The Proof is in the (Rice) Pudding!
When you think you love yourself (but consistently treat yourself like you don't)
I’ve had these jars of rice for 19 years. I took this picture when they were 17 years old. I have them stored in a box at my dad’s house and I looked at them when I was there in November, but I wish I would have taken an updated picture, even though they look very similar to what they did at 17 years old. So here is the story of the rice…
Back in the day when friends and I created the previously written about Crystal Kid Product line, we also started a Crystal Kid’s Club. One Saturday a month, for 10 months, we had a new-age theme and for the January class we taught the kids about the power of positive affirmations/thinking. It started off with a slide show presentation by one of our guest speakers, which was kind of long and dry for the kids who were on average 10 years old (but the parents loved it). Then I had cooked, in advance, a huge bowl of white rice. Each kid got two canning jars. They scooped an equal amount of rice into each jar. Then they put labels on each jar, which they could decorate with markers. One had to have the theme of LOVE and the other HATE. We had talked about bullying and how they felt when people said good vs bad things about them and how they felt when they said good vs bad things about other people. We also talked about the importance of being loving to yourself (too bad I didn’t take that advice to heart personally).
I discovered the work of Masaru Emoto, who first spoke of a similar experiment with rice, in 2004 when I read his book called “The Hidden Messages in Water”. He used mass spectrometry equipment that allowed him to capture images, via still photography, of the molecular changes in particles of water when exposed to various things like the spoken word and music. He also photographed plain water from various sources, like remote mountain streams and polluted lakes. You can find a lot of these images easily if you google his name. The thing that really caught my attention is that he had a photo of water exposed to heavy metal music that looked angry and distorted and another photo of water exposed to some sort of classical music that formed into the shape of a beautiful snowflake.
I remember thinking about how I had once loved heavy metal and one of my friend’s dads not allowing his kids to listen to it (or hang around with anyone who was listening to any sort of rock music) because of the satanic messages that it supposedly contained. I thought that was the stupidest thing I ever heard of, but with that seed planted in my mind, I had gone home and listened to some of my favorite albums backward. A couple albums absolutely had messages (not demonic) in them when played backward, and that was the way they had been designed. It could be said that other songs did have strange sounding messages in them, if you really used your imagination. Nonetheless, it freaked me out a bit. I even did a presentation in my high school speech class about the controversy around this, even dragging my record player and stack of albums to school that day. I was a little afraid to listen to them for a while, thinking I might get possessed. Then I declared to myself that I just wasn’t going to be affected by such things, if they were true, because I really enjoyed listening to my music and it never bothered me again. That’s the power of the mind. Interestingly, I really don’t listen to heavy metal anymore, and I definitely don’t enjoy music that has an angry vibe, not that I think most heavy metal did. I also listen to various types of classical music anytime I need my thoughts to be particularly focused, like when doing accounting work or writing, whereas listening to any music with lyrics whatsoever, when I’m trying to concentrate, seems to scramble my mind.
Anyway, when I saw the images in the book, I was reminded a bit of those high school days. To be on the safe side (skeptic that I am) I had already tried this rice experiment on my own a month prior. To conduct the experiment, I had been saying mean things to my HATE jar of rice and really nice things to my LOVE jar of rice, and the HATE jar of rice, had, in fact, started to turn somewhat yellow. I honestly could not believe my eyes. I really hadn’t thought it would work. However, I kept those jars of rice to this day, and they are the exact jars of rice you see above.
Interestingly, by the February meeting, not one single parent had saved their two jars of rice from the month prior, having not seen any changes after a week or two. “Uh, I said to give it a couple months”. I was pretty perplexed by that. To me, it was such an incredible experiment. That’s why I saved the jars. Because I kept seeing more and more and more changes and I was mind blown! I didn’t even keep talking to the jars after the first couple of months. I had them on my kitchen windowsill for maybe 6 months, so once in a while, I would think mean thoughts to the HATE rice and think nice thoughts to the LOVE rice, but I stopped doing it out loud because it was just weird. Eventually, I moved them to the space I used to do energy work in. And 5 years later, when we moved, I packed them in a box and didn’t see them for a couple years. I unpacked them and kept them on display during my daughters’ teen years, but they didn’t influence us out of saying meaning things to each other now and again. When I moved 9 months ago, I packed them back in a box with a few other things to store for now. I still can’t bear to part with them because they are such a powerful representation of the effects of saying anything other than loving things to ourselves, when we look in the mirror, for instance.
