Guest post by Rivka Nehorai (aka Mrs. Pop Chassid).
It seemed like such a simple idea. One I had heard before, and yet, when the mother of fourteen in a recent article on JewishMom.com described how she pulls herself up from motherly difficulties by reminding herself she’s a queen, something suddenly clicked.
I looked at myself; my exhausted, overwhelmed self with two little sick girls to take care of, and asked myself: do I consider myself a queen? Which was a pretty laughable statement, answerable with a decidable no.
I realized in that moment that I didn’t feel admiration or respect for myself. I felt overweight from pregnancy, perhaps a bit pathetic, embarrassed, and upset.
It seems like the ultimate irony; why would a queen be down in the dirt, changing diapers, trying to reason with/cajole/discipline an energetic two year old? Wouldn’t a real queen be served rather than serving?
And I reflected that the test for a real queen (for royalty is deeper than blood, thicker than circumstance, but an essential integral element of a person) is to leave her throne and her place of control and to go to the field, working her butt off, digging, sweating, and yet remain a queen.
I reflected in how when my husband and I married, we swore to make each other a king and queen respectively, yet we forgot about the responsibility we have to place the royal crown on ourselves first without relying on the other person to inform us of our dignity.
And I pondered on this – all this time… all this anxiety… my negative emotions… could they have stemmed from a misinformed mistranslation of the problem? A problem of an unannounced internal relationship of conditional love: I will love myself if…
If I get things done.
If I do things right.
If I look and act up to my expectations.
If others respect me.
Then I will respect myself, feel dignified, feel like a queen.
But we are not royalty because of what we do.
It is our birthright, our destiny, our deeply ingrained character trait.
Sent from above to be tapped into down here.
And our children, our children will thank us for remembering this destiny, this truth.
For they do not want to bring us down.
They want us to go down from our castles, from our thrones, to join them in the mud and chaos.
And bring them up.
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