As a consequence of growing up female in a Judeo-Christian tradition, I’ve been as subject as all of us are to the pervading ethos that it’s "nobler to give than to receive." And, as well, to the cell-deep indoctrination that woman’s role is, underneath, beyond and above all, that of primary nurturer to others and (as Anne Lamott would call it) emotional Sherpa to the multitudes. That woman is always to serve herself last and only with what is left over after EVERYONE ELSE in need is replete.
My own early survival depended on my being always able to be finely tuned enough to sense and to quickly accommodate to the needs of my primary caretaker. My mother was so
I learned, quite early, that to need anything from her was to seriously endanger myself. I learned that I was supposed to do whatever I could to lighten her "load" without ever appearing to actually be doing any such thing. Failing in either of these assignments brought both her rage and much shaming.
My inner child was a poignantly undernourished starveling. To survive and to be safe, I had learned to deny or ignore this little starveling and her needs. I became, instead, alertly sensitive to those around me. Exquisitely attuned to the unnamed hungers/needs of the denied inner starvelings in anyone and everyone else. THESE starvelings I was, by my culture and personal history, encouraged and permitted to try to nourish (even if only covertly).
The sensitivity and attunement carried with it an enormous sense of responsibility. If I could perceive someone’s unacknowledged hunger, I felt honor bound to do something for or about it. It wouldn’t ever matter where I might be inside of myself. Whether I was tired, overloaded, spent or at the edge of my own endurance, my first responsibility was always to respond to the needs that I perceived in others. (Or the needs that others revealed to me, however indirectly.)
From my mother I had learned that I had to respond to those needs in very particular ways. It was always essential that my help be given ways that did not force the person to become conscious either of their need for help or of my ministrations to that need.
I would always be psychically "grabbed by the collar" by the untended, unrecognized hungry waifs inside others. Most often these others were people like me. They appeared (and had a stake in appearing) outwardly highly functional and self-sufficient. As I involved myself in covert ministrations to the waif inside of them, my inner starveling could secretly sort of "jump into" the person I was tending so lovingly. That way, she could, as I tended them, vicariously identify and secretly receive some of my loving bounty.
This secret identifying notwithstanding, my extraordinary attempts to lovingly (and covertly) tend others into their own wholeness were alternately exhausting or insufficient and ultimately never-ending. Invariably, after devoting some considerable time to this thankless and ineffective "giving," I (and my unacknowledged inner starveling) would feel depleted, frustrated, unappreciated and despairing.
Sometimes, I would even feel furious (secretly, of course) with the recipient of my bounty! The feelings would be of the order of "if anybody gave me what I was giving them, I would have done so much more with it, I would have appreciated and used it to help heal myself!" I would feel angry that "nothing I did ever seemed good enough for them," (because it never seemed to fill them up or to be enough to heal them or because—if I slipped and they noticed at all—they criticized, disparaged or dismissed my "gifts" to them).
Always these cycles were a continuing, albeit less than conscious replay of my early, unremitting (and eminently unsuccessful) attempts to covertly nourish my own mother into enough wholeness that she might then mother me! I seemed, endlessly and inevitably, to be giving away that which I longed for.
What I didn’t understand then was that, if someone had ACTUALLY offered me what I was longing for, I would have felt threatened by it. Because of my early, intensive training, I would have had enormous difficulty and resistance to receiving it, to allowing it in. I would have felt "bad and wrong." I would have felt alternately shamed or indignantly offended at being seen as needing anything at all!
In those years of my life, I also didn’t understand that feeding the starveling is ALWAYS an inside job! Whatever comes from outside of us can never reach across the time warp to the little starving inner child. When others are trying to nourish her directly it doesn’t really work. She feels badly. What is given doesn’t get inside of her to the empty place. She may see this as hateful evidence of her own seeming "insatiability." Or, she may see it as irritating/enraging evidence of the "giver’s" malevolence, ineffectiveness, or incompetence at giving.
