Self-love without apology?
As we sit near the close of a year, just past the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, I feel the embrace of the dark and I wonder:
What would it mean for you to love and nurture yourself without apology?
I find that the thought of loving and nurturing ourselves without apology is practically unfathomable for most people who are committed to social justice.
It short-circuits our brains. We feel confused.
Is that even right? Let alone possible?
Isn’t there something wrong with even asking the question?
There are many reasons for our discomfort.
Some are undoubtedly very personal, but many are much bigger than our individual selves.
They are rooted in stories we’ve heard our whole lives: about good girls and bad girls, good moms and bad moms, good Christians and bad Christians, good activists and bad activists—you get the idea.
Women especially, tend to be socialized in the School of Perpetual Sacrifice, which leads to an unconscious living apology we make for the mistake of being born female in the first place.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” we say to the sales clerk whose job it is to help us find and purchase what we need, or to the professor whose job it is to answer our questions during his office hours.
“Please forgive me, but may I make a suggestion?” we say as we seek to insert ourselves into a discussion about a topic about which we have more expertise than any of the men in the room who have been easily talking over each other for the past 45 minutes.
For moms, social workers, teachers, and other helpers and healers especially, apologizing for having needs, desires, or goals of our own can become a way of life. If we don't do it through words, we apologize through our actions.
How?
We show up for all our daughter’s basketball games but regularly miss the yoga class we love.
We bend over backward to meet our clients' needs, and offer reduced rates to provide greater access, but can’t afford to pay ourselves enough to pay for flowers on our table to feed our beauty-starved hearts.
We’re the ones who can be depended on to coach the team and show up at the fundraiser when no one else will, but fail to schedule even 20 minutes a day that is totally just for whatever we want to do, a space to breathe for a moment.
We submerge our talent and deep longing to write under decades of cooking and cleaning, birthday parties, and work that pays the bills.
We give up a whole career that we love to stay home with our kids because we think that’s what a really good mom does (or work more than we’d like for other people’s children, missing out on being present with our own in the ways our hearts ache to do).
For you, the scenes may be different, but I bet you can think of one.
And so I ask you, in this dark time of the year when the trees are resting and renewing themselves before Spring returns.
What would change in your life if you felt the freedom to love and nurture yourself with the same abandon with which you love others?
For me, it often means asking for silence.
It means taking the time to walk around my small yard and connect with the trees and plants and patch of earth I live on.
It means paying for someone to clean my house even though I’m not earning a lot of money right now.
It means making space and time to dance Qoya.
It means reworking how Dave and I manage household and relationship responsibilities - after almost 30 years together, bringing more balance to places where we are out of balance.
And it means finding out how to do my work my way, instead of following someone else’s formula.
It means giving myself permission to enjoy the life I have, in the body I have, as it is.
For you, the freedom to love and nurture yourself might be as simple as scheduling a doctor’s appointment and going to it.
It may mean shutting your door to write for 30 minutes and telling your kids (like author Sue Monk Kidd used to do) to “knock twice” if there’s a REAL emergency, but otherwise to leave you alone.
It might mean that you need to talk with your partner about how you’d like to take some time off to figure out what you really want to do with your life in the next chapter.
It might mean that you make a smaller donation to Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) and buy a gorgeous new bra for yourself instead. Scandalous. I know.
Or it could be that freedom for you means you DO make a donation to EJI, instead of paying for tickets to a NYE concert your sister wants you to go to even though she’ll be mad at you for not going with her because your heart wants to support work that matters deeply to you instead.
No one can tell you what it looks like for you to love and nurture yourself without apology, but I will tell you this . . .
It’s a good idea.
No More Perpetual Sacrifice Syndrome
So many of the “good mom” and “hero” stories that are so powerful in our culture are about people who give up everything for their kids or the cause —who sacrifice all their dreams and ignore their own needs.
But the fact that these stories are told over and over in a million different ways doesn’t make them true, or helpful.
I think they are, in fact, dangerous—a barrier to unleashing the power of big-hearted people, women especially, to make the world a much better place than what it is right now.
Most moms want their kids to live fully and authentically as the amazing, unique human beings that we know them to be. But they aren’t doing that themselves. The same is true for many who are working to make thriving possible for others, but aren’t thriving themselves.
As life coach Martha Beck often says, “You have to live it, to give it.”
So, good, dedicated human-loving person that you are, I ask you again:
What would it mean for you to love and nurture yourself without apology?
That little image that just arose in your mind — or a word or a song or a memory or a “crazy idea” — pay attention to it.
Then take a tiny step in that direction. Today. Even though it’s the holidays and it’s all supposed to be about giving to others.
You can’t give what you don’t have. Give yourself some unconditional love and care.
Then hit reply to this message and tell me about it at debshine@thriving4equity.com
Here's to creating a world in which thriving is the norm for all living beings,
Deb
P.S. With my sister, I participated in an advent retreat offered through the Abbey of the Arts. Though I don’t identify as Christian anymore, I still draw nourishment from some aspects of it, just as I do from many other paths to connecting with the Divine. The retreat was a great example of drawing from a particular tradition, in this case, Christianity, while offering a wider welcome to varied perspectives and people who have often been left on the margins or completely excluded from Christianity. As a result of it, I came to know of many incredible spiritual guides and co-journeyers, practices, and organizations that have provided nourishment to my heart and life.
A couple I thought some of you might want to know about are:
*Sacred Incantations: Rituals of Trans Wisdom for Every Season. The original book and card deck are sold out as I write this, but you can get a PDF version.*
Soft Words for Hard Days: Enfleshed Disability Wisdom
Both are from enfleshed.com.