Note from Leah: I recently came across this post in my archives from 2014! It was when I was finishing up my SHE RISING painting (although I only knew it as SHE at the time and can no longer find that “in progress” picture). What struck me when rereading this was how the work I am doing know and the exciting things that have unfolded for me this year (including having the story of my journey from attorney to artist and coach featured in Dr. Tererai Trent’s book, THE AWAKENED WOMAN) are so very much aligned with the words in this post. XO-Leah (November 21, 2017)
“SHE” painting in progress,
Leah Campbell Badertscher
“The world will be saved by the western woman.”
-Dalai Lama
“If you are what you should be,
you will set the whole world ablaze!”
-St. Catherine of Siena
“Save yourself and there’s no way you can’t save the world.”
-that’d be me
The Every Mother Counts campaign was founded by Christy Turlington to end preventable deaths, around the world, that are caused by childbirth and pregnancy. I think it is an amazing and important initiative. And if you’d like to support this cause, you can donate here.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the campaign’s name:
Every Mother Counts.
I love the name and have been turning it over and over in my head.
Every Mother Counts.
Of course. It’s true.
Every Woman Counts, too.
This is also just as true.
Of course it is. But too often we believe it’s not – especially when it comes to things that aren’t an issue of immediate life or death.
And what breaks my heart and gets me all fired up to DO something – is when we don’t believe we count.
Again, I’m not talking about imminent life or death issues (though we count there, too).
I’m talking about settling for less than who you are meant to be.
Because I’ve believed that before about myself – that I was “well-enough” off in life and I should just be happy because who am I to think my contributions would matter anyway? When there is so much suffering in the world, why care so much about what I’m going “to do” with my life? Who cares if I paint? If I write? If I coach some other middle-class American woman to realize her potential and fall in love with her life?
And who cares up about waking up and falling in love with life? Isn’t that selfish? Indulgent? Such a “first-world” problem?
I don’t, of course, believe this is the case, but even so, I still have to work through these deeply embedded mental barriers with myself (even after years of this) and I work with them constantly with clients.
Maybe it’s because I’m still healing from that self-inflicted heart break and demeaning of my own soul, but this is something I strongly believe needs to be addressed in the psyche and myth of our modern day woman if we are going to have a more healed, more whole, world.
I’m talking about those things in your life that feel like a diminishing of your light, a slow soul death.
Do we still believe we count when it comes to our dreams, our intuitions, potential and possibility?
Or do we think these things are of little value and selfish, indulgent, and perhaps not even “real”?
A guilt complex and false, limiting beliefs about “worthiness” (worthy isn’t even on the table, not even in the same zip code, when it comes to your right to be here!) will not save the world.
You might…but not if you are dying on the inside. (No matter how quietly, politely, nonchalantly, stoically, unselfishly you are doing it…)
You don’t have to be dying to have a life worth saving and living.
And I’m not talking about “having it all.” I don’t want it all, anyway, and I don’t believe most of us, if we get really clear on it, really do.
But I do want what I should be. I do want what I can be.
And I want that for every other woman, mothers and daughters and sisters, too.
Every Woman Counts.
I want every woman to know that and really, really, truly, believe it. Not only for others. But for herself, too. We all know the paradox of how seemingly easy it can be to love and value another, but so hard when it comes to ourselves… and yet we also know that loving and cherishing yourself is really the only way to truly love and cherish another.
Save yourself and there’s no way you can’t save the world.
With love,
Leah
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