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Ep #63

The Greatest Act of Love

We live in a culture hellbent on challenging ourselves, in our workouts and our wellness. If we want to be satisfied, we’re taught to look outside ourselves for approval and validation. It’s a never ending whack-a-mole game of finding fulfillment. And it’s the world’s biggest scam.

Lately, I’ve been noticing parts of myself that have long been waiting for attention from me. I’ve committed to new practices, dropped the ever-challenging workouts, and looked for self-care in new places. I’ve been saying no to the patriarchal rules of our conditioning.

In this episode, I invite you to dive deep with me and begin peeling back the layers of your own conditioning. What if you were the coping mechanism, the solution, the way home? What if getting to know who you are is not just an act of love, but necessary for survival? This is what I’m exploring today, Renegades. I hope you’ll take this journey with me.

What You Will Discover:

  • Why our culture always encourages us to challenge ourselves.
  • The new practices I’m committed to these days.
  • Some surprising things you may not have realized are self-care.
  • Why your biggest opponent isn’t the scale, your ex, or your job.
  • How our patriarchal system has conditioned us to seek love externally.
  • Why self-love is the greatest act of love and survival.

Resources Mentioned:

  • If you’re enjoying the tools and concepts I’m sharing each week about your brain on dating, you won’t want to miss out on working with me one-on-one. I’ve just launched my program, Wake Up Before Another Breakup, where in just 8 weeks, you won’t question if you can trust yourself to date or why you can’t find the one. Click here to learn more about it and how you can work with me.
  • Pretend It’s a City – docuseries

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Renegades,

I may have mentioned in previous episodes that my state of mind recently has been that of one who is on mile 18 of a marathon. It has everything to do with the pandemic - I find myself thinking, wait, we are still out here? We’ve come this far with 8 more to go.

I took this to therapy. Along with something else I’ve been trying to figure out for some time, and I was relieved to hear from my therapist that at the same time I started thinking this he noticed collectively amongst his clients and through observation that we all hit another dip mid-December.

I’m telling you this because I was relieved to know I wasn’t alone in this. Which is always ironic for me. I’ve convinced myself that being unique and alone is what I aim to achieve, you know, not like everyone else but fuck me up Renegades. We are not alone in this and I’m so grateful for it.

I’ve been watching Fran Leibowitz in Pretend it’s a City and there is an episode about wellness and working out. It’s fucking great because we as a culture have adopted this behavior of needing to challenge ourselves and we do it with our work out, vacations and day to day living. She, Fran, being born in the 1950’s and of a completely different mindset says life is already a challenging. Why would I need to make it more difficult?

I’ve thought about this quite a bit because I have had very little desire to work out the way I used to. I just don’t have it in me. I keep thinking, that sounds hard. Not to mention, it fucking hurts my body. I’m sure its age combined with poor recovery practices, but I also think it has to do with what is going on in our world each day. My workout - managing my mind and emotions though this pandemic plus preparing myself to watch my kids go to college combined with seeing sides of me I’ve never witnessed is a fucking challenge. I’m grateful to make it out for a walk, practice extremely gentle yoga and dance around my apartment. And I refuse to be hard on myself for it. I kept thinking I need to join a run group. I should train and run with friends. No. No I shouldn’t. I should fucking be gentle and soft with myself because we are living through a life experience that is completely reshaping the world we once knew. Our old way of being. The marathon training before, the bikram yoga, that was practice to prepare me for the hard of what this is.

I’m committed to practices that assist and encourage my mental health and wellbeing. Practices that teach me, show me and allow for me to encourage seeing what I’m thinking, how to focus and embody what’s real in the present.

I journal every day.
I inquire, examine and question my thinking.
I breathe.
I move.
I seek pleasure.

When life got hard in the past I tried to face and overcome those obstacles through ways that I genuinely thought would work; have a drink - it will relive and relax you. Find a man- if you have someone who loves you you can get through anything. Shop. Comfort yourself with new. You’ll look and feel better. Pound the pavement until you can’t think and don’t eat most foods. As long as you’re thin, you can get through anything.

I deprived myself of feeling, nourishment and pleasure.
I distracted myself with attention, validation and materials.
I defaulted over and over again.

Before now I didn’t see how I’ve been looking for it through promotions, romantic love and being someone to everyone that I’m not.

I thought I knew. I truly believed I did, but what has been revealed to me, below all of my suffering and the symptoms was this constant behavior of choosing things outside of me to feel good about who I am. To be noticed. To be chosen.

But never choosing me for me. How I am without the title, the man or the friends.

If it’s not a man, it’s a martini if it’s not a martini it’s a MasterCard if it’s not a MasterCard it’s a muffin.
Processing life through these new practices of has given me an understanding and deeper knowing of my personal self-worth, love and acceptance.

My brain, like your brain has been trained to think that are the things that will make you feel happy and satisfied.

But we are talking about an insatiable tank that will never fill - stuff every hole you have - literally- do this long enough and you will discover its nothing more than a game of whack a mole.

Renegades. Let’s go home. Dive deeper with me.

Would you believe me if I told you you had all the answers? You are the coping mechanism. The way to feel whole again.

I think we have an adverse reaction to the words self-care or self-love. I’ve mocked it myself… do you really thinking taking a bath every day is like a cartoon commercial and it will take all your problems away? I would mockingly ask myself…

Short answer maybe not, but the long of it is yes.

Taking time to care for ourselves, however that looks for you be it in the bath or rubbing lotion on your body to feel touch IS healing.

