Bowing To Change
Surrender. At last?
Companion to podcast episode: "Lies We Tell Ourselves"
October 2023, on a retreat in the cypress tree covered hills of Tuscany, Italy, I pulled a tarot card: The Eight of Cups. It signifies the completion of a phase and the willingness to embrace new beginnings and let go of the old.
Its nickname is "bowing to change".
I’ve been journeying with that card ever since. I’ve journaled about it, created art around it, carried its invitation around like a stone in my pocket.
I knew I needed to surrender, but I had no idea what that actually meant. Or fathom a way to do it that didn’t feel like complete and utter defeat.
Then, six weeks ago, I adopted Molly.
Molly is a two year old Cavachon with a gentle heart and a tail that is still sometimes tucked. And in the most ordinary moment last week, as I was feeding her, something unexpectedly clicked.
An Ordinary Moment
For months, I'd been resisting having a food plan as part of my recovery program. The shaming voice was relentless: Normal people don't weigh and measure their food. This is embarrassing. And I resent it.
But as I was preparing Molly's meal, I noticed the careful precision with which I was measuring her food and it hit me.
I’m doing this because I love her.
I’m weighing her food because overfeeding would make her sick; underfeeding would leave her hungry.
No other reason. There is no agenda. I’m literally just meeting her needs.
And then the lightning bolt: Why do I begrudge myself the nurturing I gladly give this sweet little furball I just met?
But catching myself in the act of tending to Molly, with attention and care, I heard the lie for what it was.
The lie that my needs for structure, planning and nutritional support were somehow shameful.
The humiliating evidence of my brokenness, incompetence and inability to manage the most basic of things.
When Help Feels Like Harm
Here's what I've learned about why we resist the very things that would help us: we've been taught that needing support means there’s something wrong with us.
Think about it. How many helpful structures have you experienced as coming from a place of ‘correcting a problem child’ rather than ‘caring for a loved one’?
Budgets felt like deprivation instead of financial peace
Boundaries seemed mean instead of protective
Therapy looked like failure instead of growth
Routine appeared rigid instead of stabilising
We learn to associate support with shame, structure with confinement, planning with mistrust.
So when we encounter these things again, even when offered with love, our nervous system screams danger.
But what if the problem isn't the offering itself? What if it's the intention behind it?
The Molly Test
Here’s a question for you: What am I doing for others out of love that I resist doing for myself?
For Molly, I gladly:
Plan her meals with care and attention
Create routines and boundaries that help her thrive
Monitor her needs and make adjustments where & when necessary
I don't call her “high maintenance” for needing structured portions and meal times. I don't call her “a big baby” for requiring a predictable routine. When I go to work, I don't just leave her alone without adequate support and expect her to just "deal with it".
Yet I say all these things to myself.
Surrendering to Love
It finally made sense. I’m not being asked to surrender to control. It’s not a reprimand. The invitation on the table for me, is a surrender to love.
A surrendering to the same source of care that I naturally give to others. A surrendering to include myself in that intention.
This isn't about morality or virtue. It's about recognising that needing support is human. That structure doesn’t have to feel like self-punishment. That planning ahead isn't something I have to do because I can’t be trusted. It’s something I do because preparation is a form of self respect.
Suddenly, as I looked at my new littlest friend, patiently awaiting the meal I had lovingly prepared for her, I felt a shift in my resistance to my own food preparation & planning.
This isn’t coming from the same place it did when I was entrenched in diet culture; weighing, measuring and tracking because I was trying to conform & contort myself into a more acceptable package.
This is something I get to embrace as an act of self care.
Instead of feeling incompetent & deprived, I get to feel empowered & nourished. Instead of feeling controlled, I get to feel free.
The same behaviours that once felt like burdens of shame can now become offerings of love.
The Lie We All Tell
Maybe you don't struggle with food. Maybe your version looks different. But I'm willing to bet you have some area where you resist support because you've learned to associate it with shame.
Where do you tell yourself that needing support makes you weak?Where do you demand of yourself what you'd never demand of someone you love? Where do you roll eyes at yourself for having needs that you'd compassionately meet in others?
The lie isn't that you are incapable of doing whatever your ‘thing’ is unassisted. The lie is that you are supposed to.
Care, Not Control
Surrender, I realise now, isn't something you can do as long as the thing you think you must surrender to, feels like an enemy.
It should feel more like allowing.
A ‘letting in’ of something kind and safe and good that is offering you the same tenderness you'd show a beloved friend, a cherished pet, a scared child.
Sometimes the most profound revelations come when we least expect them. Who knew that I would have the epiphany I have been waiting for all this time over a bowl of dog food?
But maybe that's exactly how healing actually happens.
Not in the therapy sessions or self-help books, but in the mundane moments when we're most at ease and simply feeding the dog.
Amanda x
🔒 Do The Work - Inside today's paid section:
The Love Test: Reclaiming Care From Control
If this story resonated with you, if you've been resisting support that would actually help you, this practice will help you:
✔️ Identify Your Resistance Patterns: Reflection prompts to uncover where you begrudge yourself care that you freely give to others and what stories you're telling yourself about why.
✔️ The Molly Mirror Exercise: A journaling practice to explore the difference between care and control in your own life, using the people/pets you love as your guide.
✔️ Rewrite Your Support Story: Creative prompts to transform shame-based narratives about needing help into love-based understanding of meeting your needs.