Value and Validation
May earth, goddess of all creation,
mother of all that is and will be,
may she give us a great land.
May earth, with her mountains and plains,
her slopes and her peaks, may she open
herself to our needs.
May earth, with her rivers and waters,
may she give us enough to drink.
May she pour herself upon us.
--Hindu hymn to goddess of earth, Atharva Veda
Today, too, clearly articulating needs is the first step toward having them met. yes the expression of such needs is often me with reproach.
My greatest needs are emotional ones - right now at least. The need to feel valued, the need to feel validated and the need to feel needed and loved.
For the most part, those needs are met in that my wonderful guy gives all of these to me, and more... even when I don't express them. But frustrations, both those that I suffer from, and those of others, sometimes even my guy, can from time to time lead me not to feel such things. Lately I've been strugging with feelings of worthlessness.
On reflection I think a lot of it is tiredness. The end of a long school year with so much still to do that I'm falling behind on everything else that I want to be doing. But the argument goes that: should it really be something that I want to be doing I'd just go and do it. I would make time... put aside other things in order to have that time for things I want to do. After all I have so many hours after school in which to read, to write, to type up the notes from my daily meditations which I have at least managed to continue with - and notes for which I have many days worth of writing. The fact of the matter is that I'm bringing so much work home, assessments to mark, class work to mark, lessons to plan. Allowing the fact that I don't go out anywhere after school - or rarely anyway - to completely scew my work/life balance. There is no balance. I'm not alone in this.
So... no, the workload from work has not eased at all, but I have decided that enough is enough. Where did this come from? Two people, both very dear to my heart. First, (though someone Indirectly), from my wonderful guy... and secondly from my still tenuous, but growing connection with My Lady. My own needs, combined with those of my guys led me to partition the Lady for help in getting off my overworked hands and putting those hands to work in catching up with the things I want to do.
The answer came in somewhat of a surprising form... in a dream... (that's not the surprising bit - quite common actually)... it was a dream in which I was in an office in school, arguing with the head teacher, and the owner of the school. They were arguing with me about loyalty, and I was standing up to them and telling them that no matter how hard I work for them my first loyalty is to my family - to my husband, and the life we have together, the things we do and share, and then second to the families of the school. That nothing that they could say would change that, because that was the way it was, and should be. It was a very unsettling dream, but also in a way very empowering.
The upshot of it all is that yes - if these things are important to me, which they are, then I will adjust the balance of work, and my own things to so that I don't keep constantly flailing, and failing to do the things I want to do, and have said I am going to do.
Perhaps then I will learn to validate and love myself again (I don't like myself very much right now), and feeling it from myself might help me to feel it period.