Divesting from doing other people's work
Some practices and a pep talk for when you're setting new boundaries
Some of us are so exhausted because we are doing other people’s work. We have conflated our work with their work. And we don’t have to be doing that…. We all have to move to the front lines of our [own] work.
— Lama Rod Owens
This past long weekend, I was fortunate to be able to spend time with chosen family, having relocated to Massachusetts this summer in order to do just that. I cooked for a dear friend who got to bring a new date around for the first time since her divorce. I snapped the ends off haricot verts with my son, and made the Pillsbury croissants my grandmother always made with me. I decorated cookies alongside some dear cousins and their children. I celebrated a friend’s baby-to-be at a charming shower (my first since our late loss nearly three years ago). Each moment took effort to pull off, but it was mostly the joyful kind.
I know this is not the case for many others. In past years, it wasn’t like that for me.
I spoke with many caregivers in my life this week who are working to extricate themselves from various holiday performances that leave them feeling isolated and/or enraged. Many are caring, empathetic people who, as they approach mid-life, are running out of f#$s to give, what with the family they have and/or the one they’re trying to build, the aging parents, the increasing work demands, and everything else required to survive under a late-stage capitalist regime with a frayed social safety net. They are coming to realize that they must either say “no” to more people or self-immolate. And yet as they do so, it’s kicking off an unnerving round of forming, storming and re-norming in their lives.
As a result, these kind and self-reflective people are second-guessing themselves, because re-negotiating “the way we’ve always done it” isn’t going perfectly smoothly. Is it because they’re being … selfish?
My guess is that if you’ve been reading and relating to this so far — you’re probably not.
As Jimmy Knowles lays out in this popular video, it can be confusing for caring people when our attempts to forge better, healthier connections with others lead to conflict. When someone in a system expresses previously unmet needs, it does catalyze change, because the other people in that system have two choices: meet the need, or silence it through aggression, avoidance or denial. But catalyzing this kind of change isn’t a big deal if people are prepared to meet your needs. It’s only a big deal if they’re not.
Unfortunately, when meeting needs involves taking accountability or giving up unearned privilege, many people choose to eschew fairness and instead fight to the death. Sometimes literally.
The choice to dismiss others’ needs is what creates and prolongs conflict.
Including during the holiday season.
If you are in fact ignoring other people’s needs, then, well, yes, you might be a little bit selfish. It happens. Choosing a new approach may be a compassionate move — not just for others, but for you, if you’re hoping to have less drama in your life.
If you haven’t dismissed anyone’s needs recently, but you’re mired in conflict anyway, you might have someone in your orbit who is resisting the change that’s required of them to meet your needs.
If this is the case, then it may not be helpful to keep asking yourself what more you can give up in order to get the love that you want, what more can be done for or about the friends and family members who aren’t coming around.
Instead, you might consider doing less for a little while, and turning that loving energy towards yourself.
As Lama Rod Owens said a few weeks ago, in reference to this dynamic vis a vis our current politics:
Some of us are so exhausted because we are doing other people’s work. We have conflated our work with their work. And we don’t have to be doing that…. We all have to move to the front lines of own [own] work.
I’m also here to remind you — because I need this reminder too — that it’s a tall order for any caring person alive today to wring unadulterated joy out of a holiday based on a genocide, while several others rage on around the world. That one’s bigger than all of us.
A more honest way to move through this season, I think, is to give ourselves compassion for the both/and of it. Every harvest season offers a bounty of reasons to thank the Earth and the earth-tenders who make it possible, and each one is also an opportunity to grieve our lost villages, including those that used to span the length of Turtle Island. (To this end, we’ve been reading this beautiful children’s book nightly; my five year old son loves it.)
Self-compassion helps us to sustain our ability to show up for all of this.
It also helps us to show up for the chosen family members who are here to love us in ways that don’t make us work so hard for it, who always ask what they can bring to the table rather than demanding that you clear away all their mess for them, who think we’re worthy of compassion each and every day.
A self-compassion invitation for this season:
Let’s notice where our feet feel as though they’re not quite touching the ground, and press down, as though growing new roots that can connect us to other healthy beings around the world.
Let’s notice where our legs are crossing involuntarily, and our hips are aching from gripping the chair, as we consider whether to stay or leave the table.
Let’s notice how our shoulders may have begun to curl around our tender hearts, and allow ourselves, where and when it’s safe, to roll them back underneath our ears, readying our hearts again to receive.
Let’s notice where our teeth grit together, and our jaws creak at the hinges, as we consider which truths are safe to speak aloud this time, and which need more time to cook before they’re ready.
Let’s notice the wrinkled place between our eyebrows, as we attempt to understand someone or something that’s just beyond the edges of our experiences or imagining.
Let’s look up and around, noticing that other people feel this too.
If you’re a fan of guided audio meditations, I’m re-posting these three short but impactful practices from Kristin Neff’s Fierce Self Compassion to support you as you do so. (This book is a must-read, one of my favorites of this year, as I wrote when I first posted these here.)
The Self Compassion Break: In her book, Neff, a self-compassion researcher and the mother of a child with autism, offers this basic, science-backed frame for self-compassion meditation. She argues that using this meditation helps us to care for ourselves as we do for others, even if this has been hard for us to do in the past, and that this care helps resource us for the challenges we face.
Compassion With Equanimity: Neff offers this variation on self-compassion practice for when we are caring for someone else who is suffering, and the going is getting tough. This second practice invites you to take “one breath for you, and one breath for them.”
A mantra for when we hit the limits of what we can do for another: Everyone is on their own life journey. I am not the cause of this person’s suffering, nor is it entirely within my power to make it go away, even though I wish I could. Moments like these can be difficult to bear, yet I may still try to help if I can.
If you liked this post, I hope you’ll join us for our next In Tending online gathering, where we practice with meditations like this in community, share what they’re opening up for us, offer each other encouragement to keep going, and allow our intuition to find expression through creative prompts.
Our next gathering will be in January 2025. You can find out more and sign up to be on the invite list here.
Further reading:
Windows Open, Windows Closed: another body-based way to check in with yourself about what you need
Sensitivity on Substack: more holiday-themed links and recs for folks with high sensitivity, and the ones who love them
I sent my mom these beautiful, affordable Indigenous-designed goods for her own kitchen this year. Highly recommend.
This GoFundMe aims to provide shelter and other needed resources for families in Gaza. Please consider donating if you have the means.
This is so lovely, Ryan! I’ve been seeing your name around in comments and things, but hadn’t put two and two together that you have a newsletter. It is wonderful and I subscribed immediately and shared it with a friend!