Living Without Skin: Everything I Never Knew About Fierce Vulnerability

By Tammy Green

Feeling vulnerable is frightening.

Being fiercely vulnerable is phenomenal.

 

Most of us spend a lifetime trying to avoid pain and insecurity while overlooking the power we inherently possess. What would you do differently with your life if you knew you were failsafe at birth?

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Author Academy Elite
• Release date: Sep 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781647467852

Tammy Green

Tammy Green is the author of Living Without Skin, a haphazard blogger, and a thinker of surprisingly deep, sometimes wide, thoughts. A real estate professional and healthcare worker by day, author by night, she has also written articles for Elephant Journal. She resides in Memphis, TN, with her wife, two exceptionally perfect dogs, and a boss cat. She is a lover of words, her grandkitten, caramel cake, and saving items for later in her Amazon shopping cart. You can chat with Tammy on Twitter @wordsofgreen1, Instagram, or Facebook @wordsofgreen, or check out her website at www.wordsofgreen.com.

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What Others Are Saying About Living Without Skin

Tammy shows us how to take a true, real, and honest look at life and how it is formed and resurrected over and over. It is a profound and amazing book from this debut author.

- Karen McCarthy, attorney and author of Murder at The Candlelight Vigil

"Tammy makes you laugh with her, cry with her, and encourages you to be brave enough to live inside your own rawness. If you are wondering where your superhero cape was lost, then Living Without Skin is a ‘must read’."

- Maureen Sharphouse, speaker, author, mentor, and coach

"Healing trauma instead of passing it off as culture to the next generation is something Tammy has managed to describe in Living Without Skin. It’s a victory for recovery in an industry that tries its best to create success in communities everywhere. This emerging author makes you feel everything you didn’t know you were suppressing."

- Kristy McCormic, Executive Director of the Kathryn Foundation

"Tammy Green always felt she had superpowers despite hiding her true self under the armor of her Supergirl cape. In Living Without Skin, Tammy uses her homespun, southern childhood experiences to share with us the lessons she learned over her lifetime. Her courage, tenacity, and lifelong commitment to learn about herself ensured her survival through addiction, divorce, and her own rebellious antics. She learned the only way to clean up her life and find meaning and happiness was to do it herself, one step at a time. Through the power of vulnerability, she learned the only way out is through and the reward is becoming her authentic self, feeling comfortable in her skin, giving herself compassion and finding the love of her life. Living Without Skin: Everything I Never Knew About Fierce Vulnerability is a highly relatable story that grabs the reader from the first sentence to the last and shows us that we have had superpowers all along."

- Marci Brockmann, educator,

author of Permission to Land, and host of the podcast Permission to Heal.

Living Without Skin

Everything I Never Knew about Fierce Vulnerability

Tammy Green

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Living Without Skin © 2021 by Tammy Green. All rights reserved.

Published by Author Academy Elite

PO Box 43, Powell, OH 43065

www.AuthorAcademyElite.com

All rights reserved. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the author.

Identifiers:

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021908247

ISBN: 978-1-64746-783-8 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-64746-784-5 (hardback)

ISBN: 978-1-64746-785-2 (ebook)

Available in paperback, hardback, e-book, and audiobook

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Cover Design by Sudip Iglesias Murmu

SiMDESIGNS Pvt. Ltd.

www.simbhai.com

Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

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This book is dedicated to my Grand, the Great.

You did a good job. Everything is gonna be alright.

Myrtle Irby, RN (The RN stands for Right Now)

1924-2020

Acknowledgments

This book would never have been possible without Hope. Thank you for always being there—joy to my heart and food for my soul. Thank you for being my biggest fan and my partner in crime. I still promise to make sure there is always coffee.

Thank you to Daddy, Lala, and Wojja for allowing me to tell, authentically and openly, the story of which you have been a massive part. Thanks, Daddy, for doing the sometimes unpleasant job of always seeing after me until I’m grown. Thanks, Lala, for always having enough room inside your cape for me. Thanks, Wojja, for being part of my safety net, always.

Thank you to Rowan, who lived through most of my learning process with me and is still alive to tell about it. Thank you also for giving me a chance to be the mama you need. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine!

Thank you to my oldest two children, Kent and Morgan. You taught me how to be a mama, even though I wasn’t yours. You loved me without seeing all the chaos I had inside. I love you so big!

Thank you to my roots: Deb Eizinger, Dave Eizinger, Patty Crawford, Char Gatlin, and Brenda Levings. I couldn’t stand tall without you.

Thank you to the Mitchells, the Chrestmans, the Mejias, and the Creekmores. You folded Rowan and me into your lives, and you make us feel like we’ve always been family. I’m honored to be your family of choice.

Thank you to Jennifer Moon, who unfailingly holds down the fort when I need a mental health day, gives everything she has with her whole heart to anyone in need, and does ESS on the regular.

A special thank you to Barbara Hope, my friend who tells everyone that I made a difference in her life at a time when she had no skin. The truth is, without her foray into public storytelling, my writing would have never seen the light of day. Thank you, sweet friend, co-admin of Words of Green, and living inspiration on how to do hard things.

