Self-reliance.

A phrase I’ve had pressing on my mind and heart for awhile now.

But probably not in the way you’re thinking. I don’t mean preserving pickles or canning jelly or even getting out of debt or having a job. I mean self-reliance at the very core of what it means:

I can rely on myself.

 

I recently started blogging for two other photographers. As soon as I head the “Okay you’re hired,” I created a blogging calendar and I set my alarm clock for 5am. Suddenly I was keeping promises to them that I had been trying to do for myself for YEARS. Why is that? Why did it take the fear of disappointing someone else, not just myself, for me to get my act together? I know I’m not the only one.

 

Self reliance in every sense. This is my mother’s day wish for you. For my sisters, women – mothers or not – everywhere. Can I rely on myself for my happiness – or do I wait for someone else to bring it to me? Do I keep the promises I make to myself? Do I do the things I say I’m going to do – even if I’m the only one who knows I committed to it? Because you and I both owe that to ourselves.

This, I believe, is the true essence of “self care.” Doing the things you know YOUR body YOUR heart YOUR mind NEEDS in order to function at its highest capacity. I recently read this and it changed my heart:

A women who heals herself heals her children and her children’s children.

Sisters, we cannot live unhealed.

Women, you who are unhealed – and all of us are, in one way or another – I hope this Mother’s Day you allow yourself to begin the work it takes to heal yourself. Do you need to forgive yourself? Don’t wait for permission. Forgive yourself and let it go. Do you need to thank yourself? Don’t wait for someone else’s recognition. Step up and praise yourself and continue to work hard. Do you need help to heal yourself? Find a therapist and invest in your mental health. Find a doctor that will help you arrive at your healthiest self. Do you need love?  You cannot afford to go through this life waiting for someone else to give you the love each of us desperately need.  Find it within yourself because guess what! YOU ARE ALREADY LOVED. You were created LOVED.

Heal yourself because the world needs you whole. Your children – all the children and all the living of this world – need you at your best. Heal yourself because you don’t deserve to live halfway. You don’t deserve to wait to be loved until another person says it’s so. You don’t deserve to not be in photos because you don’t like the way you look on the outside. You don’t deserve to not pursue your dreams because you’re afraid of failure. You can rely on yourself to get you there. Take your hurt and your pain, your insecurities and your doubt, your supposed short-comings and your fears, and begin to take them out of the equation. Tell yourself:

I can rely on myself.

Do you want to know why this is possible? Do you want to know why I KNOW you can learn to trust and rely on yourself? Because you already have it in you. Because you’ve already been given and promised the power and the help. Because you are a divine daughter. You have an eternal inheritance from an almighty source. You have worth that doesn’t need to be earned, doesn’t need to be proven. You were created with it and no matter your mistakes, no matter your past, no matter the depth of the sorrow – this divinity, this light, cannot be taken, stolen, lost, burned, disgraced, or traded. I believe this with my whole heart. I believe us women are sisters with divine destiny, with divine inheritance from a powerful, loving Heavenly Father AND Mother. She is just as involved and in love with us as our God is.

This is how I know you already have it in you to become whatever, and whoever, it is that you are meant to become.