"You are the Steward of the Work"
When I was a little girl, my mother always seemed to choose the exact moment before we stepped through a stranger’s doorway to whisper, “Children are to be seen and not heard.” That single sentence carried more weight than any party dress or patent‑leather shoes. It meant pruning my excitement, trimming every wild sprout of curiosity so the grown‑ups around us wouldn’t judge my parents’ competence. The unspoken equation was simple: my behavior equaled their worthiness. By seven, I was hauling around a responsibility big enough to wrench a child’s spine, yet no one ever told me when the job would be finished.
Steward of the Work
That early bargain with silence stayed stubborn. Even as my body grew, my voice kept ducking behind locked doors. Desire? Better repress it. Talent? Hide it before someone measures and finds it lacking. Summers with my grandmother, herself a fine artist, added another twist: my brushstrokes were not merely mine. She believed the quality of my sketches echoed back on her reputation. Every crooked line felt as though I had smudged her good name. Writing was no safer. One high‑school teacher anointed me “the next Emily Dickinson,” while my first‑year composition professor insisted I belonged in remedial support. Brilliance or bust, genius or failure. Shame does not care which story wins as long as you stay small.
Decade after decade I kept pruning. By the time I reached my forties, the garden of possibility looked like winter stubble: bare, brown, unloved. Then something brave, maybe a little reckless, cracked open. I returned to college. Honors in writing followed, then a master’s degree. The thesis that earned my scholarship for a PhD came with one condition: teach. Two years later I was the graduate writing coordinator, feeling my way into liberation like I felt body surfing waves of words: your words matter, all of them, even the messy ones. My own writing and perspective were finally free.
Life loves a good twist. While I was teaching others to risk expression, I fell in love with someone whose entire profession ran on rejection slips and do‑overs. He made music because music was what his soul needed to breathe, not because a producer promised a payday. Watching him show up one hundred percent, day after day, with zero guarantee of applause, rewired something in me. I started making art for no one but myself: throwing paint, stitching photographs, letting poems spill. Vulnerability in motion.
Then came the year I turned fifty. Picture this: I am teaching evenings at a large university and commuting five hours north each month for a four‑day doctoral intensive in Jungian depth psychology. One Monday the schedule turned savage. Morning: present original research as a student. Afternoon: drive south, weaving through traffic, road work, and espresso pit stops, so I could host a welcome lecture for three hundred new graduate students starting their first writing class. By noon my heart was pounding like a bass drum. A professor pulled me aside, read the terror in my eyes, and asked what was wrong. I unloaded every fear: the clock, the freeway, the impossible expectation to be brilliant in two places at once.
He held my hand, looked straight through the panic, and said softly, “Bren, the Universe doesn’t make mistakes. You didn’t choose the work; the work chose you. You are the steward of the Work. Let the relationship guide you.”
Steward, not owner, not performer. The word settled into my bones like warm tea. The stress didn’t vanish, but the shame did. I wasn’t late because I was inadequate; I was late because I was carrying something sacred between two worlds. When I finally strode onto that auditorium stage, ten minutes behind schedule, I began with the same reminder: “You are the steward of the work.” A wave of relief moved through three hundred shoulders. Permission granted to show up imperfectly and still belong.
Here is what I know now:
Early messages matter, but they are not marble. “Be seen and not heard” carved caution into my childhood, yet neuroplasticity is merciful. With practice, compassion, and maybe some professional butt‑kicking, those grooves can soften.
Shame is a terrible art critic. Whether the voice belongs to a grandmother’s expectations, a professor’s red pen, or your own internal gremlins, shame’s primary job is containment, while creativity’s primary job is expansion. Only one can win.
Wholeheartedness requires a long view. My partner modeled the difference between a goal and an expectation; goals focus our energy, expectations shackle our worth. Showing up one hundred percent with no guarantee of outcome is the essence of courage.
Your work is not just yours. Stewardship invites humility and partnership with something larger: purpose, calling, the Muse, God, or the collective unconscious. When we accept that we are carriers rather than owners, the weight shifts from performance to service.
It is never too late. A forty‑year‑old college freshman, a fifty‑year‑old doctoral student: time is a construct, meaning is not. The dreams we buried under family rules and self‑doubt are patient. They wait in the dark until we turn and whisper, “I’m ready.”
So, friend, if you are reading this with a lump in your throat because your own childhood script sounds eerily familiar, let me pass the hand‑holding forward:
The Universe didn’t make a mistake with you, either. You didn’t choose the longing that tugs at your ribs; it chose you. You are the steward of the work that has been loyal to you in silence. Feel into that relationship. Trust it to guide you out of the dim hallway of “seen but not heard” and into the wide‑open space where your voice can stretch.
Yes, the old indoctrinations will shout that you are selfish, ungrateful, ridiculous. Let them shout. Your job is to keep showing up: to the page, the canvas, the living‑room floor where you dance like nobody is grading. Show up with everything you have, and surrender the outcome. That is not indifference; that is wholeheartedness in action.
Remember, repression is a habit, and so is expression. Choose the one that lets you breathe. Choose stewardship over ownership. Choose to begin, again and again and again. Somewhere in the quiet dark, your truest work is still waiting for the day you turn, open your palms, and say, “Yes, it’s time.”