This heart-to-heart episode is a tender exploration of what it means to truly show up for oneself, especially for those of us who have felt the sting of childhood emotional neglect. I open up about my journey towards self-awareness—how it began with the challenging, yet essential, practice of tuning into my own needs and the neglected parts of my soul. Through stories and reflections, I illustrate the deeply personal process of setting boundaries and embracing self-care, not as indulgences, but as fundamental acts of self-compassion.
Discipling mothers to disciple generations
Kingdom Mothers Rise Up is here for you. There is encouragement and practical steps to improve your relationship with yourself, God, and your child.
I'd love to connect with you. You can find me at:
This heart-to-heart episode is a tender exploration of what it means to truly show up for oneself, especially for those of us who have felt the sting of childhood emotional neglect. I open up about my journey towards self-awareness—how it began with the challenging, yet essential, practice of tuning into my own needs and the neglected parts of my soul. Through stories and reflections, I illustrate the deeply personal process of setting boundaries and embracing self-care, not as indulgences, but as fundamental acts of self-compassion.
Discipling mothers to disciple generations
Kingdom Mothers Rise Up is here for you. There is encouragement and practical steps to improve your relationship with yourself, God, and your child.
I'd love to connect with you. You can find me at:
This week I want to talk about showing up for yourself. I think showing up for yourself can look different in a lot of different situations, and it's something I've been working on for years of how do I show up for myself instead of showing up for everybody around me? When you grow up with childhood emotional neglect, your awareness, your attentiveness is tuned to the emotions and the perspectives of the people around you, because keeping them happy is what keeps your world safer. On on kilter, whatever kilter is probably just a family word or something. But so when you should be developmentally learning to pay attention to your needs and your thoughts and your emotions, how to express your opinions, those kinds of things, instead you're putting all that effort into paying attention to what the people around you need so that they don't get upset with you or, in the case you have, causing problems or whatever that is, or even just ignoring your own because everybody else is ignoring them, and the effort of trying to get somebody to pay attention, trying to get somebody to listen, just leads to more hurt and feeling like you're wrong for trying to share those things. If you're having those feelings and thoughts, eventually you learn to stop sharing them and even stop being aware of them. Now as an adult, I've been relearning to pay attention to these things, to start paying attention to what I feel and what I need. It's been a long journey but I've been making progress on that and the heart doodling is a big part of that, of sitting down with what do I feel and because of what do I what I feel, what do I need?
Speaker 1:So this week I was dealing with a hard situation and, as I would think about this particular situation, I noticed kind of some main thoughts that were coming up. And as I reflected on those thoughts, I feel I realized that they kind of connected to different stages and ages of my life. So there was a very young me that was like I don't, I don't even matter, like I don't even want to be seen, I just want, I want to fix it, don't make everybody happy. So her, her main thought, I guess, was that like don't, I don't even matter, I don't, I don't even matter here. And then there was also a part, an age, a stage, whatever you want to call it teenage, young adult. I was like I don't even care, I just don't even care, do whatever you want, whatever happens, I don't even care. And there was another part that was kind of a more healthy version of that of if I'm gonna be okay, then I need. I need some space, I need some distance here to figure out who I am and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:And then there's me now facing the situation, walking through this situation and recognizing that the trying to figure out how much do I show up, why do I care, how much do I care, how responsible do I need to be all of us trying to sort through all of those different pieces is me now. But right now to be able to clearly see like, okay, I am standing here with the peace of the Lord and the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, to be able to sort through these things and make choices. That doesn't mean that looking back, I would say I did everything perfect in the situation for each and every choice. Looking back at the situation as a whole, I can see so much growth and maturity and even so much healing, because I was showing up for myself and one of those ways was to not put everybody first all the time. They're like there's things that are important to me and need to happen in my life and I'm going to make space for that because I could show up more and I could be taking care of more things, but I'm not going to. And the part that was saying like I don't care, I don't want to be here, I don't want to have anything to do with this, I don't even care.
