Have you lost the old me? Have you lost yourself in your family? Do you want her back? Maybe you’ve started a habit of drinking wine or eating chocolates to fulfil the lack of sweetness in your life?
I watched The Real Dirty Dancing on channel 10 yesterday, and was really touched by how Jessica Rowe opened up to her vulnerability and realised that she shut down that feminine aspect of herself after having children.
This is common I find for many women who have had kids and give a lot of themselves to others. Their children and their family become their focus. And they forget about themselves. Maybe not that they forget about themselves, but they’re so often putting others before themselves, that this becomes a new learned behaviour.
The more often you focused on something and practice a behaviour a certain way your neurological pathways align themselves to always repeating the same behaviours and strengthen those behaviours over time.
How are you feeling about yourself right now?
Have uou lost yourself and the person that you once were … The happy, vibrant, energetic person that woke up happy every morning looking forward to the day. What is the first thing that you think of when you wake up? Is it a long list of chores that you have to complete today? And wondering if you’ll ever get through it all? And how is your sleep?
While I’m not a mother, I was reflecting on how these same feelings have affected me since having a hysterectomy and my ovaries removed. I certainly felt like less of a woman. I felt I’d failed as a woman, and my body had failed me, and I’d failed as a human unable to fulfil by reproductive role and purpose.
And I’ve noticed that since then I’ve been a lot less intimate with my husband, with myself and my body, and instead throwing myself to my work.
I am childless, not by choice and my business has essentially become my baby, which I’ve been dedicating all my time and energy to pretty much seven days a week. It’s been consuming all my thoughts.
My business is a reflection of who I am, my creative expression that I couldn’t express through having a child.
So it’s not just women who have babies that lose themselves, but also those that can’t have babies That may lose themselves.
There are ways to find yourself again, maybe not your exact old self, but a new self, a better self. It is all these experiences that you’ve had over the years and over your lifetime, that have made you who made you who you are today. So we don’t want to forget that aspect of you. Because these aspects have made you stronger and really make you stronger.
From this moment forward, you need to choose:
-How it is you want to be moving forward?
-How is it that you want to feel moving forward?
-How is it that you want to think moving forward?
and write these all down, journal them, every day. Every day you may have new awareness, new ideas, new inspiration. Then start to identify for each of these new ways how is it that you can achieve this now in a different way and put these into action.
An example might be having more time for myself. Having more time could simply be five minutes, just starting with something simple and building on this over time.
Maybe becoming more relaxed. Meditation is a way of helping your mind to relax. And meditation can start with simply stopping. Choosing to stop all your thoughts of the day by saying STOP. And then taking three slow deep breaths.
You may feel isolated and removed from your old friends. Socialization is a huge part of our self worth and self value, and just doing things for the sake of having fun, rather than having to do them because you have to do them to make somebody else happy. Is there an old friend that you could reach out to and make a phone call to say hi.
Take time out now to get yourself a cup of tea. Sit somewhere nice in the sun in the backyard or at the coffee table and start taking that time now for yourself. Journal all the ideas and words that pop into your head without judgement, criticism or analysis. Just let it flow.
You’ll be surprised by doing this little exercise regularly. Once a day you’ll start making changes for you for the better.
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Photo by Julia Caesar on Unsplash
Anne Barratt is a Transformational Life Coach, Kinesiologist, Hypnotherapist, Shaman, and Reiki Master.
Appointments may be held remotely by distance via Zoom, or in person at one of her clinics in Springwood or Winmalee in the Blue Mountains fo NSW.
More information available at www.empoweringhealth.clinic
