"Even though love does always give the loving response in a situation, sometimes the loving response in a situation is no." Marianne Williamson
What I believe is the biggest stumbling block in being a free and a loving individual is the ability to say yes or to say no for the good of your own self.
To separate you in each relationship and not lose your self in the belief that in order for love to survive, you have to acquiesce your no.
Remember, Acquiesce is "Accept something reluctantly but without protest."
What you are giving up is you...without protest. You are saying yes to them and the no part of you is willing to stand up and protest.
I lost myself when I was a small child, I didn't even protest, for I believed that being a good girl was the way to be the most loving. To always say 'yes'...even when I felt no would feel better for me. When I didn't want to do something, I never used the word no. Especially with family. Family made it even harder to say no.
I used to feel that love was something you gave to others, regardless of the cost to you. In fact, often the more it cost me, the more loving I would appear.
I loved that way for 46 years. I loved completely empty. Is that even possible to give what you don't feel inside???
What if feeling loving wasn't a team sport but an individual game?
It took me a long while to cut the strings and to separate and I did so with the jeers and not so kind words from family directed at me. For they did believe that I was the one who could put love in or take it away. I can't.
Love is not something you give to others, it isn't an item to be passed around.
Love lives inside of you. Each of us are responsible for the love we feel...or don't feel. No one can make you more loving.
It is my opinion, that the most abusive do believe that love lives outside in another person, so they will manipulate and control them in order to protect their 'love'.
If it was possible to change a person by being more lovable, how is it then that my father never changed? Did his famly not love him enough??? Did we need to do more? Is it our responsibility for how he acted?
Somehow, in abusive situations, the abuser is not held responsible for being unloving inside, but rather the victims try harder, do more and care more and believe that by loving even harder, they will change this person.
My evidence in this is the past 8 years. How many of his family members did more and not less? How many thought less of me and not more for doing nothing?
I had given all I had for the first forty six and it didn't cure, help or make love where there was no love. All it did was drain me and keep me from my own life.
At 46 I nothing more to give. Instead of doing what I had always done, I did something new...I said no. No more. There will be no more...I will give no more....for I had seen clearly what I had supported...while I gave up me without a protest.
Imagine, I gave up me to help support an abuser...
Sometimes saying No to you is saying Yes to me....and sometimes no is the most loving response.
