I posted this week on Instagram about my "unworthy workaholic".
This person inside of me who has been with me for as long as I can remember.
As many of us did, I learned to get seen and accepted by meeting everyone else's needs. I was a "good girl". I always felt switched on to others wishes. I found safety in looking after everyone else, hoping that one day I would be loved just for that.
But it never happened.
As hard as I tried, the people I was trying to make happy became more and more withdrawn from me - triggering my lost little good girl even more. I often felt rejected and alone and withdrew from life.
I see it in others too. The fact that his post resonated with so many other "people pleasers" says a lot about our ways of expressing ourselves and the ways in which we relate to each other.
I am absolutely no expert on the subject, this was my own process and I learned a lot about why I only felt deserving of love, affection, abundance and ease if I worked my arse of for it.
There is not one answer to the why, just a theme running through my life like the words in a stick of rock. It was time to let it go.
I've been in this process fully for a couple of months but looking back over the year I could feel it coming long before. I am emerging nicely now with the support from some very bright and talented people, some of which I am very proud to call friends.
Lots of alone time and working with my self concept. Understanding what lay beneath this belief that I was unable to receive without proving my worth.
As I worked through letting go of old stuff , I have also reached to my future to create the Emma that I want to be - the message came in loud and clear.
"You don't need to do anything to be worthy of life or love - what you give to people is important but YOU are more important" was finally what came to me at a very deep level.
It's been an incredible few of months and on occasion I've dropped so much of my shit, I didn't even know who I was any longer. And that felt good.
Reinvigorating my energy and creating a new life for myself. Because I actually can.
We have all been taught to be so afraid of change. Of the unknown. To stay with what is safe no matter how shit it is, that we don't let go of what is holding us back from our potential, our purpose and our happiness.
We want to be assured that the road won't have any bumps or breakdowns before we set off. But we can't, and so we stay, teetering on edge of what could have been.
Has this last couple of months been easy? Not at all. But I felt ready and I managed to be curious and non judgemental of the pieces of me that didn't know any better and held them gently with my own love and attention.
I know this will be one of the biggest turning points of my life, I have had shifts like this before and I feel them deeply in my body.
The messages are all there when we stop to listen. We just have to want to change, we have to want to step into a better way of living.
We have to have the urge to stop clinging on to the stuff that is holding us back in the hope that we can change it with our actions. We can't. We can only listen for our own cues and follow the breadcrumbs - on the other side, it's all perfect, just not maybe how we imagined it.
I hope you find the courage and the honesty to do the same