Shame & Should

Navigating the pain of self care

This photo feels like an intimate portrait of my mental health.

I am incredibly skilled at making things black or white.

I work too much. I don’t work enough.

I deserve to rest. I feel shame at rest.

I need to clean my car. I have no energy left to give.

Which lead me to last night; crying when I messaged my husband that I was confessing my internal struggle and confessing the same to a friend. Because they are both kind and loving they offered me support. My friend challenged me to pray for myself first for 30 days.

Pray for myself first? Yes. Ask for strength, guidance, and protection. Ask to learn how to love myself more.

There was a pause and then she acknowledged it will be uncomfortable but worth it. So here I am, praying for myself first. Consider this an extended confessional.

Two lessons God presents to me over the years never cease to hit me over the head.

First, my pride is my biggest sin.
Second, I need to surrender daily to Him.

I’ve been pursuing all the right things to “balance” life better. I’ve started going to the gym again for my mental health; each row I make feels like one step closer to defeating the long term exhaustion Covid left me with.

I’ve scheduled things diligently on my calendar and practiced having commutes where I do nothing but drive (no audiobooks or music). This has been a weekly practice that made me realize I am desperate for silence but have trained myself not to allow it. I’ve worked on step work in recovery, attended weekly meetings, and read my Bible sporadically on my app or before bed.

Here remains my pride and surrender problem: I refuse to admit I can’t do it all. I feel like my challenges with work and life are things I CAN do. I feel like I have the skills and drive. What I don’t have is the time, energy, or courage to say what I lack.

I am living in fear that someone will not see a driven woman that is a tired mother and who is trying to protect her time and energy.

I’m afraid they will instead see: Tired Mother Who Is Not Equipped Or Reliable And Who Cannot Handle What She Should.

Should. A word that was probably invented by the devil himself.

Where does that leave me? Afraid, not that I don’t have the skills to do what I want, but afraid that no one will care what I know is true: we only have so much control. Afraid that they will instead dismiss my reasonable limits, my capabilities, me.

I am aching to be in a safe bubble. One where I can be around my husband and daughter and watch them without needing to be engaged all the time. As if I could witness their warm laughter, popping in and out of the scene without the crying or the guilt but knowing they are safe. Isn’t that terrible? It’s a hard thing to confess but the love I yearn is always in competition with something else.

Once again, I have made a habit of writing to you all inconsistently this 2023 year and diving back in your lives bursting at the seams with vulnerability and emotion.

Another act of surrender as I try to lay down my pride.

Once again, I feel like I need to point you to the writing of my friend, Yelena, as she wrote a piece that really resonated with me. Because of this writing, I now have a a post it note attached to my desktop at work that says “I Am The Investment.”

No. 55. The investment women neglect