The rice was only sent loving or angry thoughts, according to their labels, when it was relatively new in the jars. And yet, the rice to which love wasn’t given, continued to ROT for the last 19 years. In the LOVE rice jar, you can actually still tell that it is rice. It hasn’t even yellowed, though it has broken down a bit to something that looks like rice pudding. The HATE rice eventually turned to brown liquid, then the liquid eventually evaporated down to brown powder, BUT ALSO, the HATE label turned yellow and dried up to the point that it didn’t stick on the lid anymore AND the metal lid itself started to rust. The LOVE rice label is still white and though it’s not exactly clean after all these years, the metal lid did not rust.
Also, these two jars have never been separated from one another. They have always been side by side.
Freaky, right?? I made one pot of rice and put a scoop from that pot in each of the jars. Nothing else was added to either jar.
SO…I have no explanation for it, but it sure makes you think. Especially since the average human body is 50 to 70 percent water. Infants are 75-78% water. Studies show that even infants that aren’t attended to in accordance with their needs, start to feel disassociated as though something is wrong. Have you ever seen videos of happy babies bonding with whoever is talking to them, and how they quickly get teary eyed when the attention is removed from them? AND what about infants in the womb floating in fluid??
While I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to think positive thoughts, I probably have 3x the number of negative thoughts in any given day, and that’s with me making an effort to be heart centered.
I had the thought yesterday that if my writing future doesn’t work out, I could potentially become famous making TikTok’s of things that come out of my mouth while I’m driving, as I must say, I’m pretty f’g hilarious. I mean, I’m seriously bewildered any time I leave the house. As I’m turning onto the first main road, I literally say a prayer of protection as I visualize my car being wrapped in bubble wrap, with a pink puffy cloud of invisibility around that.
How I talk to idiot drivers, is exactly the way I talked to myself for many years, and it still seeps back in on occasion.
Not gonna lie, this has been a very up and down week. I’m up right now, so it’s a good thing I took a lot of notes throughout the week so I could remember the bad, because it’s pertinent to this article. Our brains really do work to allow us to adapt to our environments, starting from the time we are born. We have innate expectations and adjust when they aren’t met. As adults, it’s similar to how we can have a bad day, then a good day and have no recollection of how bad the prior day felt (thankfully). Alternatively, it’s why we can have bad days and have no recollection of good days or even doubt we will ever have a good day again. At least if we are “thinking” that is the case. With effort, if we remember to, we can feel our way into what good days felt like or will feel like in the future.
It’s also how we adjusted to and survived whatever environments we grew up in. Unfortunately, the result of that also creates a certain homeostasis of which the similarity of in other people we meet, feels comfortable/known rather than registering as a red flag (not to say everyone’s situations were toxic, but there was undoubtedly some toxicity whether you realized it or not). As a result, we tolerate some things (even justify why they aren’t all bad, regardless of how bad they actually are) that we otherwise wouldn’t tolerate if we had higher (or any) self-worth. Because we handled those things for so long, now we just go into overdrive “Ahhh, I got this” (because you once maneuvered through similar dynamics in the past). Sometimes, we stay stuck in situations that don’t feel good, but we convince ourselves it could be so much worse, yet we never venture out to see if they could instead be better. We easily adapt to what feels familiar.
I’m pretty certain I had zero self-worth throughout most of my childhood, and by middle school, I started to develop a small amount of self-confidence and felt like things were on the upswing. I thought, “this is good” as I was becoming a better version of myself. New and improved, as I added layers of things I thought made me more desirable… to my teachers, peers, friends, boys, relatives. But really, what I was doing was building my identity, which in large part, was an armor fitted for survival. I was becoming more palpable to the environment I longed to be accepted into. Whereas, I initially did a lot of “freezing”, I eventually evolved in to more “fawning”. I wasn’t much of a fight or flight responder to stress, most likely because I wasn’t allowed to do either as a child.
Through the years, I became a self-improvement junkie. I think I was 20 years old when I took my first Dale Carnegie course, and I took an advanced one shortly thereafter. I desperately wanted to feel better than I felt, and I thought developing self-confidence was the way to do that. I was lucky to have some very empowering experiences when I worked in a bank for almost 10 years. I was especially lucky to have worked as an assistant to two different women executives. There weren’t a whole lot of women executives back then and I saw the extra hoops they had to jump through to earn/keep earning that status.
