Everyone Needs You, But Not How You Think

Last night I got home late, and I heard a call in the dark:

“Hello? It’s Annie!”

I walked towards her voice, realizing that I hadn’t known her name before now.

A bit of backstory: A few months ago I bought the tiny section of land next to my house in Las Vegas, New Mexico. It has a seen-better-days mobile home on the property which the person who sold me the land promised me he would move within a couple of weeks. There has been a major shit show on so many levels happening since then, which I’ll write about later. Annie and her hubby were planning to buy the trailer.

Back to Annie.

In the dark Annie tearfully told me she and her hubby were getting a divorce, and she had to clear out everything in the mobile home by herself. He left her no money, no resources, and a baby daughter. She had found an apartment to move into, but needed to empty out the mobile home so she could get the deposit back.

As she shared her fears and upset, I asked her:

“Do you want a hug?”

As she cried in my arms for a few minutes as I stroked her back and told her, “I’m so sorry this is happening. It’s going to be okay, sweetheart.”

We talked for another ten minutes in the dark: about how her husband has had so many affairs, why does she keep picking the wrong men, that he was clean but had gotten back on drugs in the last couple of weeks, that she tracked him down to get a signature she needed and found him at hotel sleeping with one of her friends from high school.

We hugged several more times, and cried together. “You are brave,” I said. “You can do this. It is going to be for the better for you and your daughter.” She agreed, and we also talked about how damn hard it is to let go, how scary to know you have to make your way alone with few resources.

She told me her plan was to show up early in the morning and clear out the mobile home, and I told her I’d come check on how she was doing when I walked Demi.

This morning I’m sitting at my kitchen table, catching up on projects and writing.

And Annie is probably next door right now moving things.

Part of me really wants to go help her: clean out the trailer with her, buy furniture for her apartment, pay her first month’s rent, help her raise her daughter…

And I know: she has her fires to tend, and I have mine.

Other people’s fires are often easier to tend than our own. Especially when you don’t have a fixed schedule, it is all too tempting to drop everything and help everyone else.

To all you creatives, artists, want to be writers, entrepreneurs, mamas, community activists, therapists, visionaries, healers, care professionals, CEO’s, yoga instructors… to all us changemakers, please remember this:

You must hold your vision, your dreams, your gifts to share with as much reverence and care as you hold the emergencies, needs, and desires of others.

Because if you don’t you’ll find yourself tending everyone else’s fire and ignoring your own.

You must have boundaries.

Your boundaries can be sometimes flexible, but they must be firm at the same time.

The most important boundaries are the ones you make with and for yourself.

These boundaries are like the rocks around your fire which help your unique light burn bright and be sustainable over time.

The world needs you to lovingly tend to your own fire, so you have the energy and vibrancy to be a creative, curious, compassionate force in the world.

This is what I call unconditional leadership.

Whether you are leading a company, a family, or a small group of people, or leading yourself, it all boils down to: learning to be a better leader to yourself.

Very few of us know how to be unconditional in our relationship to self and others.

Conditional living means you have unconscious or conscious expectations, judgments, and ideas of how your or other people “should” be doing things.

Conditional living means we remove our love, respect, and acceptance when things don’t go as we think they should. It’s like putting your own fire out when you get disappointed, frustrated, or hurt by others (or by your own expectations of yourself).

Being unconditional does not mean you always agree or like other people’s actions.

Being unconditional means keeping the fire of your love, respect, and acceptance bright despite what others do (and loving yourself even when you make a mistake, don’t meet your goals, or are struggling).

Most of us are wired to be more conditional than unconditional. We judge, criticize, compare, feel victimized, try to control, try to fix, try to make things the way we think they should be.

It’s exhausting.

This is why so many of us are burnt out, frustrated, and confused.

As we shift to more unconditional ways of being we learn to let go and listen. We stay in the present. We consider what we need. We hold our own fire. We stay sustainable. We honor our vision and where we need to put our energy. We get creative in how we can help others without dropping ourselves. We shine brightly from a centered, whole, loving place.

I know this: Annie showed up right as I got home so I could hug and love her, give her a pep talk, let her know she is not alone. In a bit I’ll go give her a gift I put together this morning for her: A candle that says HOPE on it, a signed copy of my book Warrior Goddess Training, and a tiny Wonder Woman statue for her daughter. I’ll see if I can help her move the bigger stuff with my truck. And then I’ll bless her and wish her well. Our paths may cross again, and they may not.

I trust she is on her path of healing, and I am on mine. I respect her tenacity, her power, her tenderness, her healing, her loving, her choices.

Just as I respect mine.

With love,