Nails, Labels, and the Ones That Stayed
I have been thinking a lot about words lately. Not big, important words. Not speeches or headlines. The small ones. The ones someone says to you on a Tuesday afternoon when you are thirteen years old, and you are still carrying them around in your body at fifty-nine.
Kind words can bring a smile, save a life, heal a rift that felt permanent. And mean words, hateful words, can bring tears that last far longer than the moment. They can leave wounds that never fully close. We all know this. We have all been on both sides of it.
But I think we underestimate just how long words live. How they take up residence in us without our permission and stay.
The Nail and the Fence
I read a story once about a boy who had a habit of saying mean and hateful things to the people around him. His father tried everything. He sat him down. He talked to him. He explained what those words did to people. And every single conversation fell on deaf ears.
So his father tried something different.
The next time his son said something particularly cruel, his father did not reprimand him. He handed him a hammer and a nail and told him to go outside and hammer that nail into the fence in the backyard. And he continued this practice every single time the boy said something negative or hateful. One nail. Into the fence.
Eventually, the boy grew tired of hammering nails. He stopped saying the mean and hateful things. And so his father handed him the hammer again. This time he told him to go pull every nail out of the fence and come back and tell him what he saw.
The boy came back and said the fence was full of holes.
His father took a moment. And then he said, “Son, every time you say something mean or hateful to someone, you leave holes in their heart. Just like the ones in that fence.”
You can pull out the nail. You can apologize. You can take back the words. But the holes remain.
Waddles the Duck
I was thirteen. I can tell you exactly what I was wearing and exactly where I was standing when a boy looked at me and told me I had a big butt and I waddled like a duck when I walked.
Waddles the duck. That is what he called me.
I am fifty-nine years old. That was over forty-five years ago. And I can still feel the heat in my face when I think about it. I can still see the hallway. I can still hear his voice. Those three words, said by a boy whose last name I barely remember, burrowed into me and stayed. They shaped how I walked into rooms for years. They shaped how I thought about my body. They left a hole, and I spent a long time trying to fill it with something other than shame.
That is the power of words. Not the grand ones. Not the ones in books or on stages. The careless ones. The ones spoken without thought by someone who probably forgot them five minutes later. Those are the ones that move in and never leave.
Difficult. Bitchy. Too Much.
Here is what I find interesting about midlife. The words that get aimed at us change, but the intent is the same.
When we were young, the words were about our bodies, our looks, whether we were pretty enough or thin enough or quiet enough. And now that we are older, now that we have finally stopped arranging ourselves to make everyone else comfortable, the words are different. We are difficult. We are bitchy. We are too much.
A woman sets a boundary and she is difficult. A woman speaks her mind and she is bitchy. A woman stops putting herself last on her own list and suddenly she is selfish, she has changed, she is not who she used to be.
You are right. She is not who she used to be. She got tired of swallowing words she should have said out loud twenty years ago. She got tired of smiling through conversations that left nail holes in her fence. She got tired of being Waddles the duck, arranging herself so no one would notice how she walked.
And the thing is, those labels, difficult and bitchy and too much, those are just nails, too. Somebody else’s nails. Somebody else’s attempt to hammer you back into a shape that is more convenient for them.
The Words We Choose Now
I think about that fence a lot. I think about the holes I have received, and if I am being honest with myself, I think about the ones I have left. Because I have left them. We all have. There are things I said in anger or carelessness or frustration that I cannot take back, and the holes are still there even though I am sorry.
So here is where I have landed, and I will not pretend it is a tidy conclusion because it is not.
Be careful with your words. Be careful with other people’s hearts. The nail goes in so easily and the hole it leaves behind is permanent. Your children hear you. Your friends hear you. The woman standing next to you in the grocery store hears you. Speak kindly. Speak gently. Not because it is easy, but because you know what a nail feels like.
I wrote recently about turning toward yourself in midlife, about the quiet revolution of finally noticing your own needs after a lifetime of noticing everyone else’s. This is the other side of that same coin. Because so many of us never turned toward ourselves in the first place because someone’s words, spoken once, convinced us we were not worth turning toward.
And also, speak up. Set the boundary. Say the thing you have been swallowing for decades. If someone calls you difficult for it, let them. If someone calls you bitchy, let them. Those are their nails, not yours, and you do not have to hammer them into your own fence anymore.
You are not too much. You are just finally enough.
I would love to hear from you on this one, friends. Is there a word or a comment from years ago that still lives in you? Something someone said, careless or cruel, that stayed long past its welcome? And on the other side of it, have you found your voice in midlife, even when it earned you a label you did not ask for? Tell me in the comments.
If this post resonated with you, I hope you will follow along on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. I share more thoughts like these throughout the week, and I love hearing from you there.
You Might Also Enjoy:
On Turning Toward Yourself in Midlife
