Please Don't Make Me Do It With A Broken Heart
Life is hard enough as it is
I am participating in a twelve week women’s recovery circle focused on our individual Word of the Year (or WOTY). I struggled with choosing a WOTY for weeks. My higher self was like “we’re good, we don’t need a WOTY”, but my junior self was insecure and couldn’t bear coming up empty-handed. So, I chose a word, but then I wondered why it seems to be only women who choose a WOTY. I Googled “men and word of the year”. Zip. Hmm.
It seems to me that women in particular are plagued with the idea that there are standards for success that we must meet in just about everything. To be fair, we have been fed this idea by many patriarchal systems in order to make us feel like we are constantly missing the mark so we settle for less than we are worth, do more (or do what others don’t wish to do), and buy a bunch of crap we don’t need.
I had bought into the belief that success exists as an absolute. Otherwise, why all the hustling? The striving to do more and be more? The having to select a WOTY to keep me on track year after year?
My brief solo retreat the other week showed me that although I had made a huge leap away from the myth of a universal definition of success when I quit my corporate career, I was still wrestling with the part about having to get everything right.
I venture to say that the pressure men feel is focused in a single area, e.g. career or making money. Women on the other hand? Please just watch this speech from The Barbie Movie, which recounts all of the ways women are expected to get things right. And the cherry on top:
"And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.” - Gloria in The Barbie Movie
One example of this absurd pressure came up in my women’s recovery circle on Saturday. One woman explained the pressure she felt to strike exactly the right amount of distress/outrage/fear over the authoritarian turn of the US government. Several other women expressed also feeling the pressure to get this right. Basically, if we try to keep our sanity intact by perhaps limiting how much we talk about or consume the news, we fear we look uncaring or selfish.
Yet, we cannot feel all of the feelings 24/7, walking around with a massively broken heart while taking care of business. But then Taylor Swift sings about doing just this and more in “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”. I hope Swift is making a point rather than setting a standard. The conditioning that we don’t have sovereignty - even over the amount of emotion we show - is so deep and messed up, right?
With the wind on my back in the form of Venus in Aries (and a bit of retrograde through Pisces) for the next four months, I’ll be working on alchemizing self-doubt as a shadow of a monolithic idea of success into my WOTY: Freedom.
I wish you health, joy, peace, and love this week.
Maria Luz
Weekly Message and Oracle Card Pull
I often receive symbolic images from Spirit through my third eye, much like I understand the Sabian symbols were received by the psychic Elsie Wheeler in 1925. Please use your own intuition and take what resonates and leave the rest.
The themes of this week seem to be about being physically in your body and in your physical space, and about doing your well-being reps and being patient.
If you gave last week’s message or Oracle spread some space in your life, I would be interested to hear how it went in the comments. A preview of this week’s spread is in this Note.
I received the below in meditation on 2.9.25.
A person swimming laps with steady even strokes.
I take a couple of meanings:
Regular movement. In times of large scale chaos, it does not help matters to add personal chaos onto the bonfire. This is an invitation to allow time for chaotic feelings to move through you, but not to take up residence. We can keep our energy flowing by engaging in intentional movement daily.
Presence. As you lean into daily intentional movement, notice how it is to be present with your body and aware of your tangible surroundings. So much of our life is built of perceptions based upon a illusory world held in a cell phone. Notice how it feels to instead be with what is actually present in your physical space and body.
Here is this week’s card spread:
Card 1. Clarity on last week: The Earthkeeper (#18 of Mystical Shaman Pocket Oracle by Villoldo, Baron-Reid, and Lobos).
This card reminds us of our responsibility as a co-creator with the Earth and with all of life. We have been conditioned to believe that independence is a virtue that excludes interdependence. The invitation is to think beyond personal success and embrace the greater possibilities that come through collaboration (think not only people, but plants, animals, land).
It is not about “#1” any more. It is about cleaning up our space, literally and figuratively, out of respect for our co-creators.
I thought about how I had to ruthlessly prune back my prayer plant this weekend. My mom gave it to me a couple of years ago, and I always felt the energy was off with it, but I was afraid to investigate (yes, this was mirroring a dynamic with her). I finally repotted it a few weeks ago, but it still wasn’t looking healthy, so I googled its brown edged leaves, and was advised that it is contagious and to trim back the diseased parts.
For a brief moment, I considered throwing the whole plant out rather than trim down from 20 or so leaves to two. But I think the plant wanted a shot, so I am collaborating.
Card 2. Help bridging last week to this week: Fill Up Your Cup (#32 from Intuitive Whispers Oracle, Maude Hirst, Lori Menna).
This card is about feeling drained and having low energy. Maybe a little like Gloria in The Barbie Movie, your cup may be empty.
The invitation is to tune into your body to determine where the emptiness most resides. What is behind that physical location or feeling of emptiness?
For me, this came up in a guided meditation. The question was, where in your body do you feel your mind’s restlessness. It was my hands. I am aware that my stress behavior is to busy myself, but it is a good reminder to pause if I find myself reflexively doing.
Card 3. Something to look for this week: Grandmother Dragonfly Holds the Wisdom (#39 of Wild Kuan Yin Oracle, Alana Fairchild and Wang Yiguang).
This is an indicator that No, you are not doing anything wrong. Things may be moving more slowly than you’d like, but don’t scrap the entire project. Is there a way to repurpose what we have already invested energy into? There is something beneficial in what you’ve begun to create, even if it is wisdom gained through the process that serves as soil for something new to spring from.
I think the haiku I wrote based upon the cards fits this card’s message. We build the most stable foundation over time, and are best able to respond to opportunities from this place as opposed to starting from scratch with each effort.
Be the stable ground
Careful your cup remains full
Able to respond