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I Will Not Shrink Down So That You Feel Big
This is what I know to be true of myself.
Take a walk with me and see if you can relate.
I love fiercely, intimately, and completely. I am empathetic and compassionate. I am kind and considerate. I am silly, childlike, and ridiculous. I am strong and stable. I am reliable, protective, and loyal. I am humorous and witty. I am sexy, erotic, and sensual. I am physical and emotional. I am joyful and passionate. I am generous and altruistic. I am disciplined and direct. I am sassy and sweet. I am feminine and vulnerable. I am honest and powerful. I am complex and intelligent. I am assertive and a leader. I am headstrong and interesting. I am mysterious and intuitive.
I am also insecure and inept. I am shy and passive. I am irritable and bitchy. I am sad and morose. I am intense and angry. I am fragile and emotional. I am sensitive and sorry. I am profane and snarky. I am sharp-tongued and shrewish. I am loud and abrasive. I am a procrastinator and lazy. I am unpredictable and scary. I am unapologetic and outspoken. I am inconsistent and imperfect.
I am a paradox. I am, to quote Winston Churchill, “…a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key.”
The key to me is to see all that I am in truth, not as you wish me to be. In return, I promise you this:
I will not whitewash my feelings to mollify yours. I will not sacrifice my boundaries in favor of soothing your fears and anxieties. I will not allow you to diminish the intensity of my feelings or mislabel them in an effort to get them to fit into your stories like twisted legos.
I will love you with my boundaries. I will wrap them around myself as a declaration of healthy love. Knowing where I end and you begin is the start of a strong love that is free of unhealthy attachment.
My job as a partner is to love myself first and foremost. My job as a mother is to love myself first and foremost. My job as a friend, a neighbor, and a member of this human race is to love myself first and foremost.
If I do not take the job of loving myself seriously then how could I ever expect anyone else to? If I want my children to learn how to love themselves then how can they if I refuse to model…