By the time I started working at a CPA firm, I had a decent amount of self-confidence. I had put myself through college and paid off my student loan debt before graduating. I got 4 promotions during the time I worked there, whereas some people I first worked with had never even tried for 1 promotion. I thought I was climbing the ladder of success (but really I was desperately scrambling to be someone other than I was). To be honest, I loved those years. I was going someplace and when I got there, life was going to be even better.
However, the women CPAs I worked with seemed to work so much harder for even a fraction of respect the men got for just showing up. My boss, a woman, was the hardest worker I’d ever met, and I learned so much from her, but also knew that could not be my future. I felt forlorn. After two years of sweating it out to the finish line, I began to fantasize (more like panic) about what could be next.
Six months after being certified, I left to become a financial planner, working for a multi-level marketing (MLM) company that was owned by a well-known financial conglomerate at the time. I was passionate about people being financially independent, thank God, but a career that was essentially “sales” was waaaaayyyyy out of my comfort zone. In order to excel, I was never not listening to one motivational speaker or another on tapes in my car, being that I spent a lot of time driving to appointments. I attended a lot of rah-rah rallies and my self-confidence and results increased dramatically. I spoke a few times a year, to audiences of 2,000-3,000 people, and even produced smaller versions of such events twice a year with 200-ish people in attendance. I taught weekly classes and spoke at weekly opportunity meetings attended by potential new agents. I received recognition on stage in front of 25,000 people. I earned luxury trips based on my sales and hiring numbers. But I was never without anxiety. It was constant. I felt like such an imposter, and a big part of my role there was to bring on new financial planners, to train them, to help build their confidence both with clients and bringing on even more new financial planners. I did a deep dive into 3 years’ worth of transformational coursework, where I realized how unsatisfied I was with life, but I missed the part about why that was. I thought it was because true self-confidence still evaded me and felt more disheartened than ever. What else could I do?
This sense of never being enough followed me for 20 more years after leaving the MLM, three years after having acquired the “dangling carrot” position that we constantly rallied agents to strive for, as though that was where the money started flowing in. I had given it everything I had. By that time, I had experienced enough dysfunction in the organization to not want to even go to work. Instead of being inspired, I felt like I was drowning in bullshit and couldn’t pretend otherwise.
Over those next 20 years, I had two children, started a business that ultimately failed 5 years later, and worked in several various accounting positions where I slowly rebuilt confidence in my abilities, yet it took years to fully realize how competent and reliable I actually was. Similarly, it wouldn’t be until ten years after my divorce, that I realized what a truly amazing partner I was in relationships, yet I had always settled for guys who didn’t have the capacity to appreciate me.
In working on writing my book, I realized the huge toll that childhood trauma takes on our self-worth. It’s a seed so deeply embedded that I never knew I’ve spent my entire life trying to compensate for not being enough. To stay as quiet as possible, lest I be abandoned while also going above and beyond to prove that I was “enough”. Trying to fit in to what I deemed worth fitting into, which of course, was based on looking outside of myself. I can’t say I was happy for much of my marriage, but I didn’t see any married people any happier than I was, so I figured that’s just what marriage is. It’s better than starting from scratch. Never did it occur to me that I could be divorced and not date, as though I had to be in a relationship to feel fulfilled/complete. While I took a good year to recover, after my ex-husband asked for a divorce, I never stopped imagining I would eventually be in another relationship.
And guess what I did after a year of regrouping? A shit ton of stuff to increase my self-confidence in anticipation of eventually jumping back into the dating game. I even considered plastic surgery, a lot of it, but thankfully didn’t go forward with that, because it would not have changed what I felt on the inside one single bit. I had a man/woman relationship coach for 5 months, and even did some coaching alongside him for a time, thinking “dang, there is a huge need for this in the world,” but even much of that left me strategizing on how to eventually attract “Mr. Right” rather than striving to be personally fulfilled without a man. I participated in a sacred sexual healing shamanic internship. I had a tantric sex practice partner. Then I decided I wanted my cake and to eat it too. I wanted great sex and a more meaningful relationship. Ha. I quickly found myself contorting into various versions of what I thought 4 different men, over the course of 6 years, wanted me to be in order to have a thriving relationship, even though every one of those versions of me felt “off” because not a single one of them was truly a match for me. I was sacrificing authenticity for connection. Instead of getting really clear on who I was and what was important to me, I couldn’t shake the growing concern that maybe it really was me that was the problem.
