Recovery Writer Gretchen responds to May prompt

                                                        photo credit: Mathias p r Reding on unsplash.com

 No Award Will Make Me Proud

Carry those buckets of water to your 4-h sheep. 

I don’t care how heavy they are.

I also don’t care that you wanted to show pigs and not sheep.

Third place is not good enough.

Your best is not good enough. 

Try harder, practice more. 

All the awards you win and 

I’ll still never say I’m proud of you. 

Nor will I dare say I love you. 

I’ll teach you how to hang out with the guys,

Poach deer, drink like a fish and 

out work the best of men. 

But I’ll never allow you to be the 

Lady you were meant to be. 

Not as long as I’m in your life. 

After cutting me out of your life 

you’ll finally be able to learn all the ways

of a true lady with the help of

your wonderful, patient husband 

Whom I hate, because he was your 

ticket to a mentally healthy life style. 

Thru out your life you will have 

Ultimately abandoned and lost 

yourself with chronic people pleasing. 

You will lie about your likes, dislikes, 

wear makeup that you hate, buy the same 

clothes “your friends” wear and chronically 

beg for others opinions so you can please others. 

Always reading their behaviors and moods 

to see if you pleased them well. 

You will eventually get to the point where 

you realize you don’t know who you are anymore. 

You will try all the eggs like Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride

And realize you like them scrambled with katchup

Not fried over easy like I taught you. 

This will be the true beginning of your journey

to self discovery and overcoming people pleasing. 

You will become so addicted to learning who you truly are

that you’ll never want to please anyone for the sake of losing 

your identity again. Keep on trucking. 

Written by a recovering people pleaser~

Gretchen Marie Walters 

Prompt for May. My Daughter's Birthday

 People Pleasing

 There is nothing wrong with wanting people to like us. But when we betray our true selves in trying to please or ingratiate ourselves with others, we are trying to get others to fill our emptiness.  It doesn’t work.  And we lose our identity in the process. I wrote this poem in the voice of my mother.  She taught me how to be pretty and how to flirt.  This was people-pleasing behavior. I didn’t know it could backfire.  It seemed natural to me.  

                   My Daughter’s Birthday

Daughter, you begin your journey from a  pool

where you’ve been floating to a light you can’t imagine.

Soon enough I’ll perch you in a tub of water on the grass,

posed for a Christmas card, naked cheer.

Until the water cools and life that requires rain,

an ancient incantation to conjure, will usher

in uncertain scarcity.

You will lie, pretend, keep secrets, smile when someone’s

watching, learn to love a dress with green apples, just

like mine, totter in my evening shoes, imitate my laugh.

And we will band together, pretty women, entertain

the men, despise their undersides, leave them in the

valley, windblown on our mountaintop.

                    Connection to Recovery:

I learned people-pleasing from my mother. This trait masked my True Self and made me feel like a fraud. I gave away my power to people I was trying to please. Today my Loving Inner Parent tells me I am complete just as I am. I don't need to smile when I'm unhappy or pretend to be self-sufficient when I need help.

                                             PROMPT:

1.Write about how you learned about people-pleasing.  

Who were your models? What type of behavior did you take 

for granted because of what you saw around you?

2. Write in the voice of one of your caregivers about a trait they 

passed down to you.

3.Write about a time you gave away your power to please 

someone and the feelings you felt then. Bring your writing

 forward and write about how you feel now.