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Yes, it is an oft used metaphor for taking care of yourself so that you are available to give to others. However, I am going to do my best to help make it a hoary cliche because I think it is a good one.
Attending to ourselves isn’t selfish. In fact, it’s selfish not to. ~Chandra Ingram at Benefaction
OK, now time to get all new-agey and woo-woo on all y'all. I've been doing lots of deep thinking as I move into the older and wiser phase of my life and I have come to realize that the answer to everything is loving your self and everything else is fear. Not narcissism (which is just another form of fear) but beginning with truly, deeply, madly believing that as a human being you are worthy and that is enough.
Easy for me to say, huh?
It is certainly not easy. In fact it is hard as hell. It is the work of all our lives and something that as individuals and as societies we mostly fail at miserably. But, to use another well-worn phrase, we must change ourselves before we can change the world. So where and how do we begin?
As always, blogs, especially blogs by women and better yet, blogs from the BlogHer blogroll are great places to find kinship, advice and inspiration.
Lisa at The Loony Bin: Outrageous but True found inspiration in a thawing bag of chicken gizzards to put herself first, stand up and begin to find her voice with her DH (and that doesn't mean what you think it does - you'll have to read her blog to find out)
Except I feel just a little bit better that I took back just a tiny bit of power and that I had the guts to do it (bad pun, I know, I’ll stop).
The blogger at After All That says "I've always been a great number two" but she took action and discovered:
While nothing good happened, nothing bad happened. Nobody called me a fraud, or told me that I was out of my league. All the things that I have talked myself into.
But, as she shares she also seeks support:
Here are my questions to you, do you freeze? Do you have a monster? How do you unfreeze and get rid of the monster?
kiki at "Life, the Universe and Everything" is working on pride:
So I think the reason I went through those tough experiences last semester was to bring me through another season of reducing my pride. I just had to go through another pride reduction cycle. The last time I went through a pride reduction cycle I actually did quit what I was doing, but I made it through this time. I just really wish I didn't need to constantly go through seasons of building up my self-esteem and then tearing it back down. I really hope that this time I can learn my lesson and next year I can just lay low and get my degree and not worry about what others' think of me or what I think of me.
Sounds like kiki would benefit from watching BlogHer CE Deb Roby's latest Seeismic video "Negative Inside, Nasty Out" with her brilliant idea to use Complaint Free World bracelets to help curb negative self talk.
Kristin Gorski at "Write now is good" suggests writing as a way of clearing out the clutter of the mind's distractions:
"Through your writing, you found a place for all of the room's details and distractions," the teacher explained. "After clearing out the clutter in the dream room and in your thoughts, the corner would eventually appear."
"I knew it was there all the time," the student said, smiling.
And Donna at (Being) Extraordinary Now! is loosening her grip on being right:
Recently I made a big discovery... I simply like to be right. Ok, not that I didn't know that before, but I realized that my emotional reaction to things that crossed me the wrong way was a result of me holding on ever so tightly to my perspective without giving anyone else room for their own.
So I've made a commitment to myself: I will appreciate other perspectives for what they are -- other perspectives!
What do you do to put your own oxygen mask on first? What do you need to learn in order to put it on?
