Flight Chronicles of the Hummingbird - Day 15 – 4-21-2021 - Focus on Self – Lessons in Learning to Love Myself

 

Focus on Self – Lessons in Learning to Love Myself

It is not selfish, no matter what we have been told, to focus on healing and loving ourselves.

As women, we are told to take care of everyone and everything in our lives. This opens us up to the side-effects of that we encounter from that, the least of which is loss of Self. We don’t know who we are anymore. We don’t know what direction to take in our lives, let alone how to take it.

Our main focus needs to be ourselves. We are actually built, as women, to look out for the whole. We have not been taught to do that in a healthy way. Then there is the expectation of taking care of others, a huge stigma that results that we are not good girls, mothers or women if we don’t do that.

There is an expectation in our society that we be perfect mothers, perfect spouses, perfect, perfect, perfect.  We take that to heart because we are women. This is not truth.

Then we push so hard to make sure it happens that we end up exhausting ourselves and never having the time or energy to take care of ourselves or other women. Any of this sound familiar?

We are so exhausted from being perfect. We want to “reap the rewards” of perfection. We each have different rewards, cookies I like to call them. Mine is not losing the love of another.

Have you ever been on an airplane when they walk through the safety procedures for the flight? Yes I know this is an unnecessary question for most people, but bear with me.

When they are talking about putting on the mask, they always tell us to put ours on first before helping someone else, especially children, to put theirs on.

Does that make sense?

I have watched women friends of mine focus so much on everyone else in their lives, especially their partners, children, and other people that they get to the point where they can’t take another step. They pass out at the end of the day and that is not self-care, that is exhaustion.

Some still do this with adult children, which is more detrimental to both us and them, as they need to learn to take care of themselves. When we are no longer there, they won’t know how to handle things that come up for them and our minds are not focused on us but them.

Don’t get me wrong, having good relationships in our lives means supporting others, but not to the detriment of ourselves.

Then what about moms who are getting ready to become empty nesters? I have heard many women go through not knowing who they are or what they can do next. They were so busy knowing their children and spouses so deeply that they can’t even connect with themselves. There is a balance that must be found.

There are also women out there who are top notch business owners or know they want to start a business. But there is something holding them back, that one little thing that they haven’t been able to work through and can’t, for the life of them, put a finger on it.

If any of these things relate to you then you are in the right place.

And so am I. I have experienced each one of these things throughout my life.

My discoveries and my work are this.

We have a tendency to focus on the external world, men do this too. Everything outside of us is made to be more important than us. Whether it is our work, families, friends, the world at large. We listen to everyone and everything that goes on “out there.”

What happens with this is that we forget that that we have just as much right to our lives and ourselves as everyone else thinks they do.

Our right as a human being is to give and receive love unconditionally, but when we don’t know who we are inside, we can’t receive it and somehow that love gets lost in the feelings and frustrations that keep coming up. And it certainly doesn’t help when we need to set boundaries.

I know this because I do this and I have been walking through that place in my life to undo it. It isn’t easy but it is simple.

Love yourself first. Challenge. Love myself first. Challenge. Let go of the feelings, things and people in life that no longer serve me. Doing that, not easy.

There was a time when I couldn’t do any of that; now as I walk through this chapter of my journey, I begin to see how loveable I am. Just because someone else doesn’t see that in me, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

This daily walk through this void is showing me that I am a powerful woman who can change and live my life as I choose, on my terms. And I am not selfish because when I do that, my relationships that are meant to stay with me stay and the ones that need to be released anyway, end. As well, the ones that stay get stronger.

One way I am doing this is through breathing and meditation and connecting with myself for at least five minutes every morning. No matter what you have been told about meditation, there is an interesting fact here too. You can pick your way of mediating, whether it is just lighting an unscented candle, sitting there and staring at it or closing your eyes for those five minutes, to doing Transcendental Meditation, if that is what you are interested in learning.

But give yourself and break, be gentle with yourself. Rome wasn’t built in a day and coming home to ourselves isn’t done in a day either.

This is our journey.