When my youngest daughter, Paige, was in kindergarten, she came home from school looking defeated one day.
Later, as I cleaned her backpack out, I came to understand why more clearly:
At the bottom of her tiny Dory bag,
I found a crumpled-up flash of red construction paper and unfolded it to verify that it was trash before I threw it away in the recycling.
What I saw when I unfurled it, though, was the most adorable little bunny drawing staring back at me.
I instantly loved it.
It had so much character in its face.
I felt almost like I knew him.
I went to her, carrying it, and asked why she had balled it up that way.
Why would she try to destroy it?
“When I was drawing it, Tali looked over at it and said its face looked funny,” she answered with a pout.
“I liked it, but she made me so sad, so I just stopped drawing.”
I smoothed the picture, quietly.
I pressed down on the bent edges.
Then I told my daughter something I still try to teach all my girls today,
and try, myself, to remember:
“Honey, all through this life, there are going to be people who don’t understand you.
Not who you are as a person, or the things you like, or the art you make.
But other people don’t get to decide who we are and what kinds of things we do just because of their opinions.
Did YOU like your bunny?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Then that bunny stays. Got it?
People will always have opinions.
Someone will always try to judge you, or tell you what you are doing isn’t good, or isn’t working.
They’ll make you feel like they doubt you.
What matters is what you know deep inside.
Do you understand?
Ask yourself, ‘Does what I‘m doing feel right, or bring me joy?’
If it does, that’s how you know it’s good and to keep going.
So many things in this world wouldn’t ever get created or dreamed up if everyone stopped what they were doing the second someone questioned it.
The reason big inventions or discoveries even happen at all is always that one person dares to do something different.
In other words: We don’t crumple our bunnies, OK? We are proud of them.”
I hugged her.
“We never know the big change we’re about to make for someone who is watching.”
She smiled, and nodded up at me.
I could tell she got it.
For nearly a decade now, that red construction paper bunny has been a main feature in my home.
I look at it and ponder the lesson I saw in him often.
His ears are still bent the way they were from that day,
and his background still bears the evidence of the folding,
but that bunny looks at me and now I feel like I know the meaning of his expression.
I’ve thought before that if I ever got a tattoo after years of not having any, one of the very first things I would consider having put on me would be that exact construction paper bunny.
To other people, it might just look like a kindergarten art project done for Easter;
But, it stands for something to me.
(and, hopefully, to my daughter)
It reminds me of something that, these days, feels extra important:
That we are free to create and be something unique, even if we stand out, or are misunderstood when we do it.
Other people may look on and criticize our art, a way we dress, something we say, or things we love or protest.
No two bunnies are the same.
One might even (shockingly) hate carrots.
We can hold our heads high, though, secure in being a little “weird,” to someone, or a little different.
The differences among us all are what make life interesting, right?
Who even wants a gallery of cookie-cutter bunnies?
We don’t have to look and act the same to all have deep value.
What we put out into the world can belong to only us:
Our vision alone.
We don’t crumple our bunnies.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
