series of comments) was meant to convey that I underestimate myself, my talents, my way of seeing the world. I was urged to be more visible, put myself first more often, stop waiting to be invited, and finally, to "step into your power."

I think it was meant as a compliment, though a sideways one, don't you think? I mean, who's being-ness wants to be defined as small?

Still, I've heard variations of this assessment going back to childhood. Remember those awful class pictures from elementary school—all of us lined up in two or three rows in our best clothes? Somehow I'm still that girl, wearing a dress with two, red, apple-shaped pockets, heading for the back row, only to be told, "You're too small" and "Stop hiding."

Smallness has always seemed a form of inadequacy.

That said, as most caregivers who have been solo caregiving for years discover, your world does get smaller.

Parts of your life get put on hold. As your ever-vigilant nervous system gets out of whack, you keep paring back what you can handle. When people ask about your beloved who is on their own shrinking trajectory, you answer lovingly, though the whole time you're speaking, you feel, to be honest, invisible.

Self-doubt creeps in. Self-confidence wobbles. Self-identity gets fuzzy. I've wondered how small I can become without disappearing completely.

Have you ever felt that way?

After those remarks, though, feeling not just a bit wounded but downright indignant, something shifted.

What's wrong with small?

My notebook is where the wonders of the world and the mysteries of tiny moments (and the impact of weird comments others make) get explored.

So I've been playing with the concept of small. What it means to be small. When it's an intentional choice vs. when it might be a habit worth revisiting. Among the writing that's emerged is the lyric essay below, and yes, it's small.

After reading it, I'd love to hear what you think, and your experiences being small. You can leave a comment below, or reply privately by email (I read and respond to all, even if it takes some time).

So Many Ways to Be Small

I am practicing so many ways to be small.

When the two chattering women with their two roaming, rebel dogs pass by, the heather is a purple-flecked mask, the rosemary protects my scent.

There’s the way I crouch, feet flat, toes splayed, a pale raven.

Sometimes I lie on my belly and look into the pond, my face among the water-striders, submerged mosses growing into my eyes, blue holding shades of green, brown, the shed wing of an insect (hmmm, is that a shade, or only the idea of loss?).

Leaves of water lilies, as if green hooves spreading across the water, tell me something bigger than me wanders here.

If you call my name, I won’t answer any more than the garter snake who once stretched out in that very spot. If you send me a text, I’ll pretend the ding of my phone is what happens when a bead of dew pops open and lifts as a tiny cloud.

The pressing up of pebbles into skin are a kind of returning, no, reclaiming.

The body is made of pebbles, stones washed soft and stacked high for awhile. I felt it, washing my mother’s back, each vertebra of her cancer-thinned frame. Stone to bone to stone. Ah, God, Dao, whatever awareness permeates this universe, you are such a poet.

There’s the way I go small when the sun is high, a shadow compressed, folded into ferns. There’s the way I go small when the moon is a silver eye, and I lean into a massive redwood, one more bit of furrowed bark.

There’s the smallness of always being a child who simply grows older. The smallness of being the one who listens and listens.

Remember the woman who told you the most valuable part of a vase is the emptiness inside?

There’s the smallness of being a container that everyone fills. My mother’s grieving has always been the water, holding the cut stems, the blossoms above beautiful, but breaking, a pile of petals in the palm always becoming something else.

Remember the smallness of being one cell, microscopic, made of two incomplete cells dissolving into something new?

That cell is long gone. Life constantly replacing itself, but carrying memory encoded in mitochondria, re-shuffled DNA, epigenetic markers bearing physical traces of lived experiences—joys, loves, traumas, moments of attention and of absence, spectacular in their own way.

I have never been only myself, and you, never only you. Think lineage, think one story recast and told slant.

What happened to that garter snake by the pond with his electric-red tongue whipping the air, each flick a question his body asked the world? Once I was part of the answer.

The cells of one body remember the cells of another. That is not small at all.

And, if I may offer you a small delight, this: