When you celebrate others, you ease the loneliness in the world.
Belonging means you are loved for what makes you different.
To celebrate means to “acknowledge (a significant or happy day or event) with a social gathering or enjoyable activity” or “to honor or praise publicly.” We can’t celebrate alone. It’s a communal activity, something we share with others.
It was nearing seven o’clock, the third evening Ben had been away on another business trip, and my brain felt like cooked spaghetti. I picked up the phone, expecting this call, uncertain as to what conversation would transpire between me and Sarah’s fourth grade teacher regarding her academic progress.
“I just want to praise Sarah,” Ms. Kaufman began. “Today we were reading a story in class about people with different disabilities and diagnoses. The kids each took turns sharing about a person in their life who is different in some way and what they appreciate about them. Most were talking about uncles or cousins or a neighbor.
“Sarah raised her hand and said, ‘Ms. Kaufman, I am different.’ A classmate, George, blurted out, ‘And we love you for it, Sarah!’ Then her friend Annie shot her hand up in the air and said, ‘I think Sarah is amazing just the way she is.’ This class celebrates Sarah. She is such an incredible kid.”
I hardly knew what to say. These stories, once abundant when Sarah was a toddler going through several major surgeries a year, have become scarce as she approaches puberty. The words “Sarah is celebrated here” made my heart soar. I guess no one has ever used that word to describe Sarah before —celebrated. That who Sarah is, is celebrated. As in, everyone cheers for her and rallies for her. That they love her.
This is beyond the baseline of tolerance, or even acceptance. This is something more, much more.
In an informal sense, to celebrate means to “acknowledge (a significant or happy day or event) with a social gathering or enjoyable activity” or “to honor or praise publicly.”1 We can’t celebrate alone. It’s a communal activity, something we share with others. I think that’s why the word celebrate caught me by surprise when Ms. Kaufman used it to explain the class milieu —because while others (mostly adults) have privately mentioned how they admire Sarah or appreciate what a special kid she is, it’s not something that has ever become an open topic of discussion in a group setting.
It’s hard to know what to say, or even how to act day to day, when you are raising a child like Sarah. Every time I glanced at her face as an infant, there was one recurring question I could not shake: What will it be like for Sarah to grow up in a world that honors physical beauty rather than inner character?
I considered the magazine images of women (even children) with perfectly symmetrical features —nose centered on the face; evenly spaced eyes; straight, white smile; supple skin; shiny hair —and that, despite my intention to raise Sarah to believe in and appreciate her innate beauty, she would absorb the message from our culture. She would eventually figure out that most people will never think she is beautiful. And when that day arrived, it would hurt. It would crush her innocence.
About a month after the phone conference with Sarah’s teacher, our family of seven packed into our minivan to head home from a gathering in Toledo. Sarah was crammed in the back seat with her two sisters, Felicity (the oldest) and Veronica (the middle child). Ben and I were enjoying a moment to chat uninterrupted, when Sarah burst into tears.
“What’s wrong, Sarah?” My heart fell. I never know what to expect when she cries. “My hands!” she wailed. “My hands aren’t like Sissy’s and Veronica’s! It’s not fair! Why do my hands have to look like this? Why can’t they look like everyone else’s?”
The day had arrived when she knew what the world deemed as beautiful.
In moments like these, I try to validate before educating. “Sarah, I don’t know why they’re different. I know that hurts you and that you want to look like everyone else. I’m sorry it makes you feel sad.” She continued to sob, and I encouraged her to breathe. Felicity and Veronica became crestfallen, their heads hanging. They hugged her, but she would have nothing of it. Nothing could console her.
I hesitated to speak again, but I tend to believe it’s best to go with your gut when there is no clear-cut solution to the complex circumstances in which you find yourself. “Sarah, remember the day at school when your class was talking about people they know who are different, and you told Ms. Kaufman that you are one of those people? And George and Annie raised their hands and said in front of everyone else how much they loved you for who you are?”
She sniffled. “How did you know that?”
“Because Ms. Kaufman told me on the phone. She said your whole class celebrates who you are.”
She paused, then asked, “What does that mean?”
“It means they all love you the way you are. They don’t want you to change anything about yourself. That’s what it means to belong. You can be different from everyone else and they will not care that you aren’t exactly like them. In fact, they won’t want you to be anyone other than who you are.”
She sighed, then fell silent. No one spoke for several miles, until Sarah broke the lull by giggling and asking Felicity if she could look at whatever Felicity was coloring. “Sure,” Felicity said, and the atmosphere returned to a state of stasis, of relative normalcy.
I wondered then, and still do now, why it’s so difficult for most of us to feel as if we truly belong somewhere. The long loneliness persists in us. Sarah’s reaction activated the reminder that I don’t feel like I’ve ever really fit in anywhere, either. And maybe that’s true for a lot of us.
We think that acquiescing to “the way it is” or “the way it’s always been done” earns us a badge of acceptance, even admiration. And it usually does. For those who are never given the option to conform, like Sarah, standing out anywhere can feel cruel. Her facial features are a giveaway that she was born with some sort of anomaly, some deviation from the statistical norm. Automatically, that makes her a spectacle, whether it is intentional or not on the part of the bystander.
Departing from what everyone else is doing is an act of bravery, but it’s equally brave to find —and value —the uncontrollable aspects of ourselves as inimitable contributions to the world. Sarah is beginning to lean into this strange genetic aberration called Apert syndrome, with which she was born, and sometimes she dances about the house proclaiming to love being who she is. But sometimes she hates it and wishes she could blend in with everyone else.
Don’t we all do that? Sometimes love the way we are, as we are, and sometimes wish we could be more like, well, someone else?
When I consider what it means to celebrate a person, my mind’s eye travels to a birthday party, where the guest of honor feels special, valued. The people choosing to encircle her as she blows out the candles on her cake are the ones who uplift her. They are smiling, exuberant to see her shine.
I wish we could celebrate people in ordinary ways, and maybe we do. You and I don’t realize the impact we make on a person with our words of affirmation, compliments, and time. Our family celebrated Sarah in the van on that drive home from Toledo. Her classmates celebrated her during a lesson about people with physical differences. These are everyday moments, indelible ones to the person who is celebrated, and that’s really the only way to begin to reshape the sad state of our current society, with its isolating tendencies.
I’m thinking about how to celebrate the people I love more this year. Not just on birthdays or Hallmark holidays, but by finding simple but profound moments to say, “I appreciate you. You matter to me, and I’m grateful to have you in my life.”
Retrieved from https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/
This is so beautiful Jeannie! I’m saving it so I can read it again. I really love this idea of celebrating the people in our life, just the way they are!
I celebrate you, Jeannie! I just love this!