Authenticity is an Ongoing Process of Inquiry


Authenticity is an ongoing process of inquiry, not a static state of being. A person isn’t one day all of a sudden authentic, nor is authenticity something we achieve through accumulated effort.

As Brené Brown explains, “authenticy is a collection of choices that we have to make every day.” And then, if we are lucky, we get to rise up and make them all over again the next.

Authenticity is a word and concept that, from age 18 until recently, gave me the heebee jeebees. Mostly because I’m in an academic discipline that is suspect of essentialist ideas, but also because when academics do embrace authenticity, it is usually a pre-packaged variety of it, palatable to the powers that be. So, not authenticity at all.

When I leave the noise of academia behind, I find that authenticity is the core of everything I do. Authenticity is one of my core values, and to be inauthentic is to step out of my integrity.

Just because I know that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

One way authenticity pains me in particular is that often I’d prefer to fly under the radar, but my authenticity is a wee bit bossy, and has loud and rough hewn edges.

My authenticity often demands I behave in ways that will draw attention to myself when really I’d rather not.

My authenticity asks me to learn new skills, to grow, to be better.

When I’d rather stay in my office and read book after book and never leave the house, authenticity tells me to get my ass up.

Authenticity likes my discomfort.

For most of my adult life I have struggled with depression. Some of this is my biology.

But some of my depression stems from living out of alignment with my authenticity, from being out of touch with my core self and values.

Authenticity is energy, and when we don’t engage it, it metastasizes in a whole variety of ways.

Brené Brown has written extensively about this and explains that when we hide from or avoid authenticity, that energy instead often transforms into “anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, and inexplicable grief.”

That is quite a list, and most of us have experienced one, some, or all of the above.

authenticity is resistance

The patriarchy likes me depressed, because depression is a powerless state in which I will more easily eat the lies of capitalism.

Authenticity is necessary for agency, and the patriarchy works hard to keep us from being agents of joy, thought, love, and justice.

Authenticity is the center of our power.

Much of modern life is designed to keep us from being authentic, to keep us from understanding we’re not being authentic, thus keeping us in a state of powerlessness.

There is so much to unpack about authenticity, but the thing I really want you to take away right now is this: to be authentic is an act of resistance.

To resist is to push back, to rebel against oppression.

When something as necessary as authenticity is rebellious, the culture is broken.

To tap more deeply into your authenticity, do some reflection on the following questions.

  • What activities make you feel most alive?
  • What kinds of interactions with others enliven you?
  • When have others responded to you in deep and profound ways?

The answers to those questions are clues to your authenticity.

Send me an email [to cherri @ cherriporter.com]. I’d love to hear your answers.

Manifesto: I’m a Motherfucking Lighthouse

A few months ago I was asked an important question, though it seemed inconsequential at the time. My answers to that question have shaped my behavior since. That question was:

What did 17-year-old Cherri want/like/feel?

I didn’t have an answer right away, but that 17-year-old’s voice and values have come back to me, through the years, and get louder inside the more I quiet and listen.

For years I entirely ignored 17-year-old Cherri.

I hushed her off as an idealistic fool. I grew up. I became cynical.

After 26 years, 17-year-old Cherri is done being ignored.

She had ideals, that one, but she was no fool. She understood the cynicism was no way to live.


Photo of Cherri with blue background

A friend made a video after our first semester of college that was a little bit silly and a little bit serious. It was shot on a cassette tape, so I never saw the results back then, but a few years ago he digitized it and posted it to social media.

This friend, who moved away senior year of high school, was back visiting half of our graduating class in Iowa and recording it for posterity. Mostly, we’re all just hanging out and having a good time in the shots.

He did, however, pause to ask everyone what their major was. Most of us were undecided, which strikes me now as an optimistic view of the future–a view that there would be time yet to explore and decide.

I was undecided, too. But this is what I said to him after I told him I didn’t have a major:

My major is life, kind of, and I think that there is an Indigo Girls song that says, ‘If the world is night / shine my life like a light,’ and that’s what I want to do with my life. That’s an important thing about me.

I gave a cheeky grin at the end. In the still, I am positively adorable.

Most importantly, though I was young and sweet, I was confident in that assertion.

I did not look naive or foolish.

I looked sure. I knew this was true.

That was my intention at 17, 19, 21—and even at 25. When I dropped out of grad school (which is whole different story), a gal in the program asked me what I’d do instead. Only half jokingly, I told her I was moving to California to become an alternative healer.

The light so badly wanted to shine, but I didn’t know how to let it yet. I lost my way.

Lost it to depression, chronic pain, health challenges, marriage, parenting, the forces of evil and darkness in the world at large.

You name it, I used it as a way to avoid my truth.

My avoidance took many shapes, and I grew a distorted vision of my true self.

I began to see myself as naturally cynical and bitter. As naturally difficult and disruptive. As outside the lines, and cranky as all get out.

I thought that because I was irreverent, I couldn’t be holy.

I believed that because I was cranky, I couldn’t be kind.

My cynicism was so pervasive at times, lightness had little place in my world.

That is a bad way to live.

I let the weight of darkness have power over the brightest parts of me.

I hid my light in a bed of depression under blankets of pain.

I ate longing and despair and starved myself of other nourishment.

This is what I know now to be true. This is what reconnected to my 17 year old self has taught me:

Lightness and depression aren’t mutually exclusive.

Light and pain aren’t on opposite sides of a spectrum.

Lightness is my essence, even when it’s not visible through the haze of struggle.

I can’t wait to feel better to change my life.

I can’t wait to be healthier to get in touch with my truest self.

I can’t wait until the sun shines on me everyday to follow the dreams that have just now begun to whisper up to me from 26 years of debris.

There is no future. There is only now.

If the world ends tomorrow, do I want to spend my last day glued to a newsfeed feeling irate about the forces of evil? Feeling angry and helpless in the face of disasters and crimes and terrorism and abhorrent politics?

Hell no.

I am a lightworker.

I am a motherfucking lightworker.

I am made of light.

I am a lighthouse so others have a guide in the night. So others can strike flint to their own truth.

I will live in light.

I will no longer fling myself against the walls of darkness created by others.

During that first semester of college, the one that had just concluded when the video I mentioned above was recorded, my work study job was in the dorm cafeteria.

Two days a week I worked the line in Friley Hall, swiping student ID cards for meals. At the time, Friley Hall was the second largest dormitory in the United States, and we served thousands of students a day.

I loved working the line. I smiled at everyone. I flirted with everyone. I remembered names, pointed out cool t-shirts, and had inside jokes with dozens of people.

My nickname that one fall semester in 1992: Sunshine.

I am still cranky as fuck some days, but I now acknowledge the lightness and the shine as part of my true nature.

Thank you! You have successfully subscribed to The Shine List.

Our newsletter adds a bit of shine to your partly cloudy inbox.






<©2018 Cherri Porter>