And haven’t we all been there? Feeling the duty to stay, whether it be sacrificing our mental health, physical safety, sanity and well-being. Every woman has experienced this struggle in one form or another, feeling like it’s up to us to keep the weight of the world on our shoulders.

I certainly felt this way when I was going through my divorce. I had come to believe that the most important thing I could do was prevent my then husband from harming himself. He’d made threats and I didn’t feel like I could leave him. It was only when we got into couples counseling that I felt safe leaving, knowing he would have someone to talk to in my absence.

Throughout that ordeal, I never even considered myself and what was best for me.

This is what’s known as emotional labor, the free, invisible work that is mainly done by women to manage the emotions and lives of those around us. And while we all perform some form of emotional labor from time to time, the weight of it can be deeply detrimental to our well-being, sense of worth and ability to go after our dreams.

Back to the woman who raised the question, here’s the advice I shared with her:

1. If your own cup isn’t overflowing, how do you expect to fill anyone else’s?

In other words, what use are you to the world, if you can’t even take care of your mental, emotional and physical well-being? I would argue that we need to spend less time touting the virtues of selflessness, and more time being selfish.

Yes! Take the time you need - whether that’s a night off, or not answering a call from that particularly angsty friend, not trying to be a productive powerhouse and jam fifty things onto your to-do list, asking for help, pampering yourself, resting, saying yes!, saying no!, and delegating tasks that drain you.

2. An inflated ego has many disguises, including martyrdom.

Believing that you are so important that people cannot possibly find a path forward without you is misguided. Life goes on after we leave jobs, relationships and communities. Crisis creates opportunities for growth within individuals and an organization.

You are not responsible for carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. And the truth is, you can’t do it anyhow.

How often do we, as women, try to take care of it all? How often do we fall on the sword of chores, emotional labor and pleasing others, completely forgetting about ourselves?
​
Let’s make February the month we learn to love ourselves up, so that we can give to others from a place of abundance.
Some ideas to fill your cup:

Have fun, be shameless and try something that goes beyond a mani/pedi, a glass of vino and meditation.

I’d love to hear what you do to love yourself up. Drop a note in the comments below.

It’s that time of year again - those glorious first few weeks of January when the self-help industry amps up the shame spiral that fuels their businesses the rest of the year by flooding our social media feeds with carefully curated articles outlining the eleventy-billion things we should be doing every day.

I don’t know about you, but the only thing I can claim to do consistently every day is battle with the guilt I consistently feel for not doing all the things I thought I was going to do.

​And even if I can manage to reconcile my guilt for not doing ALL the things, this year I’ve witnessed a disturbing trend of women shaming each other for choosing the WRONG things. The message is usually delivered under the guise of being educational or activism, but the result is the same… you’re gluttonous if you practice too much or a wrong set of the eleventy-billion shoulds.

So, if you’re playing along at home that means we can be both lazy pigs and self-indulgent twats for any singular self-care choice.

Damned if we do, damned if we don’t, right? Wrong!

​Lovely, whatever it is you practice to feel cared for - as long as it doesn’t cause harm to others OR TO YOU - is a step in the right direction.

About a year ago I made a conscious decision to explore self-care practices and determine what really mattered to me. I started by Googling, “Things I should do every day,” and meticulously curated a list from the first page of results that was 62 items long and, if followed literally, would take 19 hours and 45 minutes to complete daily.

So, you know, totally doable.

I tried a different item on the list every week - pulling oil through my teeth one week (so not my thing), fluffing the couch cushions daily another week (easy, the dogs ate them all), practicing daily self-affirmations in the mirror (surprisingly uncomfortable for me) another week, etc., etc. In the end I discovered that going to yoga, drinking water and tidying my house daily for ten minutes actually made a big difference to me...

As did poking fun at the other 60-some shoulds on the list.

I was curious to see if, or how, the list had changed for 2019. So once again I Googled “Things I Should Do Every Day” and created a new list from the first page of results.

​It’s grown… a bit.

If you’re curious, the were a few things that showed up consistently on most of the lists - sleeping 7+ hours, drinking plenty of water, spending time in nature and establishing a mindfulness practice. If you don’t know where to start with your self-care routine, these practices might be good places to start.

Or maybe they are exactly the wrong places for you to start. Only you - and your trusted advisors who have earned the right to advise you - can determine that.

And that's exactly the point - you do you, lovely. Whatever that looks like, feels like, needs to be.

Ursula Adams, MSPOD
​SheHive Founder

Note: This post originally appeared on Modern Shamanic Living

Gratitude: the state of being grateful: THANKFULNESS.

So you've made your daily gratitude lists, filled those jars and whatnot but you're still not feelin' it? I'm not surprised. Small daily habits are essential for change but are they enough to change your state of being? Superpower activation is going to require a lot more beingness and a little less doingness.

Here's what I mean. How different would your life look if you walked through it in a state of being grateful? Wouldn't everything seem completely different? Could you ever feel crappy while you are filled with the feeling of gratitude?

The thing is, your life can only be as you see it.

Let me repeat that...

Your life can only be as you see it.

Said in another way; who you are being, shapes the way your life goes.

Once you understand and accept this, it changes everything. But you should also know, it's a little like Pandora's box, and you can't put the lid back on. However, it's vital that you truly get it before you can have gratitude as a superpower.

So, how do you BE grateful? As the definition suggests, gratitude is a state of being. Just knowing this is helpful. You can't change what we're not aware of; so now you know. But how can you go from feeling grateful only some of the time to most of the time? How does it become a superpower?

Here's a practice upgrade for you:

Dawn Whitehorn,
Shamanic Energy Medicine Practitioner and SheHive KeyHolder