Finally, a super special thank you to Maureen Sharphouse, my fellow author-friend across the pond. Our weekly Zoom chats kept me sane, alive, and hopeful about the message I’m meant to bring. When the last 10,000 words took eight months to write, thank you for your unfailing commitment to me.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Discovering the Beginning

Chapter 2: Recognizing Strengths

Chapter 3: Owning Vulnerability

Chapter 4: Listening Closely

Chapter 5: Answering the Question

Chapter 6: Meeting Self

Chapter 7: Finding Your Cape

Chapter 8: Stepping Out of Your History

Chapter 9: Staying Airborne

Chapter 10: Growing Roots and Branches

Chapter 11: Living Organically

Afterword

About the Author

Introduction

Quit That Crying

You better quit that crying before I give you something to cry about.

—Every Parent Since the Dawn of Mankind

In the South where I grew up, that statement can be heard at least a hundred times on any given day on the local playground, at the shopping mall, at school, and especially at Walmart. My daddy was quite fond of the phrase the moment I tried to fly.

I was the strongest, smartest three-year-old Supergirl in the world, held in place only by my grandmother’s hand on the back of my dress as I stood on the church pew next to her that Sunday morning. Not even gravity could hold me down. Daddy sat on the other side of me in church and glared at me, daring me with his eyes to keep playing. Mimaw happened to consider me the cat’s pajamas since I was the only grandbaby. Every display of my imagination was nothing short of miraculous and usually hilarious to her, so she was laughing at me as I pretended to take off.

Zoom! Pow! Whoosh! I shouted. Daddy shot me a death stare and silently mouthed at me, Sit down and be quiet right now! But what three-year-old can resist the laughter of a Mimaw? Not this one.

If you have a sense of foreboding of what was coming, you are exactly right. After church, we went home, and my father took me to the back bedroom and spanked my happy little self as if all the heavens were raging against my glee in church. Of course, I cried. And then, the phrase that would become a tagline to the backdrop of my life was uttered.

You better quit that crying before I give you something to cry about.

Let’s look at the logic of that phrase in the context of the situation. Only a psychotic child destined to be a serial killer could dry their tears on command. Who even does that? Thus, another characteristic that would follow me through life emerged. The more I was told to stop, the more I did the thing that made me cry. I was no longer Supergirl. I was simply a toddler who learned flying in church wasn’t allowed. Today, I believe church is made for flying. I think God, Himself, designed us for flight, and His divine purpose for each of us represents one more step to becoming whole when we joyously and freely don our capes.

As I walked back into the front room sporting swollen red eyes and doing my best to stop crying, I noticed my aunt in the front room crying as hard as I was. I’m pretty sure this was the moment we bonded for life.

It’s an interesting phenomenon, isn’t it? Expressing pain and weakness and feeling about as small and insignificant as a gnat’s bottom, only to discover that someone near you is silently holding you up, feeling everything you’re feeling, wrapping their superhero cape around you.

Throughout this book, we will explore that phenomenon in detail. We will delve into real experiences and scenarios of trying so hard to wear a superhero cape and failing. We’ll look at what happens inside and what that looks like outside. Our excursion won’t be from a scholarly or scientific perspective. Instead, you’ll join me on a real-life, sometimes humorous, raw, and gritty trek.

As in any good superhero story, we’ll walk through intense drama and scenes where you’ll want to scream at the protagonist to run! We will encounter villains, bad guys, and many angels and fellow superheroes along the way, and we will laugh and cry. Grab a chair and a cup of your favorite snuggling beverage, and let’s begin.

Chapter 1

Discovering the Beginning

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.

—Genesis 1:1

I could smell exhaust fumes mixed with Daddy’s cologne inside the truck. Elvis was gently crooning on the radio.

I’ll-ah have-ah a bloooooo Christmas . . . without youuu. I’ll-ah be-ah so bloooooo just thinking . . . ah-ah-ah-bout youuu.

I was three years old, snuggled up in my Supergirl cape (aka my blanket) and sitting next to my daddy after he climbed back into the truck cab at the little country store near our home in the small town of Chunky, Mississippi. It was a daily ritual on weekdays. Daddy went out to the detached garage and drove the truck to the house near the door. He left the engine running and turned the heat on high to warm the cab. In the meantime, Mama pulled me out of bed, dressed me, brushed my teeth and hair, and deposited me onto the couch with a blanket. Daddy came inside and transferred me to the warm truck. He climbed in after me and adjusted me to fit under his arm. We set off for preschool in the town about 10 miles away. Before we got out of Chunky, he stopped at the country store and purchased a package of powdered sugar donuts and a small carton of chocolate milk. I happily munched away during the 20-minute drive to preschool.

When we arrived, I didn’t want to go in. I wanted to stay in the truck with Daddy forever. I didn’t care about his work, his obligations, or, really, anything else at that moment other than not going inside the preschool building. I screamed. I flailed. I cried hard and threw my best puppy-dog-pitiful eyes at him. I begged him to take me with him, wherever it was he was going. Anything would be better than the torture I was about to face—the dreaded nap time.

I hated nap time at preschool. Supergirls do not need naps! The school had those primary-colored, tri-fold plastic mats that were stored in the closet. The preschool helpers would bring out the mats, unfold them, and line them up on the floor for us. Then they would lead us to our mats for a nap, also known as guaranteed torture and death. So, in addition to swollen eyes and