In Search of Your Tiniest, Truest Self
When I was little my mum had a set of those Russian dolls that all nestle one inside the other, decreasing in size.
I always loved the tiniest doll the most. It was something to do with the fact that, in spite of her diminutive size, she was the only one who wasn’t hollow, and therefore the most substantial somehow.
Over the years I’ve come to see these dolls as the perfect analogy for the selves we create as we grow older. The tiniest, solid doll at our heart is our true self, but then life happens, and we grow other selves like suits of armour to protect us from its slings and arrows.
My tiniest doll, my youngest, truest self, felt happiest with her nose in a book, or creating new games to play, and freest losing herself in nature or riding her bike for hours.
This desire for freedom carried over into my teenage years. When I was a young teen I hated having to conform. I expressed my individuality through a series of ‘interesting’ hairstyles in a whole spectrum of reds and purples and custom-made most of my clothes. I regularly bunked off school to hang around with an older crowd, listening to records by the likes of The Clash and Linton Kwesi Johnson, going on protest marches, and being invited to parties in London squats full of colourful characters who taught me far more about life than a high school curriculum that seemed to be more concerned with creating an army of automatons.
But then I experienced a couple of traumatic events between the ages of 15 and 16 that caused me to create a new ‘Russian doll self’. My parents split up and my mum moved out, and a friend of mine ended up addicted to heroin. The world suddenly seemed like a dangerous place where the worst could happen without any warning.
My new Russian doll self no longer expressed her individuality through her hair and clothes. She wanted to fade from view, and so she did.
Similarly, a couple of years later, when I lost confidence in my ability to achieve my dream of becoming a writer and dropped out of uni, I created another Russian doll self. This one didn’t care that she had a crap job, dealing with irate customers moaning about late deliveries on the daily, all she cared about was partying. As she snorted speed and popped pills and danced to Everybody’s Free to Feel Good she was so far removed from that tiniest, truest, freest doll deep inside of her she’d forgotten she even existed.
And then I got pregnant.
I hadn’t planned on getting pregnant but I will never, ever think of my son as an accident. The benefit of 25 years hindsight shows me loud and clear that his birth was the best thing that could ever have happened to me, and the vital first step in me rediscovering my true self.
Going on maternity leave created the space for my childhood writing dream to tentatively bud back into life. And by the time my son was three I’d had my first book published.
The self I became during those years of early motherhood was definitely closer to my tiniest, truest doll. As well as writing, I began spending much more time in nature, running rather than cycling as a way of feeling free. But I was also in a very difficult relationship so the Russian doll self of my late twenties bore some quite visible scars.
Thankfully, I found the strength to leave that relationship in my thirties, and yet another self was created; that of proud self-employed, single mum. I imagine this Russian doll looking tired but happy, her mouth painted into a hopeful smile.
A more recent self that I created – and I’m pretty sure you might have created one of these too – was my global pandemic self, which also coincided with my empty-nest self, when my now adult son left home. I’m imagining this doll with worry lines on her forehead and maybe even a painted on teardrop. Her colours were slightly faded, and even though she was the latest and therefore biggest doll, mentally she was the smallest, as she shrank herself to fit the new world of lockdowns and travel restrictions.
But then something magical happened; I stopped resisting the changes I had no control over. I embraced the cocoon. And I wrote and wrote and wrote – four historical novels to be precise. A new chapter in my writing career began and one day I looked around and I saw that the walls of my cocoon had gone. Have gone.
A new self is emerging, one who fully remembers the tiniest, truest of dolls at her heart, encapsulating all of her love for freedom and creativity and adventure, but who also carries the hard won experience of all the other selves nestled inside her. The lines painted on this Russian doll’s forehead don’t speak of worry, they sing of the wisdom and depth of a life fully lived.