Let's talk about being selfish.
In my own journey of healing and personal growth, I began to recognise, that what I thought was "selfish" in myself was actually a healthy desire for self-care and self-love.
So conditioned had I been to care-take others, put everyone else before me, in fact to not even consider what I actually needed or wanted, that holding a boundary or speaking up for my self felt wrong. Uncomfortable. Naughty. Guilty. Frightening.
Personally, I believe this conditioning is especially strong in women and/or those with any kind of Christian background.
The martyr is a powerful shadow feminine archetype.
To be good. Make nice. Take care. Think of others.
It's such debilitating, disempowering bull-shit.
Look. If your sincere, open-to-God heart impulse is to serve and love others fine.
But if there's any sense of obligation, duty, exchange, trade-off, have to, should, resentment, exhaustion, tolerating, being good, "Jesus said so" or whatever else going on, it is NOT an authentic gesture.
And "serving" others from that place is not genuine service. It's trying to win external approval from a conditioned place either of not-good-enough or do-gooding. It's self-abandonment. Pure and simple.
It's life-force sapping.
And actually, it's dishonest. Because it isn't true.
Nobody wins when that's how you move through life. You are not serving anybody. Not really. You're actually handing on the baton of inauthenticity and begrudging self-sacrifice.
* Listening to your needs. * Honouring your boundaries.
* Asking for what you want. * Saying no to what isn't aligned. * Taking care of yourself first. * Believing you deserve rest, nourishment and abundance. * Only giving what you can, when you honestly feel resourced to. * Taking all the time you need to feel into your response.
IS NOT SELFISH.
It's love in action.
And it will most likely mean disappointing others, facing rejection, judgement or misunderstanding and going against the grain.
An essential growth-point for those of us who are empaths or have co-dependent tendencies.
Yes, I know the world is full of people who are genuinely so self-serving, that their actions evoke personal suffering and global destruction.
And the last thing we want to do is add to that.
But right here, in this piece, I'm speaking to those of you who, like me, have wrestled with this idea of "being selfish" and know it's a crucial belief to unpick in the journey of your empowerment and liberation.
Of course it's directly relevant to your sexuality and relating. How many times have you given because you thought you had to, said yes to avoid letting others down, shut your own desire down to care-take others or endured what was unsatisfying (or worse) to please?
Do you see how repressive, draining and inauthentic this is? When actually, it's TRUTH that fosters intimacy and releases energy.
So if any of this speaks to you, I'm here to advocate a healthy dollop of selfishness.
In the name of love, vitality, mind-blowing sex and conscious relating. But more broadly than that still, in the name of showing up in this world as the kick-ass woman you are born to be.