Your question has a question

You asked Sez a question - here's this week's answer

Hello you,

It’s true, the type of questions we ask ourselves defines us - and speaks volumes about where we are on this life’s journey. Just think about what burning question you wanted an answer to last year, 5 years, or even 10 years ago?

Asking the right questions is the hardest thing we will ever have to do in the retrieval of our authentic lives.

Do I really want to stay in this relationship? Am I really happy? Am I living my own life? Who am I having to be in order to survive?

At my daughter’s naming ceremony 5 years ago, I asked my friends and family to bless her with a gift. Mine was to offer her the ability to question everything (I might regret that one in her teenage years…) But this ability is the reason I am here, on a path that’s fiercely my own, and it all started with just one question, asked on a moonlit floor at a time where I found out that rock-bottom had its own trapdoor.

“What do I really want?”

The real journey begins when we use our own bodies to answer those questions - when we live them, in real-time - making our experiences the answer.

I honor the questions you’ve sent in. I am just so grateful to be gifted them, to be allowed to loosen them for you and give them back in a form that makes them easier for you to thread back into your life. 

So here we go…

(Got a question? Send yours in here)

QUESTION

How do I determine if I am doing something for myself or for another person? It is so hard to distinguish if I am doing something out of guilt or what I think I should do, or if it is what I want or is right for me and my mental health. This relates to a strained relationship with my mother who has terminal cancer.

Dear One, whose heart has splintered,

What is deeply nourishing for you is what’s right for all those around you. We all know what it feels like to become a martyr for the sake of our own beliefs or for the sole benefit of another person. We mistakenly called it ‘love’ and lost vital pieces of our intuitive Selves in the process.

Motherhood is often martyrdom for the belief that we cannot both be free-spirited and responsible. The artist who sits in front of an office computer all day instead of an easel is a martyr for the belief that she cannot make money doing what she loves. The man who gives up his friends or hobbies for his partner is a martyr for the belief that a serious relationship means giving up your more frivolous needs.

It is all martyrdom if these choices are not rooted in conscious Love.

And if we lose ourselves in the loveless acts of self-sacrifice then we are not helping anyone - especially those who depend on us most.

Here’s an interesting origin for the word:

Martyr (n.) "a torture-witness. The one who suffers death or grievous loss in defense or on behalf of any belief or cause"

Let me offer you a few questions in return, dear One:

• What are your beliefs about looking after your terminally ill mother? What should this ‘duty’ look like to you? Is that a healthy belief?

• What are your mother’s beliefs about you looking after her? What should that ‘responsibility’ look like to her? Is that a healthy belief?

• Can you create a balance? Can you both care for your mother and balance it with uncompromised self-care? Can you compassionately care for her in your own way with boundaries that honor your own needs?

If this balance cannot be achieved, and you continue to care for her riddled with guilt, then you benefit no one - and the loss of one becomes the loss of many.

You already know what is right for you - you know where the restricted feeling of guilt lives in your body and where the softness of Love resides. I believe your real question is how to do what you know is right - without the shame and guilt that comes from a learned and distorted belief about self-sacrifice.

When grace moves in, there will be no place left for guilt. So offer yourself copious amounts of grace - make an earnest practice of it - and then move forward with the faith that honoring your own needs first will be of grace to all others.

Love Sez

More questions, including Surrender vs. Goals and a question about my own story, will be published early next week.