Could it be possible that I had all these grandiose ideas of what a relationship could be, but no man thought I was worth investing quality time in? Was I expecting too much? Was I too unattractive? Not financially stable enough? Too esoteric in my interests? Too introverted? But really, I was too fearful of rejection to stick to my true desires
I’ve said before that never in history has it been more possible to heal. It truly is time. The veil between what we want and what is in the way of that is lifting. What’s been kept hidden in our subconscious and unconscious portions of our minds is wafting up to the conscious portion of our mind. Suddenly we see. Random aha moments of clarity. You only have to want to know.
I’ve been in the inquiry since about a year before I quit my jobs to go to Mexico to write my book. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE, I asked myself?? It’s not me…it’s them. WHY do I keep doing this? WHY do I ignore the red flags? SHOW ME what I need to see, because I CANNOT keep doing this.
While I didn’t even get ½ way through writing the book during that time, I had tremendous insights as to what was in the way of knowing quite what I wanted to write about. And that compelled me to further shift my life to continue working on it. Every time I get stuck, a new epiphany comes. Huge epiphanies like realizing I had felt a lack of connection from the time I was in my mother’s womb (and that resulting hunger eventually led to searching for that connection in other people…especially men). Other huge epiphanies came as well, like not being able to escape feeling it was imperative to suppress any deeper desires I might have, in exchange for having a man in my life, to the point I would subconsciously sabotage my ability to be financial stable on my own.
Then this week, I read a book that gave me ANOTHER huge AHA moment, before I was even done with chapter 1.
WORTHY, my friends, is a “must-read”. Below is a graph in chapter 1, that has already changed my life. You see, I have had a shit ton of self-confidence many times during my life and had a lot of resulting successes because of it. But something was ALWAYS missing. I thought maybe I just wasn’t capable of being grateful. Never satisfied. But that didn’t really make sense because a lot of things were very satisfying to me, but it was as though my ex didn’t approve of those things, so I convinced myself they didn’t matter (like time to myself). Who am I to want time to myself? Especially during the times when he was bringing home the majority of the money, like when I was working on the new business.
But lately, I’ve gotten to the point where I was just going to focus on peace. What brings me peace? How do I just enjoy what there is to enjoy? And that involved removing everything that I didn’t enjoy, little by little. If it interrupted my peace, I started to work to get rid of it. Without realizing it, I’d been moving in this direction for some time. The quest to feel instead of think, all started with picking up rocks off the beach this time last year. That something so simple could generate so much joy. That painting hearts on them and giving them to others could bring so much satisfaction. That regularly attending Yin yoga classes, where the focus couldn’t be further from getting in shape, could bring me so much peace. That sharing my journey with you all could bring me so much fulfillment.
What are these strange feelings?? Joy, satisfaction, peace, and fulfillment??
At a minimum, they couldn’t be more different from what I’ve experienced in the quest to be included by others.
I know this may be a little difficult to read, but I wanted to give you an appetizer of what is in the book. I realized while I had a lot of self-confidence and had once had a lot of tangible stuff to show for that, until the recent past, I had absolutely no self-worth. And by self-worth, I really mean no self-love. I was always berating myself (to myself) about what I could’ve should’ve, would’ve done, and then I’d self-adjust and get back at it. If I ever I did make a half-assed commitment to myself, I’d drop it in a hot second if someone else needed anything at all. I never said no. But also, I was a martyr, dragging my heavy cross to bear everywhere I went. Poor me. No one had it as bad as me, though I’d mostly keep that to myself, whereas on the exterior I’d be the constant trooper. I had taken to getting body work/massage over the last decade, but that was more like a band aid to keep me going, going, going, then it was actual self- care. I would sell out on myself every.single.time.
One thing I realized when I read WORTHY was how much I love other people’s stories. I always have. I hate small talk, and I hate big talk. I love real talk. I’ve always been happier one on one with a person, then in any sort of group setting. Why? Because it’s very unlikely conversation is going to go deep in a group. I’ve also heard so many deep stories, mostly from women, that have given me a connection to them that is lifelong. If someone is a good friend of mine, it is because we have gone deep. I don’t respond well to “a list of things you can do to improve your life” but I’m super responsive to hearing the stories of people who have overcome incredible odds to be happy, love, succeed, etc. I hear someone else’s story and I know “I CAN DO THAT TOO”. I loved reading about the author’s personal stories in WORTHY.
