When We Become Brittle
What happens to a woman who does not know her needs and therefore cannot get them met?
She becomes brittle. She becomes short with the ones she loves. She becomes anxious and angry. She hardens and shuts down. She becomes very hungry for something she cannot name.
As a mother, managing this hunger is a daily dance as we can’t always put ourselves first. In fact, we often need to put children first and in doing so get further away from our own feeding and need for care.
We become martyrs to our family, deciding a good partner, a good mother, a good woman is one who is need-less, one who does everything by herself without breaking a sweat. Our selflessness gets conflated with strength.
As this wild and trying year comes to an end, let’s consider what we need for the year ahead.
If you have no idea what you need (besides more sleep and less world chaos) start with these questions.
What brings you joy?
What makes you feel alive?
What brings you calm and a sense of peace?
What actions make you feel accomplished?
If you had only 24 hours left to live, how would you spend your day?
The answers to these questions are what you need. You may not be able to get all of it at once, but see what you can do to bring pieces of them into your life over this coming year.
Know this. Having needs does not make you needy.
They make you human, which is what we are all striving to be more of. More human, more real, more loyal to ourselves than to our “shoulds”. Name your needs. Ask for help. Kiss your babies. Breathe. Repeat.
If you enjoyed this post, please keep reading!
As a self care coach, schedule buffering is one of my go to self care tips after a big presentation, after a work trip, after solo parenting, after a holiday party, and after any sort of transition. I make sure to enter slowly. I don't over commit. I leave LOTS of space for me to take it easy and move at a slower pace rather than slamming into the next thing after having just put so much out.
Women are uniquely tasked with carefully navigating the way we interact with the people around us. We aren't to make anyone mad. We can't let anyone down. We mustn't offend anyone. Don't even think of hurting anyone's feelings. And don't you dare inconvenience anyone.
Truth is, many of us are amazing shit-picker-uppers. It doesn’t matter who the shit belongs to, if someone drops a steaming pile of it in front of us, we always pick it up. Always.
I've been thinking a lot about change recently. It's as if every time I catch my breath and get used to life "as it is", something shifts. There's a change in the world. A change in my 3 year old's sleep pattern. A change in my body. A change in the law.
Change, change, everywhere change.
In my 15 years of coaching I've had countless clients ask me, "If I know I want to be less controlling in my life, why do I keep defaulting to it?" There are a number of reasons why we seek to control. Many of us developed controlling behaviors as children to create a sense of stability and safety in an otherwise chaotic/unsafe environment.
For most of my life I toggled between wanting to be a "good girl" and wanting to tell people (and systems) to leave me the f*ck alone. It was a hard line to walk with one part of me wanting to be liked and held in "high-standing" and the other feeling put upon, judged and resenting it.
Question for you: What were you taught about slowness? Perhaps you were taught that slowness is a form of laziness. Perhaps you internalized the message that going slow is a waste of precious time. Maybe you see slowness as the antithesis of productivity or worse, that slowness is a reflection of low intelligence.
Since January began, my partner Adam and I have been randomly looking at each other and making an exasperated "BLAH!" face. It's the face we use when either of us is feeling uninspired, listless or just, well, BLAH.
As the days shorten we find our bodies naturally craving slowness and inwardness.
This conversation is between myself and an incredible woman named Ani, who shares how she learned how to be authentic, practice self-compassion, and take up space without guilt or shame through my 6-month group coaching program, Homecoming. Ani is a model for how to excavate internalized misogyny and live authentically without fear of others’ opinions. The conversation originally took place on podcast, The Path Home.