How do you accept yourself?

What's the secret?

IN MANY WAYS, the roots of Outsiderness is about acceptance. Acceptance of myself exactly how I am. As a kid I didn’t have this awareness, so I let external forces convince me that I was unacceptable. And it’s not even that I consciously thought this, but I internalized it somehow. I would never have articulated that, but I would try to scrub my brown skin to be lighter. This manifested as shame. I was ashamed of my brown skin, I was ashamed of being Filipino. I carried this for decades. At the tender age of my late 40s, my documentary project helped me process all of this. I don’t feel that shame anymore. I accept myself with my brown skin and as a Filipino. I’m even proud of it now.

But there are still other parts of myself I find hard to accept. For the most part, I’ve come to accept my vertically challenged-ness. In grade 7 I was tall, then I stopped growing and everyone else shot past me. It was definitely a source of low self-esteem and confidence for a long time. I’ve had to work hard at mitigating the effects of this. There are many genuine reasons I’m happy to be short. I’m reminded of this every time I take an airplane ride. (Standing room concerts, not so much.)

I’ve loved music my whole life. I started playing guitar around the age of 18, learning cover songs and singing them badly. Some time in my 20s I had the opportunity to play a couple of songs in a pub after the performer finished her set. It was late and there were like 6 people in the pub (including two or three friends and me) but it was the first time I stepped to a mic and played in a public space. When I moved to Nelson in 2010 I worked up the courage to play some open mics, and then some friends and I started an acoustic, vocal harmony driven band. We played for around seven years, performing at local markets, pubs, and restaurants. We were the kind of band that took turns singing lead, and the rest would be backup singers.

I never cared much for my voice though and lacked confidence. I never considered myself a singer. I’ve decided to work on that though, not only to improve my singing and build more confidence with it, but also as a way to help me be more confident in life, particularly with my voice. I’ve always been pretty reserved, quiet, on the more shy side. Over the past decade and more I’ve gotten used to public speaking through performing and things like Q&As or radio interviews for films I’ve worked on. But I still feel like it’s an area I have a lot of room for growth in. I want to learn how to sing with power and to belt out tunes. No more gentle and quiet acoustic stuff (for now, anyway).

I stumbled across a singing coach online that I resonate with, probably because he’s a long haired 40-something who loves 90s rock music. Pretty quickly after I started his online course I discovered I could sing much higher notes than I ever could before. I always thought it was something you had to build up to, like strength training, but it was just a technique issue. These notes were always available to me, I just didn’t know how to access them.

While this has been a very exciting discovery for me and has unlocked tons of songs I could never sing properly before, I still don’t like my voice very much. When I sing cover songs, the natural thing to do is compare myself to the original singer, but of course I’m not going to sound like them. But still. So my work now is to accept my voice as it is and just work with it. I need to learn how to lean into the qualities of it. Maybe one day even love it.

As part of my journey I push myself to share things, to put myself out there. So, in that spirit, here are a couple of recordings I recently did.

If you have any tips about self-acceptance, feel free to share!