For so long I was one of those people that always got taken advantage for being “too nice”. While I always had an innate desire to help others in need, on top of that was a guilt-ridden desire to help anyone I could, whether it meant losing or even destroying myself in the process or not. I’m not really sure where it came from exactly, or when it started but I know that it is deeply rooted to the death of my father at a very young age and the feelings of intense abandonment that followed for years to come.
While I never really knew him, I always felt like I had connected with him in the physical world by realizing how alike I was to him in regards to my admiration for “artsy” stuff as well as playing the guitar. My dad had a darker side as well, and I’d later come to find that part of him was well alive within me, too. The part that was too eager to feel…or not feel. I still wonder if he was an Empath, too?
Nowadays, I tend to get taken advantage of for not setting healthy boundaries. I used to be motivated by my ego in that it always made me feel needed and like I served a great purpose when people would come to me for help whether it be advice or favors. In a way, it was a sort of mental manipulation game where two people are reflecting their needs off one another, and the minute a need is not fulfilled by the other a fight ensues, or perhaps if you’re lucky only a feeling of disappointment occurs. Regardless, there are expectations present, and as long as there are expectations, you should expect to know that they are simply resentments in waiting.
I had done this dance for years with people…friends, boyfriends…you name it.
And yet it never occurred to me once to put that same kind of energy into helping myself. Instead, the only attention I’d give myself was filling an emotional hole with shopping or wine, or going after dreams I thought I was supposed to follow, not necessarily the ones I’d buried deep in my heart.
And I can’t remember the exact moment when, but I know it was late in my marriage while I was still living in Chicago. I was standing in the kitchen and stopped dead in front of the refrigerator as I literally had an epiphany. And it was so ridiculously simple, and something I’d heard so many friends and relatives say to me a millions times, but for whatever reason, for on that day, standing in front of a carton of OJ and a left over pizza, I was buzzed to the core of my brain with the insight that maybe I needed to learn to love myself first, before I could ever really love another and before I could ever really be loved.
Perhaps if I just stopped exhausting myself with focusing so much on other people, and instead learned to love myself in the way I’d been expecting everyone else to for all these years…maybe just maybe things would actually be different instead of the Universe always throwing this same lesson at me? Umm…hello? Is there anyone in there? Lessons will repeat until they are learned. 
A wise man once told me, “At first the Universe whispers in your ear; then it taps on your shoulder, and if you still don’t pay attention it will proceed to take a 2 by 4 to your head!” In that moment, this statement could not have been more true for me. What also came in that moment, in what I can only describe as what literally felt like a “download”, was that I’d been giving all these years coming from the wrong place, and that’s why it never felt good. When you truly give from the heart, giving feels incredible because it is a pure, loving, selfless energy. The place I was always giving from was from fear and lack and a need to be appreciated, needed and wanted and therefore what I was giving came with expectations attached. And on a soul level, I knew this and since it went against what was true to my soul, it did not feel very good. I know now that I did this from never feeling good enough and from not healing old patterns that formed many, many years ago…
Remember, no matter what you’ve been through in life or where you come from, we are NOT our experiences or the things that have happened to us. We are what we do with these things and what we learn from them. We are the love we are willing to gain from our suffering as we let it tear our hearts apart. We are the joy we are willing to spread from remembrance of who we truly are as conscious creators. And we are the energy, the particles and the space between, the visible and the unseen.
Learning how to give from the heart has been one of the most expanding things I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. Nothing has ever exposed me more to the human condition, connection or capabilities of the heart when opened and willing to relate to another. This is true Quantum Philanthropy. Where nothing is trivial and even the most very small of acts of kindness affect the bigger things at hand, because as far out as the deepest reach of the cosmos and as close in as the quarks in our atomic DNA, we are all of it. And once you truly become aware of this, the connection to the rest of humanity opens up, and remains unbroken. And you find yourself a part(icle) of something much, much bigger than yourself.
You realize that you haven’t just become a part of it, but rather have remembered your eternal place in it. And yet somehow…in the now, it will forever be a part of you.
Tamara Rant is a Co-Editor/Writer for CLN as well as a Licensed Reiki Master, heart-centered Graphic Designer and a progressive voice in social media activism & awareness. She is an avid lover of all things Quantum Physics and Spirituality. Connect with Tamara by visiting Prana Paws/Healing Hearts Reiki or go to RantDesignMedia.com
Tamara posts new original articles to CLN every Saturday.
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This article was originally created and published by Conscious Life News and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Tamara Rant and ConsciousLifeNews.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this Copyright/Creative Commons statement.
