The Journey to Undo Self-Abandonment

Last week I wrote about joining a gym in an effort to pull myself out of isolation and stagnation and put myself back into community and more regular movement.

And yes, those things are true. But if I were to better sum up what I’m really trying to do, I’m trying to stop putting myself last.

It’s kind of incredible (read: alarming) how I’m more than happy to abandon my needs and desires at the first sign that someone else wants something. I’m more than happy to volunteer for something without considering if I actually want to do it because, well, it needs to get done and I don’t want others to feel inconvenienced. There have been many times that I’ve committed to paths without even considering the long-term ramifications because they seem to best fit societal expectations. And I continue to stay on platforms that addict me, rob me of hours of my time, and profit off my data because it’s the most convenient way to keep in touch with people I care about.

In other words, I often don’t prioritize myself or my goals because I so heavily believe the story in my head that I’m only of value when I’m prioritizing other people’s priorities. My own priorities, my own health, my own needs have often been used as cannon fodder to make sure the goals of everyone around me come true.

I want to be clear that this is something I do to myself. The people in my life aren’t demanding I sacrifice myself for them. And while there’s a boatload of societal messaging that women need to put everyone else before themselves, and while it’s hard to resist that, I’m still the one who has to buy into in order for it to be true in my life. And boy oh boy did I buy into it.

This, to me, is where energetic/spiritual/inner work really comes into play. Because it’s actually pretty easy to recognize this is happening. I watched resentment build up in my life for years around how much I did for everyone other than myself. I just didn’t think I had a choice.

That’s the tricky part. Recognizing there is a choice(and then choosing to actually make a change). It takes a lot of energetic shifting.

I’ve had to shift out of victimhood. I’ve had to accept responsibility for how I show up and the actions I take. And I’ve to build trust that I won’t abandon myself again.

It’s a painful process. Not just because new neuro pathways have to be built and rerouted from old pathways that have been etched into my brain for decades. It’s also painful because I’ve had to face some of the uglier parts of myself. To acknowledge I was capable of abandoning myself time and time again in the name of “guaranteed” safety and security. It’s required hella ego death and the acceptance that there are no guarantees. All the control I thought I had was actually just an illusion. So I abandoned myself for nothing.

It sucks.

So choosing to dive into that takes guts, and personally I’ve found it helpful to have something outside myself guide me (in my case, primarily homeopathy and coaching, this this could also be therapy, working with a spiritual guide, connecting to mother earth, etc) because there’s no way I’d voluntarily poke at the emotions I’ve shoved away and try to examine then. Maybe there are people out there who are brave enough to dive into this work on their own. Those people probably were smart enough not to shove down their emotions or abandon themselves in the first place.

But once you do this work, once you reach the other side, you have the capacity to see what needs to change AND why it’s so important.

Because doing things for others in full on resentment mode usually just makes everyone miserable. Because taking care of others when you have nothing for yourself means that eventually you’re going to find yourself collapsed on the floor unable to take care of anyone. Because the things that light you up actually bring more value to the world than whatever it is you think you have to do in order to be a good and responsible adult. Because when you do more of the things that feel aligned and less of the things that don’t, you suddenly find that those aligned activities energetically feed each other and you somehow have way more energy and purpose throughout the day.

I’ll close by mentioning that I’ve been reading this book called A Return to Eros which is ultimately a book about how we are most connected to God and our purpose when we are living a life of outrageous love. (P.S. It’s also a book about using sex as a model for outrageous love, so just a heads up in case you pick it up and were not expecting that). But, in essence, the message of the book is: why on earth would our purpose on Earth be to do anything other than live a life that we are head-over-heels in love with?

To which I say, uh, yeah, actually. Why the heck do so many of us believe that our lives are supposed to be filled with emotionless duty and suffering?

It makes no sense when you stop and think about it, yet many of us believe there is no other option because a handful power-hungry dudes want us to believe we’re unlovable monsters in order to maintain control.

If I’d read this book five or ten years ago, I don’t know that I would have been able to handle it. To face something so undeniably true while being stuck so heavily in self-abandonment probably would have pushed me further into denial of myself because accepting the truth would have been so uncomfortable. Either that or it would have shattered me. Which might not have been a bad thing, but it would have been a lot.

And for those of us who believe that putting your own needs and desires first is selfish, here’s the kicker. A life of outrageous love, of putting your needs and desires first, includes doing things for others. In fact, it probably involves helping and caring for others quite a bit. It’s in our nature to be in community and want to take care of that community (it’s actually individualistic colonial capitalism that makes us believe that being in community is a burden).

But when we live a life of outrageous love, we take care of others because we love, not because we fear that if we don’t then we won’t be worthy of love. That’s the difference.

I wonder what the world would be that if we could all stop and believe that.