And then I realized, that’s my style too. I don’t like the idea of giving people lists of things to do that can change their lives. Maybe I will feel differently about that once I’ve significantly changed my own life, but right now I’m in the thick of transformation, so giving you some bullet points would be proclaiming I’m someone I’m not, and I’m done doing that. But perhaps my stories can inspire you to know that you also can do absolutely anything you want to, one baby step at a time.
I pre-ordered this book a couple months ago and had forgotten all about it. Monday had been an awful day in terms of productivity, which I still haven’t quite shaken off as my favorite measurement of “good”. I seriously don’t even know where the day went, and I was never not doing something. I let it go, and figured I’d get back to writing first thing Tuesday morning. But Tuesday was one thing after another and I didn’t even write one single word all morning, whereas I had planned to write all day. I had stuff to do for my dad that I thought would take 15 minutes, that took over an hour. I had stuff to do for my oldest daughter that I thought would take 15 minutes, that led to something that took almost 2 hours. Finally, I spent the afternoon into early evening writing. Phew.
Then the WORTHY book was delivered to the door. I had only vaguely remembered I had ordered it, and I wasn’t sure why I had. Who was the woman who even wrote it?? It took me a few minutes of flipping through it to realize she was the founder of IT Cosmetics, a line of make-up that she started in her living room, while working as a waitress at Denny’s, and ultimately sold it for over a billion dollars to Loreal Cosmetics, also becoming their first CEO of a makeup line in their history. Isn’t that fucked up? All men at the top of a company that make’s cosmetics for women?
I decided to crawl in bed and read for a while. I read the introduction, which was a little “preachy” for me, then the first chapter blew my consciousness right open. Just like the book “Mother Hunger” gave me the answer I had searched for all my life, as to why I felt so compelled to be in a relationship, “WORTHY” gave me the answer as to why I was never happy. I had little regard for myself, other than how to please/impress others, all my life. It had all been a quest. But I didn’t truly self-care. I didn’t take care of me for me. I was accomplished but not fulfilled. I wasn’t ungrateful, I was detached. I had no idea who my true self even was, much less what she needed.
I think it was such a lightning bolt of information for me because I had been working on this, without really knowing quite what I was working on, but I knew something was changing inside of me as a result of knowing something had to change and taking steps toward making it happen. The same thing happened with my Aha moment in Mother Hunger, because I had at least said NO MORE relationships until I truly know I can provide 100%, always and forever, for myself.
Then Wednesday I read even more of the book. Then Thursday I worked at my accounting job a good part of the day, but I finished reading it that night.
I was all lit up about having a new level of understanding of just how imperative it is that every single one of us recognize our worth. Not via the acknowledgement (or lack thereof) from others. Not based on the number of resources we have available at our disposal. Not based on where we are physically or financially. Not based on our failures or accomplishments. But that we really, truly are WORTHY. It’s ok for me to rest when I’m tired or play when I don’t feel like working. It’s ok to make things for the fun of doing so. Take slow walks without thinking about how many steps I get in. To not constantly contemplate what business opportunity I can drum up to make up for lost time/money. It’s ok to say no. It’s ok to be attractive to MYSELF for MYSELF. To wear clothes and jewelry that make ME feel good, without regard to what the current trend is.
So today, while I was supposed to be writing this article, I instead listened to 10 hours straight of the author, Jamie Kern Lima’s livestream book launch called “Becoming Unstoppable”. It was excellent. She had so many different motivational speakers come on to tell their own stories around realizing they were WORTHY and how doing so changed their lives. It had been a long time since I had been to a rah-rah event, and it was good for my soul. It was really great, inspirational content. At the same time, it might have been a little self-sabotagey, since it’s going to be 5:00 am Sunday morning before I get this posted, but I didn’t want to pay for a VIP ticket and without doing so, there wasn’t going to be access to the replay.
While reading the book and listening to the livestream, I wrote down so many good notes that I wanted to share, but that’s going to have to wait for next week because I’m exhausted. But I do want to leave you with a short story (as if I can tell a short story), which is part of why I wanted to listen to the livestream in the first place.
