Being Seen and Heard
As women, we have been socially conditioned to be okay with not being seen or heard.
We get the message that the woman/wife/mom should always be serving and sacrificing for the people she loves.
And there's absolutely nothing wrong with service and sacrifice.
In fact, it's part of what we get to do to learn to be more Christlike.
But this message has often been pushed at the expense of another thing that Christ taught:
To love others as we love ourselves.
Really learning to love ourselves is a key part of learning to be seen and heard.
Because when we love ourselves, we start to see and hear ourselves.
When we love ourselves we recognize our worth and see ourselves as equals with everyone around us.
We start to acknowledge our wants and our needs.
I know I went for years and didn't acknowledge myself.
I didn't even know what I wanted or needed because I thought it would be selfish to ask, so I didn't even look.
So, the first thing we can do to be more seen and heard in our relationships, is to see and hear ourselves.
Decide that you matter.
Decide that you wanting something isn't selfish, but is good self-care.
When we can be comfortable with acknowledging that we deserve to take up space in this world, that we have as much of a right to have our wants and needs met as anyone else, then we can start feeling comfortable standing up and being seen and speaking up and being heard.
We will start asking for what we want and what we feel we need.
We won't stand idly by wishing someone would see that we feel left out.
We won't wait for someone to see that we may want something.
We won't start creating stories in our brains about how we don't matter to someone.
We will take on the responsibility to start asking for what we want.
That doesn't mean we have to be demanding, and it doesn't mean we will always get it.
But it does mean that we will love and respect ourselves enough to acknowledge our wants and needs and to start asking for them.
We will stop thinking that we need to be last in line every time and that we should always put the wants and needs of others after our own.
Here's a challenge for the week:
Identify something you really want that you haven't asked for, and ask for it.
It takes some courage.
It takes some vulnerability.
It takes some honest to goodness love for ourselves.
Stand up and be seen.
Speak up and be heard.
By yourself first, and then by others.
There's a lot of power that comes when we step into acknowledging our own wants and needs.