Speaker 1:Being able to say to that part and this was really like the biggest moment of healing was to be able to say that part I understand that you don't care and that you feel no obligation to show up here, and that makes sense because of how you've been treated in this relationship in the past, that you didn't feel seen or heard. What was important to you didn't matter to this other person. And so, like I get it and I'm actually not even asking you to care I care about you like this other person hasn't, but I care about you and actually being able to say like I care about you and that's why we went to the store and got food instead of going back to deal with this situation because we matter, I matter, you matter, so we get ourselves some food, we can get some breathing room, we can. You know. Just I'm paying attention to how you're feeling and I'm validating that. It makes total sense that you feel that way and I'm not asking you to change how you feel or what you think. I am going to ask you to recognize that I do care and so I'm going to show up because I'm going to be who I am and show up with integrity and compassion and responsibility and I want you like I'm not asking you to change I want you to keep letting me know if you're feeling neglected or pushed aside, because that's not my intention, but it is a habit. That's how I've functioned for a long, long time. So you have permission to get my attention and be like hey, what's the deal here? And like I just wept and wept and like, as weird as it might sound, like I think that part of me was weeping and was so healed like that voice of like I don't even care has been so much quieter, so much more peaceful because I was able to recognize and say I see you and you're valid. You're actually really helpful for me to see when I'm going too far, when I'm taking on too much. So thank you for continuing to voice your opinion. And yeah, it was so. It was so healing and so I would encourage you.
Speaker 1:I think that's probably what February's Heart and Ling workshop will be is taking a problem and you can clearly do this on your own because I'm going to kind of explain it to you. But the heart doodling with Jesus is taking and putting how we're feeling or the things that we're thinking on paper to sort them out and get clarity and hear what the Lord has to say. And I encourage you to do it with a permanent marker and watercolor paint, but you can do it with anything and I encourage you using those things because it helps you, kind of forces you, to embrace mistakes. And it helps you to embrace the mistakes because you'll see that when you do it and you let the mistakes be there and the Lord ministers to you through it anyway, that the mistakes really didn't matter. And it's a case. There are small mistakes, like clearly makes no difference if, if your head's not round in your picture or if you can't really tell what you drew, because you can add words to say what it was that you drew. And it doesn't matter if you spell those wrong or have good hand writing or like just none of that matters. And it helps you see that none of that matters because the Lord can minister to you deeply, even with those things that we might call mistakes.
Speaker 1:So I took my, my problem, the situation, and put it on paper. And the paper was like the room. And so in the room is my little one that's like no, I don't, like, don't even see me, I don't need anything, I'm fine. And the teenagers sitting in her chair being like I don't even care, I don't know why we're here, and the young mom me being like, yeah, I'm going to need some space. And then me being there next to my situation, holding the infant me that needed to be nurtured and held, and just know that she wasn't going to get lost in the, in the drama and the chaos.
Speaker 1:So you, you could do that.
Speaker 1:You could take your problem represented as a picture somehow, whether it's a person or a particular situation, and kind of like I've never done it with my different age parts before, I've just done like what thoughts and feelings are come up and that can kind of lead to the age.
Speaker 1:But it was really interesting to see like, to identify it with that, with that age, and to see her as a person and be able to be like oh, this makes so much sense and I see what you need and I can meet that need because I've grown and matured and I can show up for you in the way other people didn't show up for you before. I hope you're having an amazing week. I hope, whatever you're facing, you feel equipped to overcome. And if you don't feel equipped to overcome or you don't know what you're going to need, you can always reach out to me here in the Kingdom Mothers Rise Up community or in Messenger, because I know some stuff you don't want to share with the world, and our group obviously isn't the world, but you know what I mean. So I bless you to be able to show up for yourself and if you're not sure what that looks like, you can reach out and I can help you figure that out. Have an amazing week.