My younger daughter is working as an electrician apprentice. She pursued the job all on her own, is the only girl (often on construction sites where there are many men), and after one year, her boss told her boyfriend’s boss (also in construction) that she is by far, the best employee they have. She really loves it, but possibly related to other auto-immune issues that she has, she has been struggling with carpal tunnel in her dominant hand and has been so worried that it could affect her future and she doesn’t know what else she would want to do. So, she is having surgery on it in a few weeks. She has to be off work for two full weeks, and a month of light office duty after that, which they gladly gave her the time off. But she can’t afford to not get paid for the 2 weeks she will be totally out of work. Thankfully, Colorado has a new benefit that employees/employers pay into, similar to unemployment, that allows them to get paid by the state for various types of family and medical leaves.
Its brand new and confusing, so I offered to set up the claim online for her.
I’m so proud of both of my daughters and they are both incredibly responsible, which I take partial credit for (but at the end of the day, it’s really them). They take the initiative in so many things, but they are at that in-between age where sometimes they just benefit from me taking on some of the things and I’m happy to help where I can. Control freak that I’ve been known to be (trauma response), I especially give myself credit for NOT trying to retain control.
I’ve really pushed them to take responsibility for themselves as adults. While my inner self wanted to continue to handle every little thing myself to ensure it gets done right vs. having to fix things that get done wrong or don’t get done at all, I KNEW I would be resentful (and rageful) if I did that. To be honest, motherhood has worn me the fuck out. What I now love to do, however, is to be there whenever it gets too much for them, and they reach out. Filling out this online application was one of those times. Neither her employer nor her doctor told her it was a thing. They might not even realize it is, because it’s so new. It was very confusing. I had a lot of exposure to it, because I’ve had to handle establishing the employer/employee side of it for the company I do the bookkeeping for, so I knew I’d have an advantage.
So, I gather all the information I need to fill in all the data. But various codes are going to be generated to her cell phone from time to time to confirm her identity. She isn’t on the phone with me, but she knows I’m going to need her to text them to me.
She does really well at a “hands-on” job because she needs to be moving to keep her brain engaged. When I was having some neurofeedback sessions done on my older daughter, back when she was in kindergarten, the practitioner offered to do it for my younger daughter, as well, who was already having some ADHD issues in preschool. The results showed the part of her brain that focuses on things, was hyper elevated. That it wasn’t that she couldn’t focus, but rather that she was focused on EVERYTHING all at once. Her brain wasn’t filtering out what wasn’t important. That made so much sense to me. If she isn’t moving, she can’t focus. Working with her hands is ideal! Remembering to keep looking at her phone, while I’m waiting for codes, not so much. Once again, something that should have taken me 15 minutes, took over an hour. Two separate occasions, she completely forgot I was even working on the application. I texted her multiple times and called her, but her ringer was off.
The anger was boiling up inside of me. I wanted to text “fuck it, you can do it yourself”. But I knew she wouldn’t be able to figure it out without me talking her through it, and honestly, I didn’t feel like talking her through it. She is probably never going to have to do it again, especially because she is likely moving to Texas in a year and the odds of her needing another leave prior to then is slim and none. I just wanted to get it done and off my to-do list asap. I didn’t want to do the form at all. I wanted to be writing. I just didn’t want her to be without income those two weeks. I was pretty certain if I didn’t do the form, she would wait until it was too late, and then end up having to use her savings to cover bills during those two weeks, which in my opinion, was just dumb.
I ended up going as ballistic as you possibly can via a stream of texts and angry emojis, but even more so, alone in my room, I was livid. I was ranting and raving and swearing and cursing God. Why did I even have kids in the first place??? Can anyone on this whole fucking planet just do what the fuck they are supposed to do? Do I have to do every damn thing my SELF????
Sigh.
WTF.
There isn’t anything more important to me than my daughters. But also, I AM TIRED. And also, I’m so programmed to focus on everyone else’s needs and completely ignore my own. It’s always something. Perhaps I should’ve waited for another day, but I wanted it out of the way. I was worried we were approaching a cutoff period for applying. I was pretty sure it had to be at least two weeks prior to the leave, and a form would be generated from the claim that the doctor would still need to sign off on.
Sometimes, it’s all just too much.
Then it hit me, in a far bigger way then it has ever hit me before. It wasn’t merely this form, or not getting the codes that was the source of my engageable rage, coming out like an AK47 for a fight where I only needed to shoot a rubber band.
