Looking For [Praise] In All The Wrong Places

Wanting validation from others is how we end up walking away from our own joy.

Photo by Chase Clark on Unsplash

Q: My parents don’t acknowledge what I do for a living because I’m not a doctor or a lawyer. For the longest time, they thought I was working in fashion, LOL. (I work in news media.) I used to be really upset about it. Now, I see ... they just don’t get it. (And, I’m not sure they want to get it, or me.) But, I do worry about how I can own my own work success and enjoy that career success when I don’t even have the most basic recognition or support from those people who mean the most to me. 

Dear Unacknowledged One, 

I’m sorry your parents don’t get what you do. And, yet, I can tell by how you ask your question that you and your parents really love each other. 

That’s a good foundation to build on, and more than most have. 

I haven't seen my mother in many moons. But when last we were together, she started off by sharing that a distant cousin of mine had been in the crowd of a big industry event where I was the closing keynote. (Remember when we actually left our homes to sit ~12 inches apart from each other at these things called conferences? No? Me neither.) Anyways, he had apparently sent her two pictures, one of me on some epic stage, and one of a long line of people queued up to get a book signed.  

My mother shared all this, ending with, "you must be so important now". 

I remember being just bumfuzzled, feeling slow and confused on how to respond. What does one say in response to something like that? Heck, how does one even interpret that sentence? 

If there’s one story you need to know about my relationship with my mom is that back when I was 18 years old, I didn’t do what my mom wanted me to do, which was to get a customary arranged marriage. I was supposed to marry a guy of her choosing to provide her financial security via a dowry. 

So even if she meant this sentence to say she saw me as doing good or being influential with these ideas, what I heard was shaped by our history, to when I was willful enough to want an education, instead of doing my “duty” to family. I didn’t feel especially seen, I just felt chastised.

Family relationships are hard, aren’t they? 

More accurately, loving someone is hard. We bruise each other simply by being with and near each other, similar to how ripe pears bear witness to the fingers that have lovingly chosen them. We see the after-effects of being touched, by the mark in a particular soft spot. This doesn’t happen because we mean each other harm, but because they are the ones who are close enough, soft enough with us to be hurt. While it shouldn’t be that easy to bruise those we love, it is remarkably so. 

Loving demands forgiveness. Loving deeply requires deep forgivingness. 

So, be gentle. On yourself. And, on them.

Their Not Getting It Really Isn’t About You
You said they just don’t get it. And, then you wonder if they want to. Let’s assume they do; have you taken the time to explain your career to them? 

Imagine you’re embarking on a long flight and you’re seated next to someone of your parents’ generation and they ask, what do you do? And you tell them. And they respond with something like fashion? In that situation, you’d likely laugh, and then clarify. “Um, actually no … it’s more this.” You might explain why it’s related to fashion, or how it’s different. And, even after all of that effort on your part…. even if this person didn’t really get it, you’d realize that her not getting it is not at all about you. It’s just their understanding. 

This is how we need to interpret your parents’ bad take: It’s not about you. 

But do try to explain. The career choices your parents, especially your mother, had available to them are so different than the choices you have available to you. I often forget it but women just the generation before mine had about five career choices. Nurse, teacher, nanny, cook, or secretary. 

My generation got to add a few things on the list, like lawyer and doctor, as those professional schools went co-ed in the 50s and 60s. (Which might also explain why your parents wanted you to be a lawyer or a doctor, FWIW.) But the next/current generation, aka you, has lots of choices, and even more creative titles. Just realize that career stuff is so very different with what your parents grew up with, Maybe they’re just lost and need a little help to see you.

We’re not playing a game of peek-a-boo, where an infant is still learning object permanence. That’s not the case here. Just cause they don’t see you doesn’t mean you’ve disappeared.

Go From Being Unseen By Finding Where You Truly Belong
And, now that you’re an adult, let me point out…your parents' work, however good or bad, is mostly done. They got you here. And now you get to become who you’re becoming. 

What is that for you? Do you know? 

Because most of us don’t. 

Often when we feel unseen, it’s because we don’t know how we belong to the world. Parker Palmer characterized it when he wrote: “Long before a community assumes external shape and form, it must exist within you. Only as we are in communion within ourselves can we be in community with others.” [From Let Your Life Speak]

And what Palmer doesn’t spell out in that short paragraph (but he does over his body of work) is that we are connected in a multitude of ways. 

Your relationship with your parents is one. Where you are beloved. 

Your relationship with your colleagues is another. Where you create. 

You are passionate about art. This is where you play. 

You live someplace. This, too, can be a community. Where you breathe. 

Maybe you belong to a spiritual community. Where you pray. 

As you see yourself, you see how you belong to yours.

Starting from that center of who we each are, we are encircled, connected, and belong in the world. Either by proximity or purpose, providence or passion… When you choose who you are, you also choose to whom you belong. 

So, when you ask, “how I can own my own success and even enjoy it when I don't even have that most basic recognition or support from your parents,” you are asking the wrong question. 

I think you need to ask, can you own your own success and enjoy it? Can you see and celebrate that spot in the world where only you stand, your onlyness? Can you name what it is that matters to you and how that connects you to others? What you value that allows you to create value? What it is that you want changed, or manifest? Can you see how you are distinctly contributing that which only you can? Can you recognize it as valuable and worthy, even if… especially if it’s still all a work in progress? 

Know that. Acknowledge that. And, more to the point, craft communities according to that. Until we see ourselves, we can’t belong, and we won’t be seen. 

You Don’t Want Their Acknowledgment. You Want Your Own
We all want to be acknowledged and known. We want so much to be recognized and celebrated. We are desperate to be seen. Yet most of us can’t say what it is we want to be known for, celebrated for, seen for. 

That is the yawning chasm that most of us are trying to fill. 

In absence of knowing what we want to create, how we want to add our bit to the world, where we might add our own value, far too many of us look outside ourselves, and act out our desperate need for acknowledgment. 

One way that happens is to seek praise from a boss. You will prioritize what they want over what you, or your family, want and need. You will say just what you think they want to hear. By seeking their praise, you shape-shift away from that spot of yours, and never get what you want. 

Another way is to actively (Instagram anyone?) project an image, a brand,  or mirage by which you might be seen and known, with the hopes that the filtered object might captivate attention and so maybe will give us some sense, however shallow, of being seen, or being known. 

And sometimes we make the mistake that a single community has to serve all our needs. That our parents need to validate our career. Or our husband needs to also be our creative colleague. Or our work colleagues, our private art passion. When that’s not their job, it's yours. 

These are ways we ask other people to pick us, to validate us, to affirm us. And this is how we give away our own true voice, the foundation of our onlyness.  

So, yes, these lovely people you love matter to you, but they don’t get to say if you are okay. When we ask people to approve of us, praise us .. we’re posing a question that never needs to be asked. You don't need their approval to prove you are already worthy; your value is not up for dispute. 

The person’s acknowledgment you most want? It’s your own.