My needs, my responsibility!

Be free to meet your needs!

Who is responsible for taking care of your needs? Who gets your needs met?

I came from a very dysfunctional family where I took on the “caretaker” role from a tender age. I became the big sister to my cousin Becky who is two years younger than me when she lived in Hong Kong with my mum and big brother. She was very needy and clinged to me quite a lot because we played together and I treated her just like any big sister would. My mum trained me to give anything to Becky to keep her quiet. She was spoiled rotten as she was the youngest. This created much resentment inside of me and later on in my adult life, I became very resentful towards my mum for training me to please others and forget to take care of my own needs.

So from then on, I would take care of my parents’ needs, my two brothers and then when I married, I was taking care of my husband, his parents and the needs of his brother’s wife and kids.

I was neglected and abused as a child and my needs were dismissed, abandoned, ignored and forgotten which created so much illness for me. I felt trapped with life and it’s harsh reality that no one was taking care of me yet I gave others my time, effort and attention had left me thinking that nobody loved me.  I I felt so much pain and sadness to know that nobody looked after me even though I looked after them. I felt life was very unfair on me.

I became a “victim” to my life and it’s circumstances, hardships, adversities and challenges. I was very sick and I needed help. Yet it took many years to get the help that I was desperately needing. The damage was so huge that it took many days, weeks, months and years of working hard on myself to get to where I am today.

I gradually began to take care of my own needs after attending a weekend personal development course in Edinburgh in June 2012. That course helped me to realise what I wanted from life and it was the first time anyone had asked me “what do you want from life Kit”?  We learned to attract what we wanted from life by using the law of attraction and we made our vision board on the Sunday afternoon of what we wanted to attract.

I had never heard of a vision board before that weekend in Edinburgh nor was I ever asked “what do you want from life Kit”? That weekend was such a huge breakthrough for me and I gained so much insight as to why I was not getting what I wanted from my life.

So from then on, I made sure to take the time to ask myself, “so what is it that you want from life Kit”?  I made a vision board for the holiday I wanted, then for the career, the dream home and my dream car and for the ideal relationship that I wanted.

The ideal relationship came to me in a very unexpected way in February 2014. Then my holiday from my first vision board that I made in Edinburgh came to me in July 2015. From then now, I was a master at attracting what I wanted from my life and I was soaring!

I read a book called “Set Yourself Free” by Shirley Smith which was sent to me in February 2015 by my mushy and sweet boyfriend. He knew I would benefit from it because he had gained so many positive things from the book.

From reading the book, I learned that my dysfunctional family set up had created so much disease and illness in my life and I needed to set myself free from all the shame and pain that was holding me back from living a life of freedom to choose who and what I was born to be.

I was responsible for meeting my own needs now that I am an adult yet my inner child’s needs were not met and this was what I needed to work on in order to heal and recover from co-dependency.

It was such a discovery for me and what a revelation it was to learn why I was attracted to addictive types of men who were emotionally unavailable. They had a huge fear of intimacy and I was the one feeling my life was getting way out of control.

In order to have my needs met, I knew I needed to focus on myself and do what was the appropriate thing for me and that meant shifting from a destructive relationship with myself and onto a calmer one with inner peace and harmony. It has been a journey to new self discovery and new beginnings since I eliminated my toxic relationships with men.

 

I became very lonely after my big brother passed on very suddenly in November 2013 and he was my most reliable babysitter for Calvin, my youngest son. So I was stuck for a babysitter who was at home to take care of Calvin which meant I would either take Calvin over to my parents when I needed a babysitter or I would take him with me to my meetings, appointments or catching up with my friends. I needed to take time off to grieve for losing my big brother and I did not keep up with contacting my friends so I lost the connection with them. Some of them was unable to relate to my grieving so I felt there was a huge distance between us and we are no longer in touch.

After getting through the initial stages of grieving, I made the conscious choice to eliminate toxic friends who were no longer supportive of me and my goals so it was time to let them go and move forward to make progress. I was being “selfing” as Shirley Smith said in her book. Selfing means we learn to take care of our needs and still care for others. We learn in selfing, how to graciously receive a compliment and that it is healthy to want acknowledgement.

Today, I am taking care of my needs first and foremost because I come first. I am important, I deserve to be taken care of and I have the right to enjoy my life. I am free to choose to be who and what I am and to fulfill my potential. I am realising my goals and dreams. I am taking the opportunities to learn and to expand for personal growth.

I decided to volunteer one day a week at a charity shop to meet new people and to get out and about. It was a need of mine to get out and meet new people and to give something to charity whilst doing it was the best way forward. I feel so grateful to have this opportunity one day a week to “mingle” with people and feel I belong to somewhere other than home. Having an identity other than a mum, a daughter, a girlfriend and a care taker is another need that I am fulfilling. Today has been my fourth week and I thoroughly enjoyed the adult company and interactions. I am on my feet from 10am in the morning when the shop opens until 3pm when I leave to pick up Calvin from my parents. It is fun to be around different kinds of people from all age groups and all walks of life.  I learn so much from my time at the charity shop. I come home feeling happy and content even though I feel tired out!

I love the travelling to and from the charity shop because I get to see all sorts of weird and wonderful things whilst out and about. I get to talk to strangers whilst waiting for my bus and there is never a dull moment when I travel by public transport around Glasgow, Scotland.

I came home feeling tired this evening and wanted a bath so I locked myself in our bathroom. I was armed with my peanut butter sandwich, phone, flask of hot water to keep me hydrated as I could be in for a long time, lavender oil, Yankee candle sent to me from America by my “twin sister” and I was sorted for thirty minutes or so. I only pulled myself out of the bath when I felt much discomfort to my neck and shoulders from lying in the bath which became ever so uncomfortable after twenty minutes.

It was an extravagant luxury for me to have a relaxing, long soak in the bath to relax and warm up from being out in the rain and freezing Scottish weather on my way home. I felt so cozy and warm when I got into my “runaround home clothes” and into bed all warmed up!  I cut my toe nails as they are much softer after a soak in the bath and then I started to write this blog. What a great way to relax!

Writing my blogs has become so therapeutic for me since I began at the end of December 2015 and I am loving it as it has become a journey to discover what beautiful opportunities lies ahead. I feel writing my blogs is another need of mine to reflect and to learn. It also gives me the opportunity to connect with other bloggers from all over the globe and it is another magical thing that I am grateful for.