PRECIOUSNESS
Have you ever held a baby?
How did it feel?
What did they feel like to you?
Did you feel like you were holding something so precious and that you had an enormous responsibility to not contribute any harm towards this baby?
Infants are precious, and despite what we may otherwise think about them – they poop, they cry, etc – more often than not, there is an abiding sense of love we feel when we are around them. It changes the way you move!
Think about your relationship with yourself:
Do you treat yourself with the honour and care you would a newborn?
If not – why not?
Chances are, if you are reading this page, when you were born, you were every bit as precious as that newborn.
What changed?
Now, before you allow all those reasons to rush in that justify why you think or believe you aren’t precious, just take a moment and read that again –
you are just as precious as a newborn.
Would you ever say to a newborn their bum was too big… or too small for that matter?
Would you say to them that they were ugly?
What about stupid? (and I'm not talking about if you are jealous of them!)
These are not appropriate ways to talk about babies – we often use terms like sweet, cute, adorable, gorgeous, scrumptious, loveable, and yes, precious.
Babies just ARE, they know how to BE; no-one tells them how to BE like this, they simply just ARE.
And sure, when they get older, they might act, behave, speak or otherwise communicate in a way that is not very … precious.
And that’s the point.
No matter what you have experienced or how you have behaved that might lead you to think you’re not worth it and that what I’m saying is untrue –
you were BORN precious.
Nothing can take that away.
Preciousness can be masked, ignored, shunned, ridiculed, hidden, subverted, and shamed, but it forever remains inside.
You are precious.
How about that!
Allow yourself to imagine what life might be like if you treated yourself with the preciousness of a newborn.
Imagine this: you are fully grown at the age you are, but you treat yourself just as preciously.
How would you move?
How would you dress?
How would you speak to yourself?
About yourself?
Would you allow people to put you down, even as a ‘joke’?
Would you go along with something that didn’t feel right,
just because others were pressuring you?
Would it really matter what other people thought of you?
Could honouring your preciousness be more important than what others thought?
And would your preciousness tell you how it feels if someone doesn’t respect it, and you?
Could preciousness give you a way forward of how to be with that?
What about if others really do honour you?
Would that be scary? Why?
This message of what our presence delivers to others is unique for everyone – we all reflect a different aspect about what it means to be alive.
For me, there is strength in presence with nothing to shy away from.
What is it for you?
Don’t let those thoughts that tell you ‘you are worthless’ lead.
Be open to learning what you are here for – what you represent, just by being you!
Many young women are at the mercy of how the female body has been portrayed in the media and elsewhere, how it is valued (or not) in society, and this shapes what women may believe their bodies are for.
Chances are, you already know the two main themes that dictate the purpose of a woman’s body:
sex and mothering.
What do you see on social media? In magazines? Online? In porn?
How do the women look; how do they behave?
Do they feel precious – in themselves and/or the way they are being treated?
Or do they feel like they are trying, seeking attention, hardened, shut down, protected, sexualised, disembodied and/or dismembered?
Do they make you feel you aren’t enough: pretty, tall, slim, sexy, attractive…
insert other adjective here?
Are they abused, pushed around, put down, demeaned, devalued, minimised, overlooked, condescended?
Is it subtle or obvious?
Observation without judgement is the key here – just be prepared to see…
Once you are prepared to accept the unalterable fact that
YOU ARE PRECIOUS
that is, you are worth deeply caring for and valuing, you can start to feel its loving truth once more.
It resets the way you think, speak and act.
You begin to move delicately, think far more lovingly, and behave more consistently in ways that nurture that quality.
Preciousness can be the marker or litmus test for whether any one thing in your life and in the world around you, is equal to that quality within. If something does not feel precious – and I mean truly limitless, delicate, exquisite, beyond value, deeply loving and holding – then we can tell that whatever it is cannot be honouring, as it does not at least match that quality inside of you, if not confirm or expand it.
