Every backyard chicken person I’ve met has a story. The details and plot lines differ, but the outcome is consistent. Despite heroic efforts (and no small expense) invested to keep their chickens safe from predators, the laws of nature consistently prevail, and a chicken comes out on the losing end.

Sometimes it’s a racoon or coyote, sometimes a hawk, or even a pet dog. Chickens are easy prey for almost every other animal in the wild because they aren’t well equipped to protect themselves. They don’t even have teeth!

So, the first time I watched my chickens fly over our fence and into the neighborhood, I quickly began searching for solutions to keep them safe in our backyard.

Some experts recommend clipping a chicken’s wings – more specifically, their flying feathers – which limits how high they can fly and essentially renders them incapable of an airborne escape. The clipped feathers will eventually grow back, but it can be risky.

I considered the wing-clipping option – but our chickens take such pleasure in their little gravity-defying jaunts around the yard, it felt too cruel. They are free-spirited explorers with seemingly boundless energy and voracious curiosity. I love that about them and wouldn’t want to risk doing something that might squelch their plucky attitudes.

I’ve had my own wings clipped over the years, and in some instances, it took a long time for my flying feathers to grow back. In the meantime, I stayed close to the ground until I regained my confidence to try flying again. That is not an ideal way to live.

I don’t know exactly when it started, but early on in high school, I began to transform from a carefree, outward-focused adolescent into a self-conscious, inward-focused people-pleaser, with an unhealthy need to live up to what I thought other people expected of me.

That need was manifested in a toxic relationship with food and exercise. I embarked on a desperate journey to make my body conform to an impossible standard for my 5-foot, 3-inch frame. The wings I needed to fly to my full potential as a promising student and distance runner were clipped by my preoccupation with thinness. It was physically exhausting and emotionally soul-sucking.

I began to hate the person I had become and felt ashamed by the actions I took to become a thinner version of my natural self. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it (there wasn’t much research or science on eating disorders at the time). I resented the thin girls at school who seemed to be able to eat whatever they wanted without losing their skinny-ness.

It was a complicated journey (maybe a future blog post), but I eventually got my wings back.

I still bear scars from the years I lived without my flying feathers in high school and college, and I want to believe that the painful experience of living like a prisoner in my own body has made me a more compassionate and understanding person. But sometimes – especially when I feel threatened or insulted – I become a wing clipper myself and try to knock my emotional predators off balance with passive aggressive comments or criticism. And gossip.

In the moment, I feel the satisfaction of tipping the scales back in my favor. But it’s a hollow, short-lived victory and I usually feel even worse afterwards.

Eleanor Roosevelt once wrote, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”. That may be true for people with ironclad self-confidence. But for some of us, it can be a real challenge to stay strong when we are insulted or rejected by people whose opinions and affection we value. Or we can’t live up to the socially manufactured physical standards and performance norms we think we must meet. Sorry, Eleanor!

Our speech can be such a powerful force to uplift and support the people in our lives – or to take them down and scorch their spirit. I don’t want to be a wing clipper. I want to be a flight instructor. I want to affirm, not cut down. The view is so much better up there.

“Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” Colossians 4:5