Real Me, Right Now: affirm me! tell me I matter!

This is post number two in a new series on vulnerability.  Over the course of ten blog posts, I will be sharing five present time things that I'm wrestling with, as well as five strengths or things that I really love about myself.  If you are up for it, feel free to join me... or not!

For the longer overview, check out the series introduction or the first post!

#RealMeRightNow

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This one feels a bit more risky, and a lot more ugly, but here it is none-the-less...

I'm a 3 on the Enneagram (the need to succeed) - and man, is it showing these days.  Most people crave affirmation and support and encouragement, and want to know that they're doing a good job, but for me, especially when I'm not in the most healthy places, I crave it more than most.  More than that, I want to know that I'm doing a good job, enjoyed for who I am, and writing, saying, doing things that matter.

For threes, often times, our biggest fear is failure (not succeeding, not mattering, being abandoned, letting people down, etc) and right now - being a snow-bound, stay-at-home mama (and often feeling like not a great one at that), writing a (slightly!) less than vastly popular blog, between "prestigious" jobs, trying to figure out where our community is now and feeling the loss and transition of some of our friends - in the midst of all of that, all of those insecurities have reared their ugly heads up loud and proud.  And I am really wrestling with wanting (and feeling that I need) that affirmation that I'm doing okay.  That I'm appreciated.  That I matter, not just for what I can do for my kids, or the sacrifice that I am making for them - I know that matters tremendously - but that I as a person, still am doing something that matters.  That I have worth and value.  (Sound familiar?  I'll give you a hint - this is my recurring battle, from whence the title of the blog itself actually came.)

I become more needy and demanding that others affirm me and commute worth to me with their words and actions.  My core understanding of my value and worth becomes less stable - and as such, I look to others to stabilize me instead.  And get angry when those closest to me can't meet the felt need inside.  [Freedom for all: no one can actually meet that need, don't worry. It has very little to do with you.]  Or get jealous when others seem to receive the affirmation and attention that I want.  Or I become tit-for-tat with my affirmations and care of others - "if I do this for you, then I expect you to do the same for me."  And bitter when it is not reciprocated.    It's ugly, friends.  Deeply ugly.

Lest you think that affirmation and attention are actually what I need, let me just clarify that they aren't.  But it sure feels like what I want.  Man, does it ever.

I've been here before, and I know that the path to health for me is actually to turn inward - to actually face myself in silence and solitude and a quest for solid truth about my identity and worth, outside of success, public feedback, applause and admiration.  To continue to press into truth, vulnerability, and real relationships.  To heed the invitation to hear again that "I am called beloved" "daughter" "delight" regardless of what I do, say, or achieve.

It is an invitation for transformation, this struggle - it always is.  And it's a good thing, ultimately, this place, because it precedes a healthy, rooted, true place without all the trappings that I attempt to claim as my worth -  but it's a hard place to be nonetheless, because all of the scaffolding on which I place my identity and value and worth, feel like they have been removed - and what is left is the ugly places that I go to instead.  And, while I know the rooted place, and know that's what I want, that that's good, I'm not there yet.

But sharing this, publicly, while still in process, is a small way of claiming the very real hope that I will be there once again. #RealMeRightNow