I Am Not From Minnesota

I moved to the Midwest from Seattle a few years ago and learned about Minnesota nice. It’s a term people use here for being passive-aggressive. Where people are super nice to your face and then as soon as you leave the room they are talking about you.

Wikipedia describes it this way: "Minnesota nice is a cultural stereotype applied to the behavior of people from Minnesota implying residents are unusually courteous, reserved, mild-mannered, and passive-aggressive. The phrase also implies polite friendliness, an aversion to open confrontation, a tendency toward understatement, a disinclination to make a direct fuss or stand out, apparent emotional restraint, and self-deprecation."

I have found this to be true and it’s starting to ruffle my feathers. Here’s the deal people:

If we don’t advocate for ourselves who will? For the longest time, I struggled because I didn’t know how to speak up for myself. I didn’t know how to say no, I didn’t know how to say when something didn’t feel right or was not okay with me.

Today I get this burning fire in my heart and in my chest when I know that I need to speak up. We do not have to play small. We can speak our truth. We hold onto so much that we’re afraid of saying in fear that we will hurt someone’s feelings or that they’ll think badly of us, but in turn, we get debilitating diseases and health problems because we are not sharing freely what we feel.

Our goal should be to speak up. We need to teach our children that it’s okay to advocate for themselves. It is okay to say no, this isn’t right. It’s okay to ask for what we want and what we need. We are not here to play small. We are not here to be meek. We are not here to bend over so that every Tom, Dick, and Harry can stomp on us. We are here to speak our truth, to share what’s going on with us. So many people hide what they’re feeling to be politically correct or to be polite. F that noise. People are not mindreaders. If I don’t speak up, who will speak on my behalf? Yes, I can have faith. I can trust in God. I can pray. I can know that things will be taken care of, but there are some things that we need to use our words for.

We need to use our voices, our God-given voices. We have powerful voices that need to be heard. No more staying quiet. No more just going with the status quo. We are a force to be reckoned with. We don’t need to be ashamed because we have feelings about something. We need to learn that it’s okay to have feelings and emotions and that we no longer need to stuff them down. We need to quit stuffing them down with Netflix benders, McDonald’s, pizza, cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, caffeine, sex, shopping. Let the feelings up and out. Have you been hurt by somebody? Have we felt wounded by somebody? Maybe we’ve been abused by somebody. Has somebody gaslit us? Did we grow up in a home of narcissists? Speak up!

People need to hear what we are saying. People need to know they are not alone. We have a voice for a reason. Too many of us walk around timid and afraid for fear of people thinking we’re different than them, but really we’re all carrying around our own stuff. Let’s talk about it. Let’s break the stigma. Let’s share about those things that happened to us. Let’s find support. Let’s go to therapy. Let’s find groups that support our healing, not people that bring us down and keep us in our misery and darkness. Let’s find people that want to also get up and out of this life. To get out of their muck and mire and the trudging that we’ve done for so long.

We deserve to be free. We deserve to heal. We deserve to see the light. We deserve to walk in freedom, no longer bound by the chains that we’ve been shackled to because of our own minds and because of our own fear or because we’ve been too scared to let people know who we truly are and how we truly feel.

The people before me that hung onto their resentment and anger drank themselves to death. I don’t want to be that person. I want to live free. I no longer want to be stuck down in regret, shame, and anger. I want to heal and be free and I have a right to it. Joy is my birthright. My soul longs to be free to feel to express myself, to dance and laugh, not to be tied down literally by my own thoughts, resentment and fear.

Forget being nice for the sake of others. Let’s be honest instead.