The ever-popular airline speech analogy about putting the oxygen mask on yourself first before you can help others is a clear picture of you must be good to yourself first. It is a concept that is fairly easy to realize intellectually but emotionally, it is a different story. Especially if you are a woman with children that has been well versed in the good family values of children and family first. Of course when you do not have the money to do anything else...I became respectable by default. I was a good person, mother, wife and I waved that flag for years. As the children left home and had lives of their own moved on to teaching artists, and still had a flag to wave proving to others my “goodness”. Please do not get me wrong, I loved every moment, I do not regret a single moment, but as life changes again I am realizing that I used those roles to define who I was, to me. I did not have the courage or the knowledge to assess my own self-worth. for myself, I depended on others to make that determination. I accepted and sought out others opinions of me to define who I was. Now the journey requires that I figure this out on my own, with no audience no flag and it is as scary as seeing the oxygen masks drop and not sure what to do next.
"Bitch" Meridith Brooks
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