You Bring Good Heart

“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”

A nanny makes a little girl recite each word like a prayer. Like she would give her life up just so those chubby little cheeks will be held up high with confidence, and with a sense of her own worth, long after her cheekbones gain definition in the process of becoming a woman.

This scene from the movie The Help makes me cry every single time, without fail, for so many different reasons. It shows the power of faith. Faith in your worth, in your qualities, in your heart.

In the U.S., gifting yourself a bouquet of affirmations has become a widely accepted self-care practice, at least from what I’ve seen. People who are into self-love have probably dabbled in it once or twice. Myself included. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that I am madly, hopelessly in love with the magical power words seem to possess.

But because I am such a dedicated follower of the church of language, I am also careful about its impact, too.

There is a school of thought that says when you give people compliments or affirmations based on an outcome, it can become a curse, especially for children.

For example, if you grow up being told you are smart, an intelligent kid, your identity can start to attach itself to that label. Then, when you are not demonstrating “smart” through grades, test scores, or getting into a good school, you might feel like you are worth less.

Or if the people around you praise you for being “talented” your whole life, you might become particularly afraid of failing, or not producing monumental results. After all, if your worth is tied to talent, what happens when you are learning? What happens when you are average? What happens when you are simply human?

So what do we do instead?

The advice is to focus on the process when giving someone a compliment, or when you want to validate someone’s value as a person.

So instead of “You are smart!” you say, “You always try different ways to figure things out.” Replace “You are so talented” with “You trust yourself with what you can do, and you stay curious about what you are still learning.”

I know it can sound a little convoluted, but I can feel the difference in my body when someone appreciates me this way.

In fact, an interaction with my daughter almost made me cry in the frozen pizza aisle at Costco.

She clung to my leg and said, “You bring good heart, Mama! I wuv you!”

She will probably never know how much that meant to me. How, those words felt like warm liquid gold, filling the cracks of my heart like kintsugi.

It was also one of those rare moments when I felt confident, even proud, of my parenting. Because every night, before my daughter falls asleep, we recite together under the covers, like we are exchanging a secret passage: “You are observant. You think deeply. You bring good heart.” Like a prayer. 

May our words not trap us in a label, but bless us with room to keep becoming.

Written by SAKURACO