:: at the intersection of intentional self-development and social responsibility ::
Self-trust. Self-love. Self-care. My work revolves around developing these 3 pillars in order to live what I call your most positively thriving life.
I know, that’s a lot of “self” going on. By design.
For too long, too many of us have been taught by example, tricked by faulty constructs of what it means to love, or told straight out that thinking of yourself and protecting your own needs is selfish (and that selfish is definitely bad.)
It’s become so much a part of our culture for women especially to dismiss themselves or let themselves be dismissed, that speaking up for ourselves and what we want and need can feel a small act of revolution that requires continued replenishment of fortitude, courage and perseverance.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt you had to:
- do without in order to do right by someone else
- give up something you love for someone you love, regularly
- discard parts of yourself in order to excel in other areas
- quiet, shrink, dull, or tame yourself in order to be palatable to others
- deny yourself or let yourself be denied of desire itself — of wanting as well as of what in particular you want
We’re fed from every angle the unsavory story that what we want doesn’t matter and never really did. That we in fact matter very little, outside of what we do for our spouses and children and bosses and friends.
I taste it everyday in what we say and what we swallow. What we tolerate and what feels out of the realm of our reach to even begin to change.
And every time we keep quiet as we let someone else cross our own personal boundaries and diminish or devalue our personal voice and inspiration, we’re doing a disservice not only to ourselves, but to the collective voice and inspiration of the world we all inhabit.
When we let our own voices be stifled or stifle them ourselves in our personal lives, how likely are we to have the strength and muscle memory to speak up for and with the marginalized and mistreated around us?
And how is that okay?
To claim a divide between the personal and the political is a privilege that’s long past time to renounce.
Although we can’t change the past, we can accept our current civil and humankind responsibility for the world in which we now live and the prior and current injustices that have created it.
Because while I fundamentally believe that honoring and nurturing ourselves is something we all get to do for its very own sake, I just as fundamentally believe that its pursuit is also inextricably tied to what we do in the world from that place of greater wholeness and vitality.
We develop these strengths within ourselves and aspects of ourselves so that they may help us create and navigate our most positively thriving life — in community and relationship with those around us.
Our work doesn’t happen in a bubble, nor should its fruits be relegated to one.
Whether we’re talking inner work or outer work, it’s all a process of active resistance against slipping into the way it’s always been and intentionally-chosen forward-moving action toward what we wish to be.
Push and pull, strides forward and stumbles, ever engaging and evolving into new iterations of experience and expression.
All of this requires a commitment to ourselves as well as our neighbors.
A commitment to developing the self-trust needed to navigate challenging spaces, the self-love to access grace and compassion during the stumbles that will come, and the self-care to rest, replenish and restore.
This is the work. There is no me without a we, and when part of our we cannot breathe, it falls on every other me to step in, speak up, and make the step-by-step change we all need to see.
Not as saviors, but as healthier parts of a hurting whole in a system designed to keep it that way.
When we don’t actively make change, we passively perpetuate more of the same.
***If you’re called to explore how deepened self-trust, self-love and self-care can help you create a positively thriving life that you’re satisfied with and proud to live, ask me about my new monthly 1:1 intensives.***