Happy Wednesday,
How is everyone doing today? Good, I hope. Things are going well here. I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday and the good news is, I won’t need to have a surgical procedure, however, I am being put on a really high dose of a medication that will take a little getting used to. I was also placed on yet another med to help with my headaches and migraines. I am hopeful that this will help with the daily headaches and weekly migraines. I’m feeling pretty optimistic about everything. I do feel I’m in a good spot right now, I finally have my own doctors working to get me to feeling better. So, that’s enough about my health, how are you all doing? Shoot me a text or leave me a comment, I love hearing from you all.
I have been reading this incredible book for the last couple of days. I take Molly and Oreo to the puppy park and read for an hour every day. They get to play and I get to read. I love it. Some days there are people there that want to chat while the pups play and that’s nice too. I’m grateful for the people I’ve been meeting. Anyway, I’ve been reading, Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser. I saw her on Super Soul Sunday and felt a connection to this author’s journey in life, and I gained respect for her honesty and the way she began navigating through some pretty rough waters. I read something this morning that hit home with me and own my journey. She quoted this. “Only those who love themselves can love others, that only people who claim their own voice can hear the true song of another.” If we are not listening to our own inner soul, basically what’s happening is that we aren’t growing and learning life’s lessons. We are living dead. If we don’t love ourselves, we can’t love others, again, we are living dead.
Living dead was a new term for me. It really means that we are going through the motions of life, trapped in fear possibly and not giving ourselves a voice in this world. If we aren’t living our lives and growing as people, we’re dead inside and if we are dead inside, how can we possibly love ourselves? If we aren’t loving ourselves, how can we possibly give unconditional love to someone else? How is it we can become intuned to their voice and what they are trying to say? We can’t if don’t love ourselves.
I’m not one that has really ever loved myself very much, if at all. I don’t see myself even to this day the way John does. I’m conflicted on how to love myself without becoming conceded or self-entitled at the cost of loving others and truly wanting to do for them. I still struggle with feeling I deserve the kind of love John shows towards me, and in turn, I put up walls and push him away. He’s a saint for putting up with me. Actually, John is the most loving man I think I’ve ever met in my entire life. Lots of lessons to learn from him and I’m grateful for that.
John has always said to me, that in order for me to truly love him, I have to love myself. He says I’m getting better at it. I struggle with this concept because I know in my heart, I do love him, and I’m excited to see how, as I peel the layers of myself away and open myself to loving me, what my love for him will look like.
I’ve come to realize that one thing I need to work on, really work on, is judging, or maybe it’s not judging, but my expectations of others and of myself. I had a dream of sorts the other night and I talked to John about it. Funny, I was struggling with what I thought it meant and what I thought the Universe was trying to teach me in this dream and John gave me a new perspective on that dream. He simply said, maybe God is telling you he loves you the way you are, you don’t have to be perfect, or your version of perfect, because you’re already perfect the way you are in his eyes.
I think one of the layers I need to peel completely off is the indoctrination of having to serve others to the point that my thoughts, wants, needs, and desires don’t matter. I am learning and finding solace in believing that if we stop and listen, God is right by our side, guiding us.
This morning when I woke up, I did my usual routine. I got up, walked the pups, boiled my water, made my coffee and bowl of oatmeal, and as I was doing this, it came to me. I need to teach. I’m a teacher. My old boss asked me once when he came to the house when my kiddos were young and I had my entire dining room in chaos with flashcards I was making and putting onto these rings for the 30+ students in Tommy’s class and Jon said to me, why are you working for me? You should be a teacher. He knew the amount of work and time I was putting in at the school and he saw a passion in me for being a part of the boy’s education. Jon even offered to pay for me to go back to school and get my teaching degree. I won’t should on myself here, but that is one offer I do look back and wonder what it would have been like to be a teacher.
Moving forward, I am not convinced that being a school teacher is or was my calling. I believe teaching is my calling, but I believe I’m here to teach the lessons I’ve learned, am currently learning and more importantly, I think I am here to teach people, women in particular that we matter. Our thoughts and ideas are important and it’s up to us to teach our sons and daughters that we as moms are people too. We have feelings, wants, needs, and desires, and by no means is that saying that we love them less, in fact, it’s saying we love ourselves enough and in turn, we are able to love them more. I can be a teacher through my gift of writing.
I think I’m finally getting this love yourself notion. I suppose one of my mistakes in life was, I didn’t love myself, therefore, I didn’t show the boys that I mattered, so when I finally woke up and found my voice, it threw them into a tailspin. I’m working on fixing that now. I have some difficult conversations that need to be had with both boys, Tommy in particular. I think I was a little harder on him in regards to staying or being in the religion, and by the time Kevin was coming into himself, I had already slipped away enough that it allowed him to not take hold of the judgemental religion they were born into. Kevin didn’t see me trying to keep him in and guide him on the course of JW beliefs, where sadly, Tommy was caught in the phase of my life where I thought if I didn’t raise him to be a JW, and to adhere to its belief system, then I wasn’t helping him gain eternal life that the religion promises to its faithful puppets. See what I mean, I have some difficult explanations to have with my sons, especially Tommy. I need him to see that I woke up and walked away from a cult and that I never walked away from him.
I want to tell my sons that me leaving and starting my life over wasn’t because I didn’t love them or their dad for that matter, it was needing to figure out how to love myself, so I could love them the way they truly deserve in this life and that their dad couldn’t come to terms with a religiously divided home. The other reasons for leaving their dad, I think they’re aware of. They saw the lack of love and the control I was under and sadly, most of that was religiously based.
I have so many life lessons to share and my hope is that maybe, just maybe it’ll help someone avoid some of the snares I fell into.
Well, it looks like I got off onto a bit of a tangent here. The bottom line for this blog is, in order for us to love one another, and truly be able to listen to others and understand them, we have to love ourselves. We can’t give something that we don’t have. Loving others truly requires us to love ourselves.
So, I think I’ll say goodbye for today. I need to get to baking and cooking. Tommy’s coming for our weekly mother/son dinner. Now to get Kevin to come more often for some mother/son time. I hope you all had the greatest of days, and I look forward to hearing from you all. Until next time, don’t forget, Love Life++
Love Life with Dawna 