Who Am I Without Helping?

What happens when being helpful becomes the way you prove that you’re a good person?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I finally had to admit something I’ve been dancing around for a long time. 
I’m tired of helping people. 
Not because I don’t care about people. Not because I don’t have anything to give. And definitely not because I don’t know how to help. 
I’m actually really fucking good at it. 
But I’ve realized that I have spent years making myself valuable through what I can do for other people. 
Teaching. Coaching. Explaining. Showing up. Making people feel seen. Giving people what I thought they needed. 
And somewhere along the way, I stopped asking myself what I needed. 
That is the mother wound showing up in a way I didn’t recognize before. 
I thought I was being of service. I thought I was building community. I thought I was helping Black women heal. 
But I was also constantly adjusting myself around other people. Thinking about what they wanted from me. 
What they would think. Whether they liked what I said. Whether I was being helpful enough. 
And that shit is exhausting. 
In this episode, I’m talking about what happens when being a good woman becomes more important than being a whole woman. 
I’m talking about the ways Black women are taught to make themselves smaller, more useful, more agreeable and more available in order to maintain connection. 
And I’m talking about what happens when you finally realize: 
I don’t want to build my life around what I can do for everybody else. I want to build a life around me. 
What I want. What I like. What I need. What makes me feel good. What lights me up. 
And yes, I feel guilty about it. 
But I’m learning that feeling guilty doesn’t automatically mean I’m doing something wrong. 
Maybe this next chapter isn’t about becoming more helpful. 
Maybe it’s about finally becoming more myself. 
And maybe the biggest question of all: What would your life look like if you stopped organizing it around being useful to other people?

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