Mothers are not valued in our society. We are expected to give and give and give some more. It’s our badge of honor (eyeroll). It’s absolutely one of the biggest things we judge ourselves for, mostly in the ways we could’ve done better. Yes, I say I take credit for their being relatively self-sufficient, but the reason for that is a very deep knowing in my soul that I had to do that, for their sake and my own. A little tiny voice inside of me said, prepare them, mama. I knew I was hanging by a thread, and I’ve lost my shit more times than I’d like. In some ways I’m ashamed of that, but also I’ve talked to them extensively about it. But in that moment, I was furious about the way things are in the world. It isn’t fair… to the moms …to the children... and honestly, not even to the men who have gotten away with not having to step up in that regard, because society told them it was okay not to. As always, not all men. I’m grateful that is one of the many, many things that will be changing over the next 20 years.
I have raised those girls myself. Their dad has contributed financially, but not as much as I needed him to. AND I had to be very fawn-like to make sure that happened. Emotionally, he has done far more damage than good. He has a lot of regrets and tries to make it up to them now in different ways, but part of that is feeling like at least he can contribute directly to them instead of to me. Really?? Not a penny I have ever gotten from him has ever gone to anything but their care. And that’s a pretty crappy misnomer in society, as well, that supporting children a man has with his ex is somehow benefiting her and God forbid that happen. How about all the benefit I’m providing by being 100% responsible for the time it takes to help shape the psyches of the children he fathered, and get them to school, and 3 meals a day, and purchase every piece of clothing they wore, and tend to them when they are sick, and get them to a myriad of appointments, and so on and so on.
So, while, yes, that is a rant, it points to how important it is for me to fully realize I’m worthy of living the rest of my life from a place that doesn’t involve fawning and people pleasing and walking on eggshells to get my needs met. I’ve done it all my life. To recognize that I have needs at all, other than money to pay bills, and to tend to them as my priority is imperative to my longevity.
At one point in my life, I had the nerve to worry about making my employers unhappy. That they would reject me. Am I kidding me???? I’ve been a workaholic since my first “real” job. Me, myself, and I have completely allowed myself to be taken advantage of by men AND many employers. I’ve been very manipulatable because I lacked worth. I had no idea how truly awesome I was for most of my life. I would get certain kudos, but inside, I was already planning how to get the next one to continue to prove my worth.
I never looked at my body as something to take care of for ME or how I feel, but rather how it would allow me to function to do all the things I needed to do. I worried about my health only in terms of how not feeling well would slow me down. I looked at my shape only as being attractive or not attractive to the opposite sex, including to the men who might hire me.
The bottom line is, as a society, women are tired. Of so many things. It’s not anyone person’s fault, specifically, but rather a generational way of thinking that is FINALY CHANGING.
It really is.
But meanwhile, we have to soothe our souls. Nurture ourselves like we are own newly born babies. Make sure we have quiet, low light environments whenever we can. That we tend to ourselves. Not in indulgent ways that are quasi-comfort, numbing, that drain our health, vitality, and finances, but in really, truly nourishing and replenishing ways. That we give ourselves the protection that we likely never got, and instead adjusted to being without. And by protection, I don’t just mean from physical abuse, but from mental and emotional abuse, as well, including that which we put on ourselves by way of “should”. That we don’t put up with bullshit from anyone…again, even ourselves. That we may be better off to cocoon in a tiny space of our own, then with all the societal bells and whistles that tell society we are ok, when we really aren’t. That we don’t keep trying to be everything to everyone, with nothing left for ourselves.
Everyone knows about the transformation process of caterpillars into butterflies. One day they are creeping along, as though they are never going to get anywhere, anytime soon. The next thing you know, they go wrap themselves up and hang out for a while, while internally they literally turn to goo. Nothing about the old self remains. And one day just the very tips of their wings bust out. But it’s still awhile until those wings are useful. They take their time adjusting and unpacking their new selves. Eventually the rest of the cocoon falls away and they can take some test steps, while they adjust to their new form. Their wings dry. And when they are ready, they take flight.
And that’s all she wrote!
As always, my apologies for any typos or grammatical errors I may have missed. I am sooooo grateful for your readership! I thank you with my whole heart!
Thank you for putting the “love” label on yourself. Your writing is evidence!
Michelle, I've always been in awe of you and inspired by you. You are a beautiful and courageous woman.