Stop Choking on Someone Else’s Apple

Serve yourself and own your stuff.

I was recently reading the Women’s Village newsletter and discovered that our inspiring founder, Tania Guest, has been nominated in the Business: Faith category of the Seven Effect Awards!!

However, when I first read the word ‘faith’ an immediate sense of unease came over me, you know the kind of internal feeling that instantly ignites when something just doesn’t sit right with you? 

It’s time to get curious …

When this type of body reaction happens to you, do you usually ignore it or do you get curious and go exploring? If you often ignore it, I completely understand because sometimes I do exactly the same thing. Usually, it’s because I am too tired, too busy or just over dealing with my stuff!

But on this occasion, I chose to dig in and what I discovered was the word ‘faith’ to me, has always been synonymous with religion due to my Catholic school upbringing. I was sternly told things like “one must have faith in God”, “God only saves those who are faithful to him” etc.
Now as a naive young girl, these kinds of messages sink in deeply and I had no idea until now that the word faith for me was so loaded.

Well, you don’t know what you don’t know right?

My flatmate told me there is a term in psychology called an ‘interject’ which is basically some information that you have ‘just swallowed’ without questioning. Like being force fed a piece of apple and swallowing it whole, an interject gets wedged in our psyche until we bring our awareness to it and do the work to ‘spit it out’ so to speak OR to take genuine ownership of it because it serves us in some way.

As a woman, what chunks of the apple have you swallowed?

This got me thinking about how many interjects we as women have swallowed over our collective and individual lives. Stories we have been fed about what it means to be beautiful or successful or a good mother just to name a few that most of us can relate to.

I was fed the story that faith goes hand in hand with serving God and God only. I can see that this definition has not served me and I am redefining what faith means to me, starting with having faith in the flow of life.
You may relate to my story or something else may have popped into your awareness through reading thus far. If this is the case I invite you to feel into whatever it is by asking where did this story/word/belief come from? Does it serve me? Did it ever serve me? Am I willing to let it go? How can I redefine this story/word/belief for myself by creating my own definition?

Your Village sisters are here for you

If you find this process challenging, know that there are both providers and members in the Virtual Women’s Village who would be more than willing to hold space for you because that is what we are here for. 

To see each other for who we really are, relating, inspiring, celebrating and helping each other stop choking on the old chunks of apple lol!! 

Big love,

Sherree Maniks,
Virtual Women’s Village Service Provider, Wardrobe Coach and Art Therapist