I ran away from home this week.

I recognized on Tuesday morning that I reached the end of my rope and I hadn’t been meeting a personal need of mine for a really long time.

And that personal need for me is anonymity and freedom.

And I tell you if I don’t get that need met, I get really cranky!

I realized this a few years ago, so I made a plan that I was going to go away by myself every three months.

I was just going to get in the car, with a pair of clean undies and my purse, and drive to wherever I ended up.

When I do that, I’m really happy.

When I don’t, I’m super cranky.

So, with all coronavirus lockdown, I’d been stuck in the house for months and I was over it.

And two days ago, I got out of bed and said, ‘That’s it. I’m out of here.’

I just got in the car and I drove.

I ended up shopping my heart out, and then choosing a motel to stay in.  I watched movies all night and ordered room service.  The next day I visited a close friend and had a long chat about ‘dressing and living your truth’, one of our favourite subjects.

Then I came home and had a quiet day yesterday.

I’m feeling so much better and I’m sharing this with you because I think the reason so many women get filled with resentment and frustration is because they’re not meeting their own needs.

In fact, they often don’t even know they have any needs to be met.

We talk about this in my online ‘Boundary Queen’ course.

Women are so surprised when I bring this up early in the course because I explain that we don’t just have physical needs but also emotional and psychological needs too.

And they’re all different for everybody.

We each have to work at what ours are and most people have never given it any thought.

And the problem with most relationships is people go into the relationship, thinking their partner is going to meet their needs, or the relationship is going to meet their needs.

And usually it can’t.

It’s not your partner’s job to meet your needs.

It’s yours.

And where this gets all messy is if you come into a relationship with a whole big barrel of unmet childhood needs.

How many of us have a whole lot of needs unmet from childhood?

We’re just like a big gaping hole of pain because we didn’t get what we needed from our caregivers. They didn’t know what we needed. Or maybe they weren’t capable of giving us what we need.

Without awareness, we can take all those unmet needs and throw them into relationship, and it gets really messy.

So, what I teach in my ‘Boundary Queen’ course is there’s only one thing we can do about our unmet childhood needs.

You know what that is?

Grieve.

That’s it. All we can do is grieve.

We can’t go back. We can’t change it. We can’t change our caregivers. We can’t take that time back. All we can do is acknowledge that loss and grieve it.

That can be quite a long process, but nobody else can fill those needs now.

The only person who can do it now is you as a grown-up adult.

And that’s why the ‘Boundary Queen’ course is really about growing yourself up, recognizing your own needs and meeting them.

It’s quite funny because for years I’d never met my basic physical needs. And by that, I mean, I could be busting to go the loo and pee, but I’d be like, “Oh no, I can’t do that because all these people need me. I don’t want to get up and walk out of a meeting because they might think I’m rude”.

So, I’d just suppress my own need to pee.

I thought I was the only one, but no, it turns out I’m not the only one!

So many women suppress their needs so much, including their basic physical needs of eating well and sleeping well and peeing and pooping and all of those things.

It’s crazy what we do, but that’s just one part of it.

It’s important to explore your own emotional and psychological needs and taking responsibility to get them as an adult.

And yes, it’s lovely if your partner is available to you and able to help you meet those needs, but they can’t do it for you.

I needed to own my need for freedom and anonymity. My husband can’t do anything about that.

However, he recognised I wasn’t meeting my need and he’s been saying since the lockdown lifted, ‘Nat you need to get away by yourself.’  I came up with lots of excuses about being busy and he reminded me I was putting everyone before myself and he was right.

The good news is he got a similar need for freedom, so he understands me.

But what I see in my work is that many women are still waiting for their partner to give them permission to meet their needs. They are looking to their husbands for their approval and permission to do what they need to do for themselves and it causes such anger, frustration and resentment.

But that’s just the old pattern of suppression. It’s the model of the old relationship where men were seen as the authority and women believed they had no voice, power or significance.

And I tell you, it makes women very sad and very sick.

That’s why it’s a really big part of the work that I do with women is to help them realize no one who has the power over them.

They have all the power.

If they choose to take it, they can turn their relationships into a healthy, equal dynamic, rather than this parent-child dynamic.

If you’re ready to step into your natural power in your relationships I invite you to join my next round of “Boundary Queen – How to Create Meaningful Relationships Without ‘Losing Yourself’ Again.”

Trust me, life will never be the same when you become a Boundary Queen!

The course will help you:

* Develop the clarity and awareness to know when, where and how to set boundaries, so you can be a woman who respects herself, holds herself in integrity and owns her own life.

* Gain the discernment to handle conflict gracefully, and the inner strength to hold your boundaries without caving into guilt, so you feel confident and can make empowered choices.

* Reclaim your feminine power so you can naturally speak your truth from the heart, create genuine connections and experience relationships that are meaningful and drama free.

If you’re curious and have questions for me, you can book a Free Enrolment Chat with me too.

I look forward to seeing you become a Boundary Queen too!

I hope this blog has been of service to you. I invite you to comment your experiences or thoughts on this topic below.

You do have the power to just be you.

Love,

Want to connect personally with me?

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