Women: Stop Putting Yourself Last
I know, this might offend some of you; that’s ok.
I’ve met countless women who are having a mid-life crisis, or what I’d like to call it, mid-life clarity. This is when we begin to re-examine our lives and notice that we’re way out of whack with what’s aligned to our deepest longings. But, wait, what does that even mean? A longing? A yearning? A calling? Yes, this fire that resides within you is still there, but over time it’s been just an ember reflective of the ashes of what once was, and filled with the flicker of what might be. These ashes are the remnants of what used to ignite that longing from deep within your center. This is a place you may not even recognize. It’s been so long since you tendered your fire that you’ve forgotten the way.
If there’s one sole truth about our feminine yearning, it is the tending of our creative fire, our destiny to be in unity with other women, to bring out these longings in each other. Our embers have been neglected and we’ve lost sight of the force and nature of our Feminine Being. We’ve fed, nurtured, and championed our children, become career women, loved our partners, and cared for our aging parents. We’ve laid the path of nurturing for everything and everyone exernal, and forgotten how to nurture ourselves.
The fire pit of your creative center and your maternal longing is not lost. It’s just been covered in the ashes of what once was. There, deep within your center exists a fire, a light, a warmth that still burns with the fuel of this desire. The fire expresses itself as an unmet need, an itch that can’t be scratched, a beckoning through rumination and worry. What will I do next? How do I begin? Is it too late?
The forces of our upbringing, our patriarchal society, and our desire to be validated and seen in the light of these expectations have influenced this imbalance in our true nature, our creative longing, and our divine femininity. This unmet need is showing up in our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies. These untruths are the smoldering a thick black smoke that permeates the air around us, and suffocates the very life we’ve been born to create. We’ve been ruled by our brains, our thoughts, our emotions, and become infected by the smoke. Our rumination and worry have manifested as the very action that also holds the key to our opening. The messages stored in our bodies are speaking to us – it’s time to tend our fire, to light our passion, to honor our deepest nature.
Is this you? Have you forgotten how to tend your creative fire?
Have you gotten so out of whack with your true nature that you don’t even know who you are?
Are you saying “yes” to everyone else and neglecting yourself?
It isn’t too late. It’s never too late to begin again and start where you are. It's time to be your own champion.
The wisdom within you is there as a guide to navigating you back to you, as you are right now.
Here are some ways to tend to your fire and re-ignite the creative center of your longing:
Get quiet. This doesn’t mean take a nap – unless you’re vastly deprived of sleep, then well, go take a nap. Getting quiet means spending some time vacant of your racing thoughts and worry about what might happen, and what once was. Getting quiet means spending time in the present moment. Yep, yogis and spiritual leaders, and inspirers have been on to something; they've mastered the art of getting quiet. In his best-selling book, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, Eckhart Tolle says,
“So the single most vital step in your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger.”
The light of your consciousness can be a metaphor for fueling the fire from within and shedding light on what is most important to you. The intent is about creating a gap between the past and future and being in the now. By doing so, you’re not “checking out”, but rather “checking in” to the longings of your creative center. The more you tap into this gap, you’re actually expanding the connection to what most resonates with you on the deepest level of your Being.
This doesn’t have to be a long drawn-out process. Ask yourself what amount of time you are willing to spend in any given day. There are 24 hours in each day and even if you have a load of responsibilities to others, you can carve out a sliver of time for yourself. Even 3-5 minutes of tapping into the gap of your essence will create the oxygen and space needed to rekindle your fire.
Ask what you need. We live in a world of external answers. We seek advice from just about every industry. We go to the doctor for our ailments and yet, we’re sicker and more stressed than ever. We seek advice from our friends, our clergy, our family. You see the pattern here? We're seeking answers from everywhere and everyone else but ourself. I am urging you right now to sit with yourself quietly (yes, there’s that word again), and just ask what it is you need.
The only person that can answer the questions to your secret longings is you.
Spend a moment and breathe into your body from bottom to top. Notice what physical sensations you feel. Perhaps it’s tension, tightness, or even lack of feeling in some parts of your body. If you make it a regular practice to connect with your body's wisdom, you will find tiny snippets of information that act as the voice to your inner most questions. Maybe it’s that nap that you need. Maybe you want a healing bath. Maybe you'd like to light a candle. Maybe it’s movement and exercise. Perhaps you're craving solitude in nature. Or, maybe it's a constant longing to make a bigger shift to leave that soul sucking job, or exit a toxit relationship. Your inner guide is there to navigate you toward your truth. This is the truest wisdom you can access. This is the rawest and most loving place of wisdom there is.
Be willing. Be willing to know that you may not have the all answers right now. Be willing to trust that even in your state of stress and anxiety, there actually is a way out. Be willing to be open to an alternative way to live your life that you may not even be aware of. Just because you’ve been living your life on everyone’s terms right now, doesn’t mean you have to throw away everything you know in order to create more peace and alignment for yourself. Just because you’ve been the rock of caring for everyone else that your friends and family won’t want you to take time out for yourself. Just because you are in a job that you hate, doesn’t mean you can’t slowly work toward something more fulfilling. Just because you have certain roles that you fill within your domestic partnership doesn't mean that things can’t shift for the better. Being willing to the possibility that you can create more balance, peace, and freedom, creates the very gap that is needed to start your fire again. A tiny gap of willingness is all you need to create a shift.
Be kind. One of the most prominent symptoms of being out of whack with our true nature is that our thoughts have become a war zone. We have become our worst enemy based on living up to everyone else’s expectations. We’ve adopted a false set of beliefs that create a war zone of suffering. Our essence has become clouded in the black smoke from burning with demeaning comments and critical jabs. Byron Katie refers to this as “dirty pain”. When we believe a limiting story that is outside of our reality, we create self-inflicted dirty pain that’s driven by the voice of our lizard brain. Remember, as you start to examine your thoughts, without judgement, you start to notice the over-critical voice that tells you that you aren’t, “good enough…successful…worthy…valuable, etc.” These are likely untrue stories that you’ve been creating over many decades of conditioning. And, they aren’t kind stories. Imagine yourself as a small wounded child. Now, visualize stepping outside yourself as the caring and nurturing woman that you are toward everyone else. Direct this loving and kind energy to your wounded nature. You can even adopt an endearing term toward yourself like, love, friend, or whatever resonates.
Start where you’re at. We don’t live in a black and white world. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You don’t have to make a drastic shift in order to start feeling better now. You can set aside this care for yourself in small ways that just may have the biggest impact. Start with 3-5 minutes of care for yourself. When you care for yourself even in small ways, you will not only gain the respect of your children, but also your partners and friends. They will see this as an invitation to do the same.
Ali Dombek Handel is a life coach from Denver, Colorado. Ali has been coaching friends and colleagues on getting back to their true nature for as long as she can remember. She recently completed the Martha Beck Life Coaching program to hone her skills. Ali finds inspiration in world leaders and influencers who are paving a new path to greater fulfillment in life. Ali inspires you to care for yourself so that you can make steps to create the blissful life you want.
