Women's Work: How to Give Without Depleting Ourselves

Note: This is not an accusation, a test, or a trial. Don't we have enough of those? Our healing invitation, should we choose to accept it, is simply to consider what it might be like to turn some of that infinite kindness and generosity we so often shine onto others back onto ourselves.

The Set Up: Losing Ourselves in Our Relationships

From childhood, we are taught what it means to be a "good" girl. Polite. Sweet. Compliant. Giving. We see all that our mothers do. We see the portrayals of women and girls in the media. Our culture gives us further specific flavoring on top of that. The recipe for happiness tends to be attracting a mate (male suitor) and maintaining a happy marriage, kids, families and friendships.

Why Giving Without Boundaries Can Harm Us

The problem comes in when the key ingredient to this recipe falls disproportionately to entirely on us. When we abandon ourselves to accommodate others. Whether by starving ourselves to attract the "right" mate, silencing ourselves to preserve peace in a dysfunctional system, or just plain every day over-functioning that too many of us see as "normal" or "the way things are."

The Alternative: Embodied Living and Giving

Bethany Webster calls it stepping into our "right sized responsibility," our integrity, and our sovereignty. These are the qualities of partners, regardless of gender, in interdependent relationships based upon mutuality, trust, and respect rather than extraction, power, and control (often of females' bodies and labor). These are the fulfilling relationships we truly desire.

Self-Care Is Essential for Sustainable Giving

To show up as an embodied person and partner, we have to know how to fill our own cup. This means pursuing our own company, curiosity, calm, confidence, and compassion. Nurturing ourselves, on purpose. Secure attachment (with ourselves and others) is not something that can be chased, bought, or sold. Rather, it's a feeling we nurture in ourselves and with others.

Examples of Conscious Generosity in Action

When I know that I belong to myself, that I am worthy on my own, I am able to create the life and relationships of my choosing. I can set boundaries, make decisions, and trust what I am drawn to next. Because I know that I am a good, whole, and worthy person who can figure it out. One step at a time. Likewise, I can see when I'm being depleted and make adjustments. I have agency.

Tips for Maintaining Balance Over Time

• Cultivate friendships where people give positive energy. That's where joy can be co-created.

• Seek medication, therapy, and other supports a person may need need at points in her life.

• Remember, balance is never achieved but it is a worthy intention, a fluid process.

• Recalibrate, recalibrate, recalibrate. Our bodies and minds are dynamic and alive.

  
  

The Other Side of the Coin: Men's Work

What questions are central to a man's life? What blueprint for success has been handed down to him by the dominant culture? I don't believe that the answers lie in chasing muscles (bigorexia), capitalist "success," or other current expressions of "peak" masculinity. Like women, it is the closeness of his relationships that bring a man's life meaning. In the end, what really matters is the quality of our bonds. Perhaps, in this spirit, our recalibration can play off of each other's.

Personal Reflection: A Garden Just for the Soul

I've been opting out of the "attention economy" over the past year or so. Learning how to show up in my life, day after day. Not for likes, not for performance. Just for me. If cultivating a place for those quiet, unseen moments that nourish us appeals to you, keep an eye out. I'm contemplating a more private offering, a "secret garden" to share with other sensitive souls. The idea is tapping into the long wisdom of nature and our human experience within it...