My mother taught me to make things look good.
Nobody taught me what it cost.
My Mother Taught Me to Make Things Look Good.
Nobody taught me what it cost
.In my family, we didn’t work things out.
We varnished.
“Here’s what varnish looks like in real life. It’s gorgeous. It’s also a cover-up.”
My mother had a can of it — metaphorical, but I swear I could almost smell it. She’d pop that lid the moment the family started fracturing. Misunderstandings. Hurt feelings. People taking sides. The usual human mess. She’d dip in her brush and paint right over it.
Nice and shiny.
Her varnish sounded like this:
Y’all just love each other. Let it go. Don’t be ugly. Family is family. Just move on.
And listen — I’m not dragging my mother. She did what she knew. She wanted the temperature to drop. She wanted everybody back in the room.
But what she never taught us was the one skill that actually creates real peace.
How to disagree and still love each other. How to name what’s true without becoming enemies. How to stay connected while something is unresolved. How to repair what’s broken instead of painting over it.
We didn’t learn any of that.
We learned to make things look good.
I know exactly what that cost. Because I paid it.
Years ago, when I was married to a minister, I was also working full-time as Marketing Director for a major shopping mall in Virginia. We had just completed a massive renovation — a grand reopening — and I needed volunteers to help manage the day. Greeting people. Directing traffic. Keeping things moving.
I reached out to my husband’s Sunday school class. A tight-knit group. Good people, I thought. They showed up and they were wonderful. The day was a success by every measure.
And then, one by one, they left.
By the end of the night it was just me. Nine o’clock. Alone in the wreckage of a successful day, putting every last piece back where it belonged. The company made a small donation to the Sunday school class in appreciation. A nice gesture. Generous, even.
Fast forward to Sunday morning.
There I was. Preacher’s wife. Sunshiny face. Shaking hands and smiling at the very same people who had walked out and left me standing there.
And I couldn’t say a word.
Not one word.
Because my role — the role of minister’s wife — required me to perform okayness at all times. No rocking the boat. No calling anyone out. No honest conversation about what it felt like to be left alone, holding everything, while everyone else went home.
I had to varnish it.
Smile. Be gracious. Make it look good.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that feeling. The particular humiliation of swallowing something true because the role you’re playing doesn’t have room for your actual feelings.
That’s what varnish costs.
Not just your truth. Your dignity.
And here’s what I’ve learned since then: varnish shows up everywhere.
It shows up in caretaking. A woman is exhausted, worn down to nothing, taking care of someone at home with no relief in sight. Her inner world is starting to fray at the edges.
And here comes the brush:
Just be grateful you have your health. At least you still have them. You signed up for this. Love is sacrifice.
So she smiles and keeps dying quietly. Because if she admits she’s drowning, she feels like a monster.
That’s varnish.
It shows up in money. Someone says, I don’t know how I’m going to stretch Social Security anymore. Prices are up. Rent is up. My budget is a bad joke.
And here comes the brush:
Be grateful you get anything at all. Some people have nothing. Stop complaining.
Translation: I am uncomfortable with your reality so I’m going to polish it until I can tolerate it.
That’s varnish.
It shows up in friendships. Someone tries to tell the truth — I felt hurt when you said that. I need something different from you.
And here comes the brush:
You’re too sensitive. That’s just how I am. Let’s not make this a thing.
Translation: I want the closeness without the responsibility of repair.
That’s varnish.
Here’s why this matters — and yes, it ties directly to reclaiming your life.
You cannot build something new with old relational rules still running the show.
You cannot reignite a dream while you’re living inside a varnish system that trained you to swallow your truth. To perform nice. To call self-abandonment love. To call silencing yourself maturity. To call suppression peace.
Dreams require clean energy.
And varnish is not clean energy. It’s sticky. It’s heavy. It’s the layer you live under when you want things to look good more than you want them to be true.
The moment you start changing — really changing — the varnish people will reach for the brush. Not always with malice. Sometimes with love. Sometimes with fear. Sometimes because your freedom makes them nervous.
But they’ll offer you the shiny line anyway:
Just be grateful. Just keep the peace. Just don’t upset anyone. Just do what you’ve always done.
And that is the moment your dream either lives or dies.
So here’s a question worth sitting with — no guilt required.
Where are you still using varnish? On your own life. On your own feelings. On the people around you.
Where do you say it’s fine when it isn’t? Where do you rush to brightness instead of staying present with what’s real? Where do you minimize your own truth because it’s easier than saying it out loud?
This is not a shame exercise. It’s a power exercise.
Because once you see the varnish, you can put the brush down.
You can learn a new sentence.
Instead of y’all just love each other — try: I love you and we need to talk about this.
Instead of be grateful — try: That sounds hard. What do you need?
Instead of don’t make it a thing — try: Let’s stay with it long enough to actually repair it.
That’s what real love sounds like. Not shiny. Not smooth. Not performed.
Real.
And real is what your dreams require. Because dreams don’t grow in sterilized air. They grow in truth, in honest connection, in a nervous system that isn’t constantly bracing to keep everyone else comfortable.
I still think about my mother and her can of varnish.
I understand why she used it. Life was hard and messy and she wanted her family in the room together. There’s love in that, even if the method cost us something.
But I’m not living under it anymore.
I’d rather have the real conversation than the shiny fake peace.
And I’ll tell you something else — something I know for certain after all these years.
The moment you put the brush down is the moment your life starts coming back to you.
Not shiny.
Yours.One more thing before you go.
If this piece landed for you — if you recognized the varnish, if you felt the weight of performing fine when you weren’t — I want to invite you to go deeper.
Become an annual subscriber to The Daily RE-WIRE, and it will be my genuine pleasure to send you our official “We Don’t Retire, We RE-WIRE” coffee mug.
Not as swag. Not as a thank-you trinket.
As a visual anchor.
Every morning when you wrap your hands around it, before the noise starts and the day takes over, you get a five-second reminder of what you’ve committed to. Reclaiming your dreams. Re-invigorating your life. Refusing to perform okayness when something truer is available to you.
The mug doesn’t fix anything. But it interrupts the old loop.
And sometimes that’s exactly what we need.
Join us here. Your mug will be on its way.
This is so awesome. I can relate
Brilliant insight, and more to ponder. So grateful that you share your wisdom.