“We can do hard things”-Glennon Doyle

The last week or so I have been channeling my inner knowing. I have been seeking guidance within myself because it is time that I refocus myself and let the rest of the noise burn. When there is a lot of noise in our heads it makes it impossible to process our own thoughts and beliefs. We lean into how other people are feeling and we forget about ourselves and what WE need and then the shame spiral begins. The triggers take over, and our ability to clearly think goes out the window.

Many of us spend a lifetime disconnecting and compartmentalizing. This notion of presenting a sanitized version of perfection that allows us acceptance because we are doing things that society deems acceptable but losing our autonomy and identity. We prioritize admiration versus connection which essentially separates us from others rather than bringing us together. We spend most of our lives following the “trainings” we receive from our parents, from society, from everyone we interact with. Each telling us how we are SUPPOSED to behave, and we become tamed. According to Glennon Doyle, the world needs more women to stop fearing themselves, to start trusting themselves. The world needs more women who are entirely out of control. And I couldn’t agree more.

We all have at one time of another had an idea of what gaslighting feels like in relationship but what we don’t realize is that we are born into a world that uses universal gaslighting to shape us as human beings, we are born into a world developed on a gazillion manipulations and we lose any chance of being our authentic selves because we spend a lifetime living up to the expectations of the world. The tragedy of this is that the people who are supposed to protect us are the first ones to perpetuate those manipulations. Our parents who have also been manipulated into these belief systems, train us just like they were trained, and the cycle repeats. The generational patterns continue. There is tremendous trauma in this training that we receive, and it essentially wrecks us, and destroys who we were supposed to be.

What we must realize is that what is inside of us is more real than anything outside of us. What we feel viscerally when we are alone with ourselves and wondering what those flutters of hope are inside our deep crevasses, that is where we find the freedom to be our truest selves. It is where we no longer allow the worlds manipulations to decide how we live our lives. It is where we can become free.

I was raised with the belief that being a good daughter was pleasing my parents. That if there wasn’t suffering or sacrifices being made that I was not truly being loving. My mother was raised to be a martyr. That to fully love her husband and family she needed to abandon herself, her needs, wants, and desires. She raised her children with a less stringent set of rules, but the underlying life lesson was that to have a successful marriage, to raise healthy children, you must suffer, if you aren’t suffering you aren’t loving them well. That amount of pressure to put on two young impressionable girls, can destroy the possibilities that the world provides and can set those girls up to be caged creatures not living to their full potential.

What I have learned this last year is that being a good mother is about being a role model, not a martyr. Being a good mother is about not settling for anything less than what you would want for your own children. We need to stop being willing to abandon ourselves in the name of being a good mother, of living up to a societal view that is so antiquated, that it is society that NEEDS to catch up.

“A woman becomes a responsible parent when she stops being an obedient daughter.” Glennon Doyle

This line has been resonating with me today. It is the truest of statements. A therapist I saw not that long ago, told me that I needed to fire my mother as the CEO in my head. That I needed to silence the gaslighting, the manipulations. That I needed to take control over my own life. There has been an unhealthy power dynamic between my mother and I my entire life. She has spent her whole life asserting her role as my mother and reminding me that I am the child and what I am starting to realize is that, that is because she’s afraid. Her identity is the martyred mother, and she hasn’t been that for as long as I have been on my own and she hasn’t come to terms with that. The less I live by her rules the more she loses control the more fear develops. The more the potential for conflict rises.

When the people that you love carry fear, you must decide if you are going to give them access to you. It doesn’t matter if it is your lover, friend, parent if they want access to you, they need to realize their fear and come back when they are ready to love and accept you. We can only be ok when we have solid boundaries. When you are meeting your purpose, when you are doing what you were meant to do, no one gets to disrupt that, no matter how difficult that may be. It is not our job to convince people that we are ok. We don’t need to explain ourselves about being ok, we just need to live our lives, and let the world observe.

I don’t want to live my whole life in reaction to someone else’s rules. Someone else’s triggers and expectations. That has proven to no longer be working for me. I am no longer willing to live out of bounds to ensure that someone else’s comfort is paramount to my own. I am not a victim or a martyr, but I am fierce about my healing. We all have the potential for slipping in and out of victimhood and in many ways, we are all victims of societal expectations. Of our traumatic childhoods and of course we have the choice to fiercely look at ourselves, our patterns, our trauma, and make changes but if we eb and flow out of accountability does that mean that progress has not been made? No, no it does not. It is just a reminder of our humanity. The moment we forget our humanity is the moment that we are living life for others and are completely out of bounds. And then our focus needs to shift on getting back in bounds or we risk abandoning ourselves.

My children are a part of my identity. They are what gave me the blessing of being a mother. My children taught me that rigid belief systems don’t work when you are trying to raise two, beautiful, smart, independent, fierce young ladies. They taught me that the universal gaslighting that I experienced does not need to be their experience and it is my life’s mission to change that for them. To keep changing myself because what I need and what my children need is not mutually exclusive. I am here to be their role model. They are watching each move that I make and are learning from me. If I am not living authentically, they will not trust themselves to live authentically, and that would be a tragedy. My children will be inspirational in this world. They will make a difference. They will not be tamed. I will do anything for my children besides abandoning myself. I will do anything for a friend, family member, or partner but I won’t abandon myself for them.

I am in a pivotal place in my life where I must trust my knowing. I always seek counsel from my most trusted sources but what I need to stop doing is to stop outsourcing my life to others. I am no longer willing to turn my life over to anyone. I have spent a lifetime overriding my intuition based on my belief systems and whether that will adversely affect someone else. I have spent my whole life as a very unboundaried person. I have been figuring out how to protect myself, to guard myself and that isn’t healthy either. I need to integrate my knowing with the knowing of others. I can seek counsel and pool information from others, but I must trust that in the end, I can make the final decision for myself.

In partnership we must acknowledge that we share different belief systems. That we don’t always see eye to eye. We like to highlight our suffering by making our partners feel that something they are doing is wrong. We allow our differences to get in the way of experiencing true happiness. Of being able to embrace the people we love because we can’t embrace ourselves. We must spend time unlearning the things that don’t suit us any longer. But what happens when both partners are in recovery? Does it make it impossible to have a healthy relationship? Is there room for both?

The therapeutic work we do is very hard. Feeling the emotions of our abuses is at times agonizing. We work hard to forget about those memories and when we embark on our therapeutic journey, we are not only talking about these most painful memories, but we are sitting in the feelings. When the feelings begin to flood, is when people have the potential to quit therapy because no one wants to be sad, lonely, or rageful. Courage is required to sustain the pain that therapy can bring up, but the result is truly worth the agony. We discover the parts of ourselves that we want to hold on to and we rid ourselves of the parts we no longer have room for in our lives. To grow, we must be intimate with our pain. So, can two people in recovery have a healthy relationship? I believe they can but they have to have the same idea of what healthy boundaries are. We think boundaries are things you implement with certain people, but boundaries need to be about ideas and beliefs that are consistent not something we implement on certain people.

What I have been realizing is that I have never been broken. I am an angry, heartbroken woman who is paying attention to what’s going on in her life. My anger isn’t unreasonable. Wanting to be fierce about those that I love does not make me deplorable. If someone is asking me to compromise myself because of their triggers, am I willing to slowly die inside in an attempt to make them happy? The price of making other people comfortable is that we are not comfortable. When we free ourselves it becomes contagious and we encourage those around us to free themselves as well.