Unraveled: Unbinding the Patriarchal Spell of Self-Abandonment

Codependency runs deep in my blood. I've been unpacking that baggage for several years now, but have recently gotten down to the last sweater in the suitcase. It's called codependency and it's old and ragged and as I lift it out I notice a thread hanging off one of the sleeves. I give it a quick tug, but it doesn't break, it gets longer. I pull harder and the thread is now a string. Panic sets in--this was my favorite sweater. It's piling up in my hand and before I know it, half the sleeve is gone.

That's kind of how it feels anyway--to take everything you thought you knew about yourself and have to look at it through a lens that changes everything--watching it all unravel. Codependency is one of those things that you think you understand--sort of--until you understand it as self-abandonment. You recognize the moments in your life where you did that, again and again.

Every gut feeling you ignored.

Every time you let someone else's voice be more important than yours.

Every time you let someone treat you poorly in the name of love, you abandoned yourself.

You abandoned yourself, so that they wouldn't have to.

I've been thinking about self-abandonment a lot lately--forced by recent life events to confront the generational components of my own wounds, and how those wounds unintentionally bled onto my own children. But when I think about codependency as self-abandonment, I can't help but think that this is a concept that is built into our patriarchal society. It's not only a product of abuse, physical abandonment, or emotional neglect, it's part of what has come to be expected of the women.

Did you know that one of the main reasons women were encouraged to be in the home after labor laws were put into effect during the Industrial Revolution was because the men didn't want to pay them the same as the men?

They told us we were "allowed" to stay home and take care of everything and they would "take care of us."

But they didn't.

Because we were never equal and couldn't even vote.

And now we've had to go back into the workforce too, but we also still have to take care of everything at home. And they still pay us less. And expect us to work outside the home, manage the household, take care of them, and the kids, and... abandon ourselves in the name of family values.

The bottom line is that our patriarchal society was built on selling codependency as a virtue.

Add in a family history that could write the book on the delicate dance between addiction and codependency and it's a recipe for a lifetime of abandoning myself in a whole colorful array of ways.

They say knowledge is power and I'm here to tell you that's the truth. If you've spent your whole life abandoning yourself, it can be scary to have to think about who you are when you're not trying to be what you think everyone expects of you. It could mean admitting that what you've called love was never really love at all. You can't keep being the person keeping everyone above water. You're drowning, just like generations of women before you.

But there is also hope. None of the patriarchal systems (religions included) that govern our society were ever created to support equality or protection for women. They created these things to convince us that it was a good deal and have spent hundreds of years gaslighting us into abandoning ourselves for them.

The jig is up. Many of us have already pulled the string. We let that sweater disintegrate right in the suitcase and then threw the whole thing over the bridge. We're telling the others and showing them how great life can be when you go ahead and unpack all that baggage you've been carrying around--especially the stuff that was never yours to carry in the first place.

The systems are crumbling--and with them, the patriarchy. That path forward will be lit with the flames of the divine feminine rising from the haze of self-abandonment.