by Virginia Satir: At this writing I have been a therapist and teacher for nearly 40 years. Once in a while in my life, things come together in a new way.
This is a point of creation for me.
I see myself in my world through different glasses. This contines until some further new pieces come togehter and again with the new glasses I see me in my world differently. Writing the poem which you are about to read was one such point for me.
It was a Tuesday afternoon in early spring in Palo Alto, California. The air was fresh and the sun was coming through the open window. The breeze gently blowing on the curtain made lively reflections and shadows were playing on the walls in the room that was my office. Maria, an attractive, eager, yet somewhat worried and sometimes very angry 15-year-old girl, was sharing this time with me. Maria and I had become good friends.
There was a strong bond of trust that had developed during the three years we had known each other. We had met when Maria was 12. She was deperate over how to find her way among all the puzzles, pains and struggles with which she was living in her family — a situation many of you who are reading this may know something about. At one point in the middle of Maria telling me about a very hurtful experience with her mother she looked at me helplessly and desperately and said through angry tears, “What is life all about anyway? Life makes no sense. What is the meaning of it all?” At that moment, in that situation and where I was in my life, there with Maria, her questions had a powerful impact on me. I felt deeply stirred and at the same time uneasy.
Her words were not strange to me, her questions were not unfamiliar. I had said the words myself and had heard them from others. I don’t know whether I had ever put the question to myself just like that before. If I had I had not remembered my answer. I loved Maria and felt her pain very deeply. I wanted to help her. Maybe If she could find some kind of an answer for herself to a very central human question she might have a new place to begin. I knew that to giver something to her I had to answer the question for myself. I then realized that I never really had. The poem “I Am Me” was my answer then.
Fifteen years have passed since I wrote that poem. For both Maria and me it was the beginning of whole new possibilities. Furthermore, during these past fifteen years many people have read the poem. There were so many people who said: “Reading your poem put so many things in place for me. Can I have a copy and give it to my friends?” The requests became so numerous that publishing it seemed to be the next step.
Self-Esteem
by Virginia Satir
I AM ME
In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me
Everything that comes out of me is authentically me
Because I alone chose it – I own everything about me
My body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions,
Whether they be to others or to myself – I own my fanatasies,
My dreams, my hopes, my fears – I own all my triumphs and
Successes, all my failures and mistakes Because I own all of
Me, I can become intimately acquainted with me – by so doing
I can love me and be friendly with me in all my parts – I know
There are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other
Aspects that I do not know – but as long as I am
Friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously
And hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles
And for ways to find out more about me – However I
Look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever
I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically
Me – If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought
And felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is
Unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that
Which I discarded – I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do
I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be
Productive to make sense and order out of the world of
People and things outside of me – I own me, and
therefore I can engineer me – I am me and
I AM OKAY
