Ever feel that people don’t notice what a a great woman, mother, wife, partner, daughter, worker, …you are? Ever since I was a child, and even before I knew where Africa was, my heart wanted to go to Africa to be with the orphans. Later I sponsored a young girl, and wrote regularly to her in Uganda. I was never sure what called me in this way, but I realise now it about the “forgotten” child – one who feels left, who feels abandoned, who feels insignificant, who feels perhaps worthless and perhaps even feels invisible.
Looking back on my life, invisibility has been one of my life themes. I excelled at many things, but probably as a means of trying to be noticed. I kept under the radar, not daring to leave the restraints of the rules of my very Christian parents. I became very independent at an early age, preferring also to see much of the world, and experience what the world offered me, on my own. I largely kept my “problems” to myself and found my own answers. . To the outside world I seemed happy and I was accoladed with prizes for various things. I was in a caring family who noticed and served others. People saw me as a confident, daring young woman. but in my inner self I felt lost, abandoned, different and often invisible.
Just last week I noticed a street sign promoting the Watoto (Ugandan) village choir, so I could not help but go. I cried, I cried and I cried some more at their stories of these orphans and the aloneness they felt, the experiences they had had, but now the joy in their eyes and the lightness and vitality in their dancing feet and bodies that jumped in the joy of feeling included, secure and protected and given opportunities at the village that had included them as their own. With loud gusto, they sang “I am not forgotten.” Listen to it!
It reminded me that my life story was false. My life theme was just a perspective that I chose to hang on to. It reminds me that when I choose the perspective of non-attachment to acknowledgement, accolade and inclusion, and I choose to see myself as visible, powerful, approachable, loveable, worthy, gifted and beauty-full, my life is good. I am not forgotten. I just forgot myself for awhile, and sometimes still do now and then!