Solivagant
"wandering alone"
Lately, I’ve been reflecting on how much I’ve learned about myself and grown in focusing on myself over the past year or so.
In some ways, it makes me a bit embarrassed to admit. After all, here I am, a middle-aged woman, I am smart and educated and successful, and single and childless…It’s not like I have much to show for having to care for others in my life over myself, and yet, I have.
I have centered others even though my mother did her best to raise me with the core and foundational belief that I was capable and could do whatever I wanted to do. She knew she needed to counter my father’s verbal abuse and emotional unavailability and the absence of that, so she tried.
And yet, we learn from our parents’ actions even when they tell us to “believe as I say and not as I do.”
I consider now the ways in which I learned co-dependency and enabling, and the normalcy of instability and chaos in a relationship, with the woman over-extending and over-giving in a relationship, with the man owning no accountability.
This is how I was raised. This is what I saw. I have gravitated to those traits in my partnerships as well.
I think this is part of it. The other obvious factor is that we live in a patriarchal society, where men are taught that they are the Subject, the one to be focused on. However, unintentionally and however much we are unaware of that, we are raised in/influenced by these cultures.
This culture: where we expect little girls to prefer dolls and imagine “playing house” scenarios, where we cook and clean and caretake for another. We do this from the time we are so small that we probably don’t even remember a time when we didn’t have these internalized messages.
Whereas, the little boys were often the ones who play the action packed games: trucks and building and fighting. The one who took action. Who focused on themselves.
Now, I am not saying this is always the case, and certainly I am delighted to see it changing with more progressive and open-minded parents who don’t just stick to or adhere to traditional gender roles in the ways that their children are growing up…allowing them to play with whatever they want.
Still, these “traditional gender norm” messages run pretty strong in our culture and society. And even if you are a parent who desperately tries to push against them with your kids, we simply cannot be cognizant of all the ways in which our kids otherwise receive these messages: commercials, school classrooms, the playground, sleepover at a friend’s house, etc.
I know that I did.
And now, at this point in my life, 40, single and childless, it’s amazing to me: I am just now starting to come into my own skin, to recognize that I am the one worth prioritizing.
Because even though I have no partner or children, I will still (sometimes overly) focused on others—my students, my friends, my neighbors.
All of that is well and good, to an extent.
But not when I forget to give love and care to me, to neglect myself. Which I have. Which I do.
My friend and I were talking about this the other night, as we were reflecting on how even good men [usually] don’t have to be taught to prioritize themselves, to center their own needs, and to be focused on their own boundaries.
Not all men, certainly. But enough. A majority.
So, as a middle-aged woman, I finally realize, as I responded to another’s social media post the other day—
I am my own best thing.
I am the great love of my life.
I have said this before, but it is worth repeating. Because, for many of us women, we are unlearning decades of internalized and external messages.
We are going against the grain of what society teaches us. Swimming against the current.
I feel that I was made to be childless and partner-less at this point in my life so that I could intentionally focus on my own healing and growth.
I am a very loving and generous person. Thoughtful, considerate, empathetic and compassionate. I know this about myself; others have noted it often.
I am very good at doing that for other people.
But I am still learning to do that myself. I often feel that I am in my infancy in this area of my life. Sometimes I suck at it, to be quite frank.
But I am trying. My mother never could. I strive to be different, the way I was taught and she would want me to be. The healthier way.
That is part of my healing journey.
I am learning to wander alone, to be solivagant.