On Tending to Self

From self-abandonment to self-nurturance

At home, in Canada, amongst nature.

Hello community,

It’s Sunday evening and I am now, for the first time since July, sitting down at my laptop to write.

It has been two months since I published my first Substack with the intention of sending you regular weekly letters, but what I didn’t know at the time was that my energy and presence would be very much needed here - at home, with my family, with myself - and not typing in front of a screen.  As I shared in my first Substack, I was feeling drawn to share more of myself here on this platform and was excited to have a fresh space to write, because over the past several years I was feeling less inclined to engage with social media -  a space that has felt less connective, and more performative.  I was hesitant to create and engage with yet another platform, but I also could tell almost immediately that this space was different - more communal, reciprocal, and genuine - values that are important to me.  

Substack feels special and like a home away from home in many ways, so I was eager and delighted to return to my first love, the written word, and share my musings as they unfolded for me so that I could then share them with all of you.  I envisioned myself sitting outside by the pond in the backyard or at a cute local cafe writing furiously on my laptop each week pouring my heart onto the page and sharing my insights or curiosities - a glamorous scene for a writer, yet hardly the truth of what it actually means to be an artist.  Because great art is often created from great pain, great love, and from the moments that remind us what it means to be human long before they even come close to landing on a page of weaved words.  And for the right words to land on a blank page, we must first digest and integrate each edge of our experience - the priority being for ourselves first - so that we can honour the intimacy and process within ourselves before revealing it to others. 

So, as much as I wanted to stay committed to my initial intention of writing to you all weekly, I quickly realized that I had much to tend to here at home first - to nurture the edges, to traverse my own inner landscape, and to meet myself in deeper ways than I had originally anticipated, and so I honoured that calling until I felt ready to write, now.  

It’s interesting, because there was a part of me, albeit small, that arose while writing this letter that felt I needed to apologize for my absence here, but it was quickly followed up with the knowing that honouring my needs, tending to my nervous system, and acknowledging my own capacity is how I am able to create, to love, and to live sustainably without a cost to my health and wellbeing.

But, for so many of us we’ve often been taught that extending ourselves to others and giving all that we can is not only the noble thing to do, but somehow reflective of a loving relationship - one in which we give to the point of extraction of ourselves.

To which I ask, at what cost? This is the birthplace of self-abandonment; a journey I have walked many, many times throughout my life.  And it’s often not something that happens suddenly, but rather a slow and steady burn of many small moments built up over time that pull us further and further away from ourselves - becoming a shell of who we are for the sake of someone else’s happiness, or worse, someone else’s expectations and demands placed upon us.  

I invite you to pause here and take a moment to re-read that last sentence, and notice what happens in your body.

Sensations, movements, temperature….

How does your body respond?

For me, my breath becomes shallow and fast and I notice some contraction in my abdomen - precisely the same sensations I experienced when I would abandon myself, either consciously or unconsciously - familiar terrain I have traversed on more than one occasion.  As someone with a history of trauma, a sexual assault survivor, and a woman who has experienced abusive relationships, self-abandonment was how I survived.  Ignoring my feelings, pushing my thoughts aside, and dissociating from my body was all I knew how to do in order to cope and manage painful experiences - a learned behaviour that my nervous system so brilliantly developed from a young age in order to seek safety.  Put simply, I learned to hide my true self and became adaptive to the environment in order to keep the peace - “good girl” conditioning was the name of the game back then, and I wore that mask well for many years. Smile, be polite, and stay quiet - and that I did for many years, until my body said no more.

We self-abandon in order to survive and how it shows up is different for each of us.  Maybe the moment you feel a big emotion or some discomfort you reach for your phone, or perhaps you ignore your instincts and intuition in an effort to favour feeling good in the moment.  Sometimes it looks like a lack of boundaries in order to please someone else, or expecting your partner to make you feel better all the time while neglecting your own responsibility for self-care. Self abandonment teaches us, and others, that we don’t matter and that our time and energy is best spent on making sure everyone else is okay, while neglecting our own needs and becoming estranged from our own emotions and inner landscape.  And yet, even when we incessantly give and over extend ourselves, we often feel like we are always coming up short, that we are never good enough, right?

And so the cycle continues….

Self-abandonment, criticism, shame.

Self-abandonment is insidious by nature; a gradual and subtle extraction of ourselves over time that comes at a great cost. And the more we hyper focus on our relationships with others, we neglect the one relationship we are guaranteed to have forever - the one we have with ourselves - and it's this relationship with Self that forms the roots that all other ones stem and grow from.

Whether we experience self-abandonment in romantic love, friendships, or family - losing ourselves in the name of a relationship isn’t love, it’s unhealthy attachment - and it asks for our attention.  It asks that we invite it in like we would a guest for tea and meet it with curiosity and compassion.  Mostly, it asks for our honesty though, with ourselves first, then with others - a tender, and sometimes long journey, but one that is worthy of our time and care.  Because on the other side of self-abandonment is a grounded space of self-nurturance, a place in which we honour, trust, tend to, and make space for all parts of Self, with love and compassion at the forefront.

Have you experienced self-abandonment before?  I know I am not alone in this, and from the hundreds of women I have worked with over the years it’s evident to me that it's more common than not - we just aren’t talking about it.  So let’s open up the conversation here and see where we end up, together. 

An invitation for inquiry:

• How has self-abandonment shown up for you, and with whom? 

• Who benefits when you self-abandon? and what does it cost you? 

• What would self-nurturance look like for you?

Some reminders:

• Self-abandonment is learned, and therefore can be unlearned.

• Self-abandonment says other people’s needs matter more than my own, self-nurturance says when I take care of myself I have more capacity to serve others in ways that feel good for me.

I invite you to take some time for yourself and reflect on these questions, perhaps put pen to paper if the muse calls for it, and sit at the seat of compassion while you get curious about your relationship with Self.  My hope is that you can offer yourself some grace and patience, knowing that being human sometimes means feeling uncertain, it sometimes means losing ourselves, and sometimes it means finding ourselves following down familiar, yet uncomfortable paths, but ultimately guiding us towards ones that we then carve out and choose for ourselves. I’m working on it, too.

So rather than apologizing for my absence here on Substack, I want to say thank you for your patience and grace while I have been nurturing myself, first.  

Thanks for being here, with me.

Laurita xx

Ps. If you found value or meaning in my words, I invite you to share with me what resonated or sparked interest for you. And I invite you to share my words with others as it may support other humans along their own, wildly unraveled, paths too. We are all in this, together.

Pps.  I am gearing up for a pilgrimage on my ancestors land very soon and will be eager to share my journey with you all.  Plus, I have some intimate stories of some things I have been working through over the past couple of months, so if you are a paid subscriber ($5 CAD/month) you will receive all the behind the scenes posts, zoom meetings, and mini podcasts, too.  

Ppps. If you are into podcasts, I invite you to explore some episodes from my podcast called UNRAVELED here . Some really great conversations and more to come from some incredible humans who have much wisdom to share.

Upcoming Offerings:

RECLAIM - a 12 week journey to support women in remembering and reclaiming their voice, power, and body so that they can feel confident, regulated, and authentically expressed.  This program is heavily focused on nervous system restoration, somatic healing, and relational repair through the lens of attachment theory.  The program begins late November 2023. 

Learn more here - I am so excited to gather another group of women for the fourth cohort of RECLAIM; we have such a beautiful and powerful collective.