Your independence is the problem
Lucy Maeve
Professionally success yet personally unfulfilled? Want to feel empowered, alive and excited about life again? Come, I'll show you how. | Trained with Gabor Mate | Ex JP Morgan | Featured in the Telegraph & BBC
I decided pretty young that the best way to get through life was to do sh** on my own.
To have my own back. To figure it out. To not rely on anyone. To just get sh** done.
For a long time, I wore my independence as a coat of arms.
I was proud of it.
Overcome with nausea at the sight of friends who ‘needed’ someone else to be ok. I could do it alone.
How pathetic to need another.
It’s a complicated and confusing cage to live in, the cage of hyper-independence.
In many ways, it served me: in a society that fetishes the ‘boss babe’, my hyper-independence and ability to do anything and everything alone resulted in me appearing like I had my shit together.
I was the go-to to get things done because… nothing fazed me.
Except it did..because deep down underneath the coat of arms and all of the other masks of protection, lay a sensitive little girl who wanted more than anything to be loved.
You’d think that as I started to heal, the hyper-independent mask would come off but yet again, I found a loop hole in the veil of ‘healing’.
Self-responsibility.
The more I ‘healed’, the more I took on the idea that I and I alone was responsible for my emotions.
I was responsible for my life.
I was responsible for everything coming up within me and that everything coming up within me was a portal to divinity.
This is true, expect… for someone with hyper-independent tendencies… it can further tighten the grip of the shield.
What I realised over time was that I had started to use the guise of ‘healing’ as another way to further maroon myself on my island of independence.
I AM SELF RESPONSIBLE AND YOU CAN’T TOUCH ME.
It took my beautiful friend Lauren turning to me, after an episode of DEEP betrayal from another friend, as I was muttering about the sister wound and my stuff from childhood and the pain it had brought up that I needed to heal, and saying…
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“Lucy…I see you taking responsibility which is beautiful AND you’re kind of gaslighting yourself. What she did is also NOT ok.”
Oh f***.
It’s not, is it?
It turned out that OWNING that this event had hurt me, rather than spinning stories of self-responsibility and my childhood trauma was a HUGE edge because it required me to acknowledge that I had let this friend into my heart and that my heart was just a little bit (or a lot) broken.
It required me to let someone in.
It required me to accept that I cared about this friend and that maybe…just maybe.. a part of me needed her a little bit.
* enter stage right vomiting hyper-independent woman *
There is nuance to self-responsibility.
Just like there is nuance to healing, to growth, to pain.
For some of us, myself being one of those people, the biggest healing of all can come from finally exhaling and allowing our human to be held, to be loved and to be supported.
For others, the healing comes from stepping into independence and having their own backs.
For some, it’s a mixture of the two.
But whatever the path to healing, the endpoint remains the same -
And when we don’t have ourselves, we lean on each other
With love and liberation,
Lucy x
P.S. I'm heading back to London in a few weeks and am feeling into the idea of running a day retreat whilst I'm home for the independent boss ladies among us - if you're interested, let me know by sending me a note saying RETREAT
P.P.S. I HAVE A SPACE OPENING UP FOR 1-1 WORK HURRRRRAHHHHHHHH! It would be an HONOUR to support you, book a call here if you'd like more details