Only we ourselves can re-mother that under- or un- nourished self that wasn’t properly nourished in the time that she actually was a physical child. And, when we have ourselves opened a conscious connection with that little one within us, others’ gifts CAN actually work to help support our own loving ministrations to her.
Only in my early forties did I begin to grasp these truths and these realities about my own "giving" behavior. I began in those years to develop my own permission to recognize and to tend the starving little child inside of me. Not having permission to recognize and tend her had set me up for the awful, fruitless subterfuge of trying to secretly, vicariously get her some of the nourishment I was always offering to others (whether they wanted it or not!). Not recognizing and tending her needs set me up for always feeling shamed by being a vulnerable human being.
As I began to openly focus on giving to myself, to my little one inside, I came to see how much my "giving" to others had been always "tainted" by hidden expectations, strings and agendas. I expected people to use what I offered to make themselves "better." I expected them, once better, to be able to "give" back to me what I had given to them. (Even though I would probably not have been able to receive what they gave.) I could see that much of my seemingly selfless giving to others was my convoluted (and doomed to failure) attempt to secretly get nourishment for myself.
When we give because we believe that everyone else’s needs are always more compelling or important than our own, when we give to get, when we give to others what we actually need for ourselves—we are inevitably depleting ourselves. Because we are, in these instances, so often giving with secret agendas and expectations, that which we "give" is tainted and ultimately toxic for its recipient. And, all too often, what we are "giving" is what that person and we ourselves each actually need to be GIVING TO OUR OWN SELVES.
When we do the work to garner and to act on the permission to give our own selves that exquisite devotional tending and caring, we are doing the inside job necessary for truly nourishing our inner starvelings. When we deepen our practice and hone our skills at loving and caring for ourselves, we become truly capable of filling the emptinesses inside of our long abandoned little inner selves. We simultaneously become less vulnerable to being "grabbed by the collar" by the disowned neediness in others.
As we become adept at feeding and filling ourselves, we actually become able to truly gift others out of our inner abundance, out of overflow. This kind of giving often feels the same as just being ourselves: no effort, no agendas, no needing anything "in return." The joy we feel in sharing ourselves, our overflow, our bountifulness is complete in itself. We offer our love, our energy, our caring, our being as "giveaway" rather than as "give-to-get" or "give to fix." In this offering, it is actually possible for all of us to be nourished in appropriate, effective ways.
In the process of giving up my convoluted "giving," I learned that the hardest piece of the work was giving up the belief that anyone other than I could or would ever be the "Mommy" for whom my starveling ached and yearned. So much of my "Mommy-ing" of others had been my way of creating and sustaining the illusion that it MIGHT really be possible for one person to "Mommy" another person into wholeness. Sustaining that illusion would, of course, give me reason to keep on hoping and believing that one day someone might at last appear to "Mommy" ME into wholeness.
Giving up that hope/belief was for me and is for each of us, a source of enormous grief and sorrow. Yet, it was for me and is for each of us the threshold of being able, at long last, to begin to do the work to grow an inner Mommy who actually can provide what we’ve so been longing for!
Give yourself permission to take exquisitely loving care of your very own self!
P.S. So many of your delicious e-mails send appreciations for the affirmation, support and nourishment you receive from the site. When I answer them, I don’t always remember to let you know that having your own deck of the Rememberings and Celebrations cards is a way to bring this same loving voice into your everyday world, to have it at hand as you need to remind yourself of the "real" truth moment to moment in the crazimakingness of the so-called real world!
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The card on this page is part of a set of 64 handcolored bookmark-size cards called the Rememberings and Celebrations deck. They can be used as an oracle, a meditation focus or a "book-in-pieces" to kindle and grow a compassionate, gentle, unconditionally loving, fiercely protective inner-Mother to help you carve safe healing space for your emerging self and for the wounded little ones inside.
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