New Year, New Lessons

Love is not denying ourselves and doing for others, but rather it is honestly expressing whatever our feelings and needs are and empathetically receiving the other person's feelings and needs. To receive empathetically does not mean that you must comply-just accurately receive what is expressed as a gift of life from the other person. Love is honestly expressing our own needs; that doesn't mean making demands, but just, "Here I am. Here's what I like." - Being Me, Loving You by Marshall B. Rosenberg, Phd

I've been loving others so wrong for so long.

Where do we get these ideas that denying ourselves is the best way to care for someone else, let alone ourselves? How do we come to a place of giving and receiving that both the giving and the receiving feels like a gift? 

I am just now realizing that I've been living in the 'deny ourselves and do for others' version of 'love' for so long that 

a) I'm exhausted 

b) I've got some serious resentment to unravel 

c) I no longer know what my feelings or needs even are, if I ever once did... 

Love is not denying ourselves and doing for others, but rather it is honestly expressing whatever our feelings and needs are and empathetically receiving the other person's feelings and needs.

Oof.

I think I am much better at recognizing others' needs and feelings as criticism and insufficiencies in myself. I lose focus of the one I'm in relationship with and trying so hard to love well and look back at myself, but in a critical way instead of in a helpful way. I want to retrain myself to recognize my dear ones' needs as a gift of life. To pause my own inner-dialogue for that moment and really hear what's missing... and then see if I can support them to meet those needs and/or desires or if it's a situation that I can only hear and understand them.

To receive empathetically does not mean that you must comply-just accurately receive what is expressed as a gift of life from the other person.

Love is honestly expressing our own needs; that doesn't mean making demands, but just, "Here I am. Here's what I like."

I've been trying to take a few minutes every night before I lay down to sleep each night to journal some of my day and how I felt as a result of the compilation of those events. It's amazing to realize as someone who feels very deeply, that I have no idea how to identify those feelings or how difficult it is to put words to them. 

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I'm sharing this mostly as a way for myself to process.

I'm trying to use my voice more and identify what's going on in the inner workings of my heart. 

I'm trying to care for myself and allow the space and time to work through some things that, to be completely honest, I haven't even identified yet, but have somehow brought me to a halt.

I know that some of the things I've been doing (or not doing) lately have been hurtful or offensive to others, that's certainly not my intent. 

I am solely trying to, like Humpty, put my pieces back together again - trust me, it's messy.

Please understand that my hibernation is my best attempt to heal my broken pieces so I can really know and love those God's placed in my life. I know it seems counterintuitive to withdraw in a time like this, but I promise you good things are happening(!)... it's just a slow process.