Photography by ~CC "A Summer Day at the Biltmore Estate Gardens" Just because we "love" someone,
it doesn't mean that we love them well... that includes our self! About two years ago when I joined a women's support group at The Barnabas Center in Charlotte, NC., I learned that it's possible that the "way" we love is not necessarily a healthy way to love.After learning this, I reflected on the way I'd loved people both past and present. I understood that I was included in the statistics of people who didn't know how to love well. Whether it was loving my parents, my siblings, past boyfriends, and eventually husband and children; all my life I loved poorly by loving too much. Basically, I was always motivated to do things to "keep" their love. I was always doing things I thought I "ought" to do. Most times I didn't consider how some of those things I chose to do would effect me in the long run. I never thought about my own self, at least I didn't think I was thinking about my own self. I just wanted to "keep" the person happy that I loved so they wouldn't leave me.
Falling "in love" as a young woman and marrying Prince Charming is a dream come true for many little girls. It was for me when I married my husband, Johnny. Many women marry the man they think will "complete" them, I did. It sounds so romantic too, doesn't it? "Loving One's Self Well" was already not clear to me. I learned much later in life that to have a healthy emotional love relationship with anyone, I had to bring myself into the relationship feeling "complete and happy" already. I needed to be complete in myself to give 100% of myself to any loving relationship.
Fast forward 20 years... No one can give us happiness and joy if we haven't already learned how to find it within ourselves, we find it within the foundation of our faith and in one's own character. A job can't fill that empty vacuum, and a man that we love can't fill it. It's up to us to search and find out who we are and why we do the things we do. Without knowing these things about ourselves as young women, we go into any relationship with a deficit. We go into the relationship with our cup half full looking for someone else to fill the other half and bring us the joy that we've long searched for.
Many of us have old scars from past pain that we stuff into parts of our heart, "thinking" we're moving forward in life. We're not going to allow ourselves to be affected by a past that binds us we say. So, we walk through life tying to use the coping skills we used as children, yet we aren't a child any longer. The things that used to help us cope are no longer working.
OK, who are we then? Just asking ourselves that question is the start of finding out. Then we are beginning to search out what it means to be an authentic woman, even when it means that we might have to face certain truths about ourselves. It's one thing to fool the ones around us, it's another to realize we've fooled our self the most throughout our life. That's exactly how I felt when I realized that the positive happy person that I constantly radiated to all those around me was not who I truly was inside.
"I will never grow up and allow my children to see me sad and crying, I never want them to see me like that. I don't ever want to make them sad." I had made this unspoken vow when I was a little girl. The reason was because my mother's nerves were often frayed due to having a challenging life with six children by the time she was 29 years old.
I was fourth in the lineup. By the time I was 9, the two older siblings had left the nest. All I wanted was to see my mom smile. I'd clean the house to put a smile on her face. I'd try to make dinner to try and put a smile on her face. I still remember the first time I made a pot roast. She was lying in bed resting and I'd walk back in the room and she'd tell me what to do next.
Early on I struggled to understand what loving well meant. I thought if I just loved harder, it would make my Mom happier. I took this same principle into my adult relationships, and then couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong.
What does "Loving One's Self Well" look like? Really, in many ways for me, it was learning a few things about myself before I could really learn how to love myself well. When I became aware of who I really was as a person... and how I was wired, it explained why I did the things I did all my life. Once I became "aware" of all these things, that's when I began to see I had a choice in changing. I had to come to grips with the fact that I've struggled in and out of depression much of my life. Most likely because of all the emotions I "thought" I had to stuff. Now I understand why being around people that were depressed were too horrible of an experience for me. It was too much like looking into a mirror and finding out what was truly hidden deep in my own heart. I had to stop running, I needed to learn "about" me, I needed to change what I could, and live with what I couldn't change.
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