I haven’t written for a while because I have lost the muse for it a bit and I have been busy planning a business with a friend.
As anyone who has been reading my blogs will know, my whole life has been going through a transformation whether I wanted it to or not. Well, actually, that’s not strictly true. At some level I must have wanted it or I would have done more to stop it, and I didn’t. This isn’t me beating myself up, this is me taking responsibility for subconscious and conscious decisions I have taken that have led me to where I am in my life. And for once, I am bloody well embracing it. I have also been unknowingly going through (another) significant learning and healing process which coalesced this morning into this blog.
This is undoubtedly the result of 8 straight hours of sleep I had last night for the first time in weeks rather than 8 hours cobbled together over a few nights. And probably a hyperfocus phase, let’s face it. But it’s also because of something my friend said to me last night which was, paraphrased, that my way of expressing myself is through my blogs and I am clearly in need of expressing myself at the moment. I was immediately besieged with ideas of how to write what I needed to express but they were all jumbled in my head. Until I saw something on social media about standing in your power. An expression I have, in all honesty, never truly understood. Which was the question I rather irritably asked. What the fuck does that even mean?
Then it came to me, coalescing with a nascent thought process I have been having over the previous two days. It’s about standing in your self-worth. Your self-belief. Your self-love. Your self-esteem. None of which I have ever exactly been brimming with, which has led to a number of issues in my life. Namely, in a sense (not literally) begging for the attention of the people I love, contenting myself with the scraps they have been prepared to throw when I now realise I deserve the fucking banquet, frankly. It means I tolerate people like my stepfather deciding periodically that it’s okay to speak to me like dirt and throw past mistakes up in my face as if he is some ideal of perfection (newsflash, he’s not). Or my mother speaking to me in the most vile fashion while she takes her worry and fear about my stepfather’s illness out on me at a time when I too was intensely vulnerable. Why do I accept it? Out of fear of rejection and abandonment. Not standing in my power enough to realise that if that’s what they are going to do, they’re not worthy of me anyway. Because I deserve a damn sight more than that.
It’s where I tolerate significantly less than I should to avoid that old chestnut of rejection and abandonment. What do I mean accepting less? Sometimes it’s the combination of the little things that add up into the big things. As nonsensical as it sounds, it’s from someone only preparing a coffee for themselves despite the fact you’re there too and a coffee addict in the morning. It’s the not asking you if you want anything to drink while preparing a drink for themself in the evening. It’s abdicating all responsibility for household stuff then being difficult when you ask them to do something. It’s not asking how something is going and then when they realise the potential implications of it, not automatically offering to take some time out to be with you. They all add up and come together with some pretty big things to the point where you think – I want and deserve more, and I am going to have more.
Not standing in your power is about internally faltering on a decision you’ve made for your own reasons that are important to you because someone else wants something from you sooner. And you don’t want them to walk away if you don’t do what they want. But standing in your power is saying that you will give them what you both want just in the timescales that suit you, not just them. And valuing yourself enough to know that passive aggressive behaviour isn’t going to change your mind, transactional communication is not going to change your mind, and that if they don’t like that they can go somewhere else. Because if I am worth it to them, they will wait. And if I’m not, that’s fine. I am worth it to me and I will stick to that regardless of the outcome.
Why is this important? Why is this lesson needing to be learned now? Simply it’s because I have a vision for my life that is immensely meaningful to me and in order for me to achieve it, I have to stand in that power. I have to love myself enough to hold out for it because it’s the life I absolutely deserve. It’s one where the business I am starting with my friend is a phenomenal success. It’s one where my writing continues and evolves into something more powerful. It’s one where, in the fullness of time, I find that true partner who loves and respects me enough to give me their time, love and respect. An equal relationship. And in order to do all of that, I have to love me first and foremost.
A life, in short, where I demonstrate to my son what standing in your power means and the benefits it reaps without him having to go through the more difficult times to realise when you’re not. So that he always stands in his power, unquestioningly.
Louisa Simpson 