Don’t Leave Yourself Out

A reflection on what it means to tend the life within us as faithfully as we tend the world around us.

I have been thinking about stewardship this week.

For much of my life, stewardship has meant taking good care of what has been entrusted to me.

My relationships.

My responsibilities.

My resources.

The people I love.

The work that is mine to do.

But lately, I have been wondering if I left something important off that list.

Myself.

Some of us become very skilled at tending the world around us.

We notice what other people need.

We anticipate what might make things easier.

We adjust, accommodate, encourage, support and smooth the way.

There is generosity in this.

And sometimes there is something else operating too.

A quiet belief that our job is to help everything and everyone around us be okay.

I have been getting to know this pattern in myself more intimately.

I think of it as a People Pleasing Protector.

Not because I want to make it wrong.

Quite the opposite.

I can see how faithfully it has worked on my behalf.

It learned that attending to other people could create connection. That being useful had value. That anticipating what others needed could help relationships feel safer and more secure.

Those strategies served me.

Until I began to notice that sometimes, the way I cared for others left something within me unattended.

That is the distinction I am becoming interested in.

Because caring for other people isn't the problem.

Generosity isn't the problem.

Service isn't the problem.

The question is whether I can offer those things without abandoning stewardship of myself.

Can I listen for what feels true and alive within me?

Can I notice what gives me energy and what depletes it?

Can I honor my own desires and preferences, even when they differ from someone else's?

Can I allow someone else to have a preference, a disappointment or a need without automatically making it mine to resolve?

Can I tend my own gifts, energy and becoming with the same care I have so readily offered elsewhere?

Maybe this is another way of understanding what it means to come Home to ourselves.

Not turning away from others.

Not becoming less loving.

But recognizing that the Self within us is also something precious that has been entrusted to our care.

Perhaps stewardship of Self isn't about putting ourselves first.

Maybe it is simply refusing to leave ourselves out.

And the more we live from what is deeply true in us, the more fully and freely we can participate in what is alive around us.

A Creator Mode Principle

Our relationship with Self is an act of stewardship.

A Question to Carry

What changes when you begin to include yourself among the things you have been entrusted to care for?

What I’m Practicing

Remembering to include myself in the field of my own care.

Listening for what feels true and alive within me, and trusting that tending it is part of how I tend the life I’ve been given.