Cooking and preparing food to nourish our bodies is nourishment for self.

Touching your body, getting to know your pussy and what turns you on, self-care.

Being mindful of the people you talk to and how you let others talk to you is medicine for you mind.

Rest and recovery are equally as important as the daily workout.

I’m amazed at how much effort we are willing to exert to cut our body fat percentage or the dedication we practice to train for a sub-4-hour marathon but don’t practice apply this same effort on thinking thoughts that don’t put us down. Criticize the body. Shame us for not being farther along in life.

We are fucking relentless, y’all.

I watch how much time and energy we give to scrolling social media looking at who they’ve been with, what they are doing or dating apps imagining a life with someone else and when we could be investing that time in ourselves doing things that would evolve us, inspire us or teach us something new about ourselves.

Marianne Williamson says ‘The lover is not whom we hide behind; the lover is who appears before us as we emerge from the shadow of our own delusions. A Goddess does not go and ‘get’ a lover; she is a true lover, and happiness gathers unto her. Love is not something that comes into us from someone else; it is an extension of our own mind, reverberating back to us in what seems to be another person’s smile.’

We spend so much time outside of ourselves that it’s no wonder that we don’t know what to do with ourselves when we are alone.

What personal things do you know about you? Have you asked yourself what’s the most interesting thing I know about me? What’s my favorite color? What part of my body gets me turned on when touched? What’ the one song you could dance to all night?

What is your self-care routine? How do you practice self-love?
What actions do you take? How protective of yourself are you?

Consider that your biggest opponent often times isn’t your ex, the deadline or the marathon you are setting out to race, the number on the scale… consider its you.

The person standing on the other side of the mirror. The one looking over their own work. The one ruminating and spinning stories left right and sideways. The one telling you what it means that you weigh this much or are this age.

When you are standing in front of the mirror are you showing up loving every bit of your body? Or do you target and start to pick yourself apart?

When you're alone do you tend to fill your time thinking about how lonely you are - he’s not reaching out or asking me out and thinking about what you should have said, if you get another chance, you’ll act differently

Do you obsess with work and getting promoted? Being the person that people rely on and need. Or can you take the downtime to replenish and restore yourself from the demands of the day to day.

Inquire. Seek and Reveal. If your thinking is held up in any of these areas this is your work.

These are your ceilings Renegades. These are the areas you want to start actively loving, creating new thought patterns and developing new habits.

They are all symptoms to your suffering from your inability to love and accept you just as you are.

We have been taught by society that validation and self-worth through romantic love, your physical appearance, accolades or promotions - to be someone for everyone- someone you’re not- choosing all these things outside yourself to feel noticed or seen is how you will feel good and I’m here to tell you it’s the world’s biggest scam.

It is an insatiable bottomless tank that will never be filled from the outside.
And it’s fucking exhausting. The amount of time and energy that we mentally and emotionally give to the attempts.

How do we learn really learn to love ourselves back home? How do we learn to choose us even when the world around us says you aren’t doing it right? How can you love yourself when you are single? Not skinny? Not curvy enough? Not working hard enough? Working too hard?

It starts with understanding and recognizing that this standard that has been placed before you was created to make you feel exactly this. Unworthy. Not good enough.

We are talking about thousands of years of putting women down, teaching us to compete with one another, making sure we know we are the lesser sex- that we are to be seen as sex, objectified- to know our place. Don’t think it’s not continuing to happen now even in this day and age.

The exposure of how women have been treated over the years, assaulted, held back, critiqued in the media is finally becoming a conversation, but the misogynistic patriarchal culture that we are absorbed in doesn’t just evaporate.

We are talking about generations of programming.

Consider the fact that now we are told curves are in, women CEOs are the wave of the future- to some degree its disingenuous to a degree. We are still being told by outsides what we can do and who we can be. It’s approved- the media has confirmed. It’s trending.

And the truth is, none of it will matter if you don’t know you for you aside from all of this.
Until you have a loving meaningful relationship with yourself it will never be enough.

As women, we are constantly being challenged. As women in a modern world that has taught us to compromise before we come, we have been trained to show up in a way that is counterintuitive to our makeup. And forgive me for speaking in heteronormative tones. If you were assigned female at birth also known as a-fab or identify as femme than this applies to you. It’s the feminine energy I’m talking about that is working against the patriarchal world culture which has taught us that masculine energy is the way to overcome obstacles and do hard things. Be bad ass. Nail it. I killed it at that. Or that pussies are weak. You’re being emotional. Don’t act like a girl… All of this language combined with women being told we have to look and be a certain way in the home, at work. Have kids, don’t be sexual… How we should act… when you start to piece it apart Renegades it’s really fucking alarming. How could you love yourself? Know yourself? Care for yourself in a way that is intuitive to your nature?

You almost don’t stand a chance. Almost.

Mama Gena says that “Being a woman means so much more than having a vagina. The feminine force is intuitive, nurturing, the connecting glue. The feminine is a place inside us where we are receptive rather than active. In this country and on this planet, humans have everything we need in order to heal the world and live happy lives. We have information, technology, skills, money, intelligence and scientific ability. What we are lacking is meaningful relationships. We lack the conscious intention to use our resources for the purposes of love and healing. And without this, we cannot go anywhere. We are like a 747 without fuel. Love is our fuel.”

The more we can learn to know and heal ourselves the more we can help those around us, our community, family and friends. When we soften in our struggle and stop demanding so much of ourselves, we stop expecting others to do the same. We can see their pain because we know that pain.

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