Surrender vs. Defeat

 

When I was a baby, I had a huge piece of glass fall on me when I was in my crib.

I grew up during the war in Lebanon and explosions were not unusual. And on one random day, as I was sleeping in my crib, another explosion tore open the window above me and the whole thing came crashing straight down on me. Luckily for me, my family had just added window films on all our glass so although the window broke into many pieces, it remained in tact stuck to the film as it came crashing down on me, and as a result could not wound me.

Do I remember this? Not in my consciousness. I’m sure my body does. But I heard this story when my dad was first telling me about it, proud that I had not cried. Apparently, I had just lay there waiting for someone to rescue me from under the glass, not even whimpering.

I haven’t thought much about this day or this story. Until yesterday. I’m newly working with an ordained Priestess who is also an amazing somatic psychotherapist. And you know how it goes, childhood shit comes up. And I’ve been called into the Temple of Great Mother. In layman’s terms, people, this means I have been called to really examine the extent of my own self love.

And we all know what a bitch self love is, right?

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So it’s been on my mind. And I keep thinking about the window. Why did I not cry? Was I in shock? Had my father gotten his “don’t cry” attitude into my bones THAT early on? Did I sleep through it?

Or maybe, just maybe, I had faith. I trusted. That all was going to be ok. Even though it must have felt super painful and scary, I somehow knew that I was held. Even though my whole baby nervous system was probably shivering from the reverberations of a massive explosions, I somehow stayed calm. I somehow knew that someone would come for me. That someone’s got my back.

I’ll never know the answer. But what I do know is that if I had panicked and moved and cried, I may have gotten A LOT more injured.

Interesting the way that goes, right? How sometimes in our moments of fear and panic, when we are not trusting, we feel the need to DO something. And what we don’t realize is that in the DOING itself, we are harming ourselves. Sometimes, we just gotta lay back and have faith in the instinctual part of us that is telling us to not move, to not say yes to the deal, to not try to “fix” it. And to wait.

I have no idea how long I waited under that glass. Probably not long. But it probably felt like FOREVER being under there. And still something in my little innocent baby brain knew to wait it out.

Makes me wonder. How often are we stuck under a metaphorical piece of glass, plotting our way out of a shit situation, squirming under the weight and end up cutting ourselves a lot more than if we just surrendered and had faith that it was all gonna work out somehow?

Sometimes, the ultimate act of self-love is to stop trying to fix the shitty situation or push your way out of it. Sometimes, the ultimate act of self-love is just wait it out and love yourself through it.

Often, this disguises itself as defeat. But it’s not. It’s just surrender. You see:

Surrender pairs itself well with self-love. Defeat only goes well with self-loathing. – CLICK TO TWEET

Sometimes, we aren’t strong enough to lift the big piece of window glass off our own bodies. Sometimes, we need a force bigger than ourselves to help us out.

And that doesn’t mean you are any less. That doesn’t mean you didn’t try to save yourself. It just means that you are patiently loving yourself through it.

If you want to explore this form of self-love and surrender more, I’m bringing together an elite group of badass chicks ready to take their nourishment and pleasure to the next level. Are you one of them? APPLY HERE.