There is an ebb and flow to this work of undoing all the myths and stories that were overtly pounded or slyly snuck into our heads as we grew up in the world. It is a dance of coming together and holding the stories close while learning not to let them have a hold on you. It is whispering to the old stories that we, us and the story, have transformed while they scream at us.
Sometimes we feel the shift happening. We notice our dissonance and discomfort as a story is about to transform, be re-written, reborn. We are ill at ease and sometimes this comes through as anxiety and sometimes it comes through as physical illness and sometimes is comes through as just not feeling right in our skin, sensing that it is about to shed.
Stories of our worthiness are common. Or rather, our unworthiness. Stories of how we have nothing to offer this world. Stories of how we are terrible mothers or wives or friends. Stories of how we are ungrateful daughters or students. Stories of how we have no real value in this world.
I believe we dance with these stories. I know I do.
These stories stop us from caring for ourselves. From loving ourselves. From honoring ourselves.
These stories allow us to give and give and give to others, trying so desperately to prove our own worth and value, to the outside world, but mostly to our Self. We discount our work as unimportant. We undervalue our gifts. We make self denigrate ourselves when another person recognizes our gifts or thanks us for being in the world.
These stories can be re-written. We do not need to live in a world where we are not valued, not honored, not respected.
We start re-writing by learning to honor, value and respect our Self. We start taking the lead in the dance by making the space to love ourselves even during our busiest times.
These are things I have learned and relearned. My own dance with many of my old stories has become more refined, smoother. I am in the lead and can hold some of my old stories as they cry and scream, like I would hold my own toddler as he is sharing his big emotions with me. I can thank many of my old stories for what they did or tried to do to protect me and then lovingly tell them it is time for them to change, that they can’t bite or kick or hit me anymore.
I can tell them that they have changed, that I have changed. And then I move out of that dance and into another, another layer ready to be revealed and shed. As I love myself up a little bit more, as I recognize my own value and gifts for this world, for my Self.
I hear the music of my worth. And I change the steps to the dance.