Self-sufficiency, the highest gift I could give myself

There was a time in my life when I thought I had to make myself likable by saying yes to things I really didn’t want to do. I hadn’t realized that with every Yes I said to other people, I was saying no to myself. And I was not doing that because I was a people pleaser or needed validation from other people in order to feel my worth, or did I? What I know for sure is that I was doing that because I was dying to belong somewhere and because I was raised like that. I learned as a child that I should not upset people and that I should always give in and be supportive because this is what good girls do, and that I should be a good girl and fit in.

Today, I don’t want to be a good girl anymore, and I will certainly not raise my daughter to be a good girl. I want to be an example of what it means to be an emotionally self-sufficient grown-up woman so that she can model that.

Being emotionally self-sufficient is not the definition of being ruthless to other people. It means to know who you are, to make decisions based on your own values, and to know when to ask for help or lean on your inner guidance. It also means that you love yourself enough to give yourself the permission to spend your precious time with the people who respect and trust you, and not the ones who try to make you live by THEIR standards, manipulate, and invalidate your very essence if you don’t do so.

When you learn how to be emotionally self-sufficient and start to make decisions that are good for yourself, you learn pretty fast that there is a big price to be paid for this lesson.

The price I had to pay was to accept that the people I once loved were also the people who turned their back on me when I made decisions they called mistakes, when I spoke my truth, and when I was no longer willing to live my life according to their expectations. One particular person actually said that I will be alone for the rest of my life if I kept behaving like that.

But being left alone in the dark with a lot of questions and no clue about how my life should begin to unfold turned out to be a real blessing. In the darkness of that moment, I found the person with whom I will have the longest relationship of my life: Myself. And this was the beginning of something beautiful.

When I started to live an authentic life full of situations that were aligned with my very own values, I started to meet people who love me for who I am. People who are happy for me in my good times and who are willing to grow along with me in my bad times. People who are truly considering my thoughts and feelings and are not trying to make me feel unworthy just because I have a different opinion or dare to dream big. The communication between connected people is transparent, based on truth, and we can talk about our deepest fears and most intensive feelings because we are not afraid of being judged or invalidated. And most of all, we don’t fit in, we belong.

So here I am, happier than ever before and very satisfied about the decision I made to leave some toxic environments even if it meant to walk alone for a while. I am now living the life I chose for myself because I had the determination and strength to no longer play small just so others can feel big. And because now, that I know what it means to belong, I will never try to fit in again in my life.

Self-sufficiency is the highest gift I could give myself because the moment I realized that inner completeness and stability was the moment I knew that I was a very powerful person.