“If you are trying to please, how do you take responsibility for your own needs? How do you even know what your own needs are? What do you have to cut off in yourself in order to please others? I think the act of pleasing makes everything murky. We lose track of ourselves. We stop uttering declaratory sentences. We stop directing our lives. We wait to be rescued. We forget what we know. We make everything okay rather than real.”
― Eve Ensler, I am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World
Perhaps the simplest practice here is to make a declarative sentence. A client texted me this morning at 7:00 am, “Sorry for the early text, but can you spot coach me?” She shared that she was in the process of moving in with her partner and she was in a moment of freak out. Freaking out that perhaps he couldn’t meet her spirituality, meet her need to be in Oneness and to explore together, and that was so necessary for her. This one I can hold tenderly. Tenderly, because at each new level of intimacy, I find myself in a similar place. There are two questions that open my heart here:
1) Dearest one, in what ways are you honoring your spirituality? In what ways are you seeking and building a community around you that supports you and that you support? In what ways are you building spiritual practices, be they praying, journaling, creating an altar, going to your acupuncturist, dancing, gathering in circles of folks…. List the ways your heart is craving you honor it.
2) Wild one, in what ways are you inviting him in? (How can he say yes without an invitation?) In what ways are you extending your heart and your hand, and requesting that he join you? Is it at the end of a long and exhausting day when you are desperately needing? Is it when you are fully resourced? You first, my love. And if you are a recovering people pleaser, like me, know that when you are wanting the person across from you to give to you, it is often the moment when you most deeply and compassionately need to listen to your heart and give to yourself first. Make a declarative statement.
Mantra: Today, I declare what my heart says. I do the things that are alive in my heart and I let that be the gift that I am giving.
Journal: What is your declarative statement? What are you doing to source your heart? What invitations are you making to your loved ones, your friends, your family, your community so their hearts may join you?
xo,
Jess
These Soulful Sunday blogs go out weekly on Sundays to be used as a place to step back from the hustle and bustle and explore what your soul might be saying to you. Some folks use these as journal prompts and let loose amidst pages. Some folks bring them to the kitchen table and jam over coffee. Do you, boo.
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