Influence

I write about the things that hit me from the external world a lot. And I'm especially inspired by words that others choose to share, whether they wrote them themselves or they borrowed them from someone else. And lately, I've read a lot of messages that strike me.

When you nurture yourself, you become grounded and resilient.

When you are ignoring your needs, you lose stability and your center.

When completely taking care of yourself, you best serve (both yourself and) those you love.

Is there really anything else you can say? I will say that I'm good at ignoring my needs. Do people do my laundry, clean my house or fill up my cpap machine? Yes, all the time. But then are those needs? They are conveniences yes. But I wouldn't really call them a need. Needs are core elements that you need to acknowledge in some way or another and if you don't then you will lose your center. You will begin to lose the things about you that make you an amazing and beautiful person. In some ways I had begun to lose the things about me that make me well, me. Not because anyone made me but because I thought that is what you are "supposed to do" ... ignore your needs for others. Apparently it hasn't worked out for me. I wonder if I can learn in the future.

In the last few weeks, I have begun to take care of myself a little better and because of that my resilience and belief has come back more. I am able to love a little better. But it's oh so precarious. I wonder if it will get truly better?

"What you are now is what you have been.

What you will be is what you choose now." - Buddha

What I have been a lot of the time is a scared little girl. I view the world through the lenses of the pain of my childhood. You spend years looking at the world with the values and messages that your family gave you. The message is sometimes good and sometimes very bad. For me, I was taught that the world is a scary, frightening place where people will take advantage of you. The message was that I should sacrifice myself for others. That my needs, my wishes, and my desires were less than others, especially less then men. Oh I've done the therapy to work through this. I know the psychology of living your life by the values that your adult self sets, to see your childhood morals/values through the lens of the adult but it has been hard. So what I am is what I have been.

I seem to be making choices left and right these days. I wonder how it will influence me and how much closer I can get to showing the person I am inside. We shall see.