Melanie O'Shea“You need to allow yourself to be taken care of and loved by others, without feeling the need to do something for them.”
“You give too much of yourself to your relationships, almost losing yourself in them.”
“You take on way too much for everyone else.”
“Remember, you must take care of yourself as well.”
I don’t think I have done a single intuitive medicine session without something coming up about the client not taking care of themselves, and putting their own needs aside to be everything for everybody else.
These are all female clients, by the way.
I know, the feminine energy is all about nurturing and caring – it is such an innate urge for us women. We are literally born with this urge, it’s biological.
As soon as my youngest daughter had walking figured out, she was doing things for her older sister, who has a disability. Without being asked or encouraged to do so, mind you – she just did it. Now that they are both teenagers, my youngest still takes it upon herself to worry about, look out for, and take care of her big sister, even when her sister is perfectly capable of taking care of herself.
We are natural care-takers and for most of us, we learn very early on that taking care of others is a good thing and being selfish is bad. We feel wrong when we put our needs ahead of someone else’s.
Us modern gals, we are so fortunate that we can have it all, do it all, right? Oh, the things we can do now – the sky is the limit! Career. Stay-at-home mum. CEO. Single. Married. Mum. Home-owner. Player. Influencer. Expert. Freedom fighter. Domestic goddess. Crafting genius. Jet-setter.
Ladies, how freaking lucky are we!!
Never before in history have women had so many options available to them, and so much freedom to choose.
And yet, every day I see women who are broken, dejected, burnt out, miserable, flat, bitter, exhausted, pushed beyond their limits, and stressed to the hilt.
What’s the deal ladies?
We can have it, do it all! We should all be on top of the bloody world!
In my opinion, believing that we have to have it all and do it all, plus taking care of everybody, is making us all sick!
“Come on, admit it – you know deep down you’re making yourself sick with your incessant need to prove to the world how strong and selfless and truly incredible you are, because you can do anything you put your mind to. Well, I say pfft to that.”
Melanie O’Shea, ‘FibromyAWESOME’
Do a web search for ‘burnout in women v men’ and you’ll see that, across the board, women are heaps more (very technical scientific term) likely to burnout. And, we’re doing it to ourselves.
Now search for ‘fibromyalgia in women’, ‘chronic fatigue in women’, and for a truly alarming read, search for ‘stress and heart disease in women’.
Notice a trend?
Basically, in this time of incredible freedom and equality (still a long way to go with equality, yes, but that’s not the point) for women, we are bloody sicker than ever before!
So, fellow females, what’s the deal??
We can have it all, but at the cost of our own health? Really??
Please, please, hear what I am saying.
When our health is shit, so are our options.
All of the equality imaginable won’t make us happy if we’re too bloody sick to get up off the couch.
Believe me, sisters, I know. I’ve been there. And I didn’t have too options to rub together.
When we avoid choosing ourselves for too long, we find ourselves without choice. And that is a shitty, shitty, dark-ages kind of place to be in. It’s a just a whole lot of ‘nope, can’t do that. Nope, can’t do that either’. And if you get to that place, it won’t be men or society saying ‘nope’, you’ll be saying it to yourself honey.
When I was 30 I was so ill with fibromyalgia that I was days away from not having the option of raising my own children. I was so close to signing over full custody to their dad, because I knew they deserved better than what I was able to give them at that time – I struggled to heat up baked beans for their dinner, and I’d struggle to keep my eyes open for the 20-minute school pick up drive, that’s how unwell I was.
I almost gave up on my nursing degree because my fibromyalgia symptoms made it near impossible to sit upright for more than half an hour, let alone concentrate and retain information in my foggy brain.
It was a dark and horrible period of my life, and I will be forever grateful that I was able to cure myself, and fill my life with possibilities and options once again. I even wrote about my self-healing journey, and because I don’t want others to be stuck in a self-made world of ‘nopes’, I practically give copies of my book away.
Goddesses near and far, consider this your wake-up call – it is time to make yourself your number one priority. It is time to stop ignoring your Inner Wisdom when she screams at you to rest, to stop juggling so much, to give up on the idea that you have to do it all, to give yourself a bloody break already.
If you want to have it all, you cannot be all for everyone else. You’ve got to put on your own oxygen mask before you can help anyone else with theirs. Fill your own cup until it runneth over, and you’ll effortlessly fill the cups of those around you too, but you can’t pour from any empty cup. If you can’t paddle your own canoe….I think I’m done with the analogies…
Why do we make what should be the easiest job in the world the hardest? Taking care of our own needs, our own bodies, shouldn’t be hard – us humans come with a built drive to survive after all – yet, it’s often not until we’re on the brink of not having any options left to us that we realise we’ve been neglecting ourselves for way too long. And, that’s not an easy place to come back from.
I don’t want to see anyone get to that place because they focused so much on everyone else and neglected their own amazing self for too long. It’s time to break the cycle of self-neglect and nurture ourselves with our powerful feminine energy.
Here’s a little tip to get you started:
Take your to-do list for today and rip it up. Now write a new to-do list, but don’t write any more than five tasks on it, and make at least one of those tasks something that is just for you (eg. go to yoga class, meditate for 10 minutes, go for a walk on the beach, write in my journal). Now, put the task that is just for you at the top of your to-do list. Don’t add anything more to your list throughout the day until you cross something off, and tomorrow, start your new to-do list with something that is just for you once again. And repeat.
See, it’s not hard! I bet you are feeling better already aren’t you?
I hope to see many more of us getting around blinding people with our radiant glow.
I wanna see you shine bright like a diamond girl!
