I always love your thoughtful responses Ben, and I love what you’re sharing here. What I would be curious about is this part…
“However, if we are not grounded and confident in our capacity to hold pain and uncertainty and struggle, we will not allow ourselves to show up as being the enough that others need.”
The part where you say, “being the enough that others need” is where I would say being enough for us/knowing my worth/loving myself is what creates true belonging with others. And that’s not to say, per your question, that we have to be or will be completely whole before we’d have true belonging. As Maya Angelou has shared “I belong everywhere and nowhere because I belong to myself.”
What I’ve experienced is that when we don’t see ourselves, it’s really hard to see and receive others. And our depth of connection with others can only be as deep as the connection we have in and with ourselves.
I do believe we do show up as abundantly as possible in every moment because that’s who we are at that time, but that it’s ever-evolving based on knowing and loving ourselves. And the more I learn to love and belong to me, the more abundantly I can show up.
I am sitting with the question of what it means to hold true the fact that we are both enough and not enough.
If we are meant for belonging and relationship then there is a sense in which we cannot be enough, independent of other people. However, if we are not grounded and confident in our capacity to hold pain and uncertainty and struggle, we will not allow ourselves to show up as being the enough that others need.
Can we show up with nothing and still be abundant in our showing up?
I always love your thoughtful responses Ben, and I love what you’re sharing here. What I would be curious about is this part…
“However, if we are not grounded and confident in our capacity to hold pain and uncertainty and struggle, we will not allow ourselves to show up as being the enough that others need.”
The part where you say, “being the enough that others need” is where I would say being enough for us/knowing my worth/loving myself is what creates true belonging with others. And that’s not to say, per your question, that we have to be or will be completely whole before we’d have true belonging. As Maya Angelou has shared “I belong everywhere and nowhere because I belong to myself.”
What I’ve experienced is that when we don’t see ourselves, it’s really hard to see and receive others. And our depth of connection with others can only be as deep as the connection we have in and with ourselves.
I do believe we do show up as abundantly as possible in every moment because that’s who we are at that time, but that it’s ever-evolving based on knowing and loving ourselves. And the more I learn to love and belong to me, the more abundantly I can show up.
I am sitting with the question of what it means to hold true the fact that we are both enough and not enough.
If we are meant for belonging and relationship then there is a sense in which we cannot be enough, independent of other people. However, if we are not grounded and confident in our capacity to hold pain and uncertainty and struggle, we will not allow ourselves to show up as being the enough that others need.
Can we show up with nothing and still be abundant in our showing up?