While runnig errands last week, I was listening to Tracy Chapman. I hadn't put her CD in for a long time, so the words of the songs were standing out more than usual to me. The words in one particular song struck me about women in relationships and how we do things that are harmful to us in order to maintain the existence of our love relationships, even as we are unaware of what we are doing.
The things we won't do for love. Climb a mountain if I had to, risk my life so I could have you....you, you, you, you..................
It seems dramatic, doesn't it? It is, and yet as women we find ourselves having done this many times over metaphorically in our love relationships. We convince ourselves we're ok with a particular situation or we over focus on something else so we don't have to deal with it. So we don't have to make uncomfortable choices. We wonder why life seems like an uphill climb or why we no longer know what we once thought we knew we wanted in life. We don't understand how we got lost and decide there must be something wrong with us. We get health problems, depression, we eat, we live angry, we lose interest in our hobbies or careers - the things that make our hearts sing. We lose our zest for life, our vitality. Our self-esteem plummets. All the while we seem to miss what is draining the life out of us - we offer our soul up to others, we give ourselves away in relationships. We betray ourselves.
We climb mountains and risk our lives for others.
We need to climb mountains and risk our lives to have ourselves, to connect fully with the essence of our beings. Once we get there life no longer feels so hard, so confusing. Once we get there we must safeguard what we have earned and embraced. This is our place of safety, our place of truth, where we find the answers. This is the place we can't count on and trust ourselves.
The key is to learn to be all these things to ourselves and still open our hearts to those we choose to be in relationship with. I haven't figured it out yet, but I will.
5 comments:
Great post. If I love myself unconditionally, that is when I can love you too. If I'm putting you first, then we both loose. jeNN
How right you are! I think now how odd it is - maybe rather how sad that we were not given these tools to love ourselves - were not given permission to make us first when we were growing and learning and setting our foundation for life.
Cat
What an affirming post. I needed this today. Thank you.
Amazing post. I have found myself doing all this over the years. Losing myself in the efforts to love and be loved by another.
Wonderful post! Someone's been reading Women Who Run With the Wolves. ;)
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