Sometimes giving to others has been the only way I’ve kept going at all, the only way I felt like I had value. My cup was empty for me, but full for others. And I think....that’s ok? The demand that women give to the point of self-sacrifice can be toxic for sure, but yes, I have often found myself giving from my brokenness, not from my abundance.
I specifically remember a day when I was in the midst of the worst depressive episode of my life. My abusive marriage was unraveling, but had not yet entirely unraveled; I was in the thick of it. My main emotional support was my best friend, but his mother was dying in another state. Furthermore, a large chunk of the rest of my support network was wrapped up in a disastrous drama revolving around a years-old accusation of sexual abuse by one person I cared for very much against another person whom I deeply loved.
I’m a hospitalist and I was working on the cancer floor of the hospital. Every hour or so, I had to slip into the stairwell and sob. I would close my eyes and contemplate just driving my car off the overpass, or maybe into a road cut.
On the day I am thinking of, one of my patients was being worked up for a new and life-threatening diagnosis. There were all sorts of challenging logistical problems at play, largely because his care had taken place over multiple hospital systems. I must have spent at least four hours (probably more) phoning multiple hospitals and specialists, getting them to phone conference with each other, transferring imaging studies and lab reports from one system to another, and calling various family members to talk them through everything.
It’s always meaningful to me when family members thank me, but my patient’s daughter thanked me that day, and only the fact that I had made a fairly recent stairwell visit stopped me from crying, heh. Knowing that I could still give even when I had absolutely nothing was a gift I have never let go of.
I attribute this not to me but to grace, to be fair; I think when we give from our emptiness that’s often because, hmmmm, sometimes the times when we have absolutely nothing are the only times when we are able to get out of God’s way and let Him fill us. Thinking back on it now, I think one of the most important lessons from that day is that it’s never really me who is giving anyway; it’s always God’s love working through me.
I just realize it more when I myself have nothing.
It's often easy to think of suffering as a separating thing, I think, because sufferers tend to be seen as locked away within their own bubble: that we can't understand them, and they're unable to focus on anything other than their pain so they can't understand the rest of us who have *lives*. But of course that's not the case. I really like the idea of offering up our sufferings for each other, because, yes, you can have a bit of a bond with someone if you're suffering the same general kind of thing as they are even if nowhere near the same intensity (I'm thinking here of the example of myself and one of my aunts: she's been in enormous chronic pain for a couple of years and in contrast my day-to-day pains, that I've come to think of as ordinary, and which are hardly ever entirely disabling, is *nothing*), whereas perfectly healthy and happy people just don't get it. (If anyone anywhere ever *is* perfectly healthy and happy.) But when you deliberately turn your suffering to good use beyond the "oh yes, I can understand" conversation, and use it to pray for the other person all the time even when you're miles and miles apart, that can really bring you close.
Along another train of thought, it's comforting to know that even when we are empty cups, God can still pour Himself out of us. To take a tiny example, it's terribly difficult to get myself put together and out the door on time each day. I'm almost never right on time, let alone early, for anything, so on those rare occasions where I am, it's obvious to everyone that it wasn't just me making that happen. Similarly, I'm so clumsy and unskilled when it comes to helping people that when something I say or do does lighten their burdens in some way, it *has* to be clear that it was "not I but Christ who lives in me*. Which is reassuring to me in turn --- to remember that no, I'm not too broken for God to use. I don't have to worry about pulling the right things out of myself when I know they're not there.
I think that some of the most cathartic moments for me have been times when I squared the circle between ways I view relating to self vs relating to others. While for years I have appreciated the dignity, beauty, and worth in the sufferings and helplessness of others, it was only recently that I articulated to myself that my own suffering, failing, and helplessness is worthy of the same dignity, and for me that was a moment of such catharsis that it brought me to tears.
Perhaps a similar reconciliation can be made on the topic of giving through suffering. Even if I am struggling, if someone needs help and I am the best person to provide it, I dig deep inside myself and find the strength to do it. This necessarily must include being *able* to provide help--which is obviously not the case with all needs. Similarly, if I am struggling and *I* need something that I can only give to myself--some examples that spring to mind are exercise, meditation, and just being kind to myself--I dig deep inside myself and find the ability to do it. I guess in the case of both myself and others, I try to be called more by the existence of the need that I am the best person to fulfil rather than anything about my personal state at the time. I'm not sure that this approach would work very well if I put my own needs into some sort of separate category that required less (or more) prioritization.
I think it's important when people say to put on your own oxygen mask first to think about what constitutes oxygen. Oxygen is the stuff that gives us energy and life. That is different than what anesthetizes us. Watching a TV show or playing computer games may on some level de-stress, but it isn't oxygen.
Learning to recognize what acts as oxygen for me transformed a whole lot of misery. For me -- like Rosemary below -- the ability to help others is oxygen. So at a time when I had three kids in three separate hospitals, it was actually AIR to meet up with another mom whose kid was struggling with something my kid had been through. I could do something useful with all that pain, including alleviating someone else's. That gave me a sense of purpose beyond my suffering, in the midst of my suffering.
An empty cup requires that we look beyond ourselves. By asking for help or seeking out the support of others we are reminded that God has not made us to be wholly self-sufficient. The difficulty in our society is not the empty cups- that's a normal part of motherhood! It's the distorted expectation that we should be able to somehow fill our cups alone.
I love this whole answer to the "helpful and the helpless" dichotomy. The reality of human existence is that we all are a mix of both. It sounds like stating the obvious, and yet bears reminding, that we all can be - and usually are - needed and needy in different ways at the same time.
My preferred response to the oxygen mask analogy is that, true, you won't be much help to the person next to you if you're not breathing. But you also won't be helping if you first secure your own mask, then fix your hair and makeup, then make sure all your carry-on luggage is conveniently assembled, etc. etc. all while the person next to you is dying of asphyxiation.
This may be tangential...but I keep thinking of a story I want to share about pouring from an emtpy cup. Long ago, I trained and supervised a small group of volunteers to completely retrain other volunteers in a nonprofit organization. Many of the training sessions had to be scheduled in the evenings, from 6 to 9, and most of us had worked a full day by then. Many times, those of us teamed for an evening session would view it as nearly impossible: a long drive? to lead a group of trainees who were apt to be resistant or even hostile? When we were already exhausted. Yet...we had a mission we believed in.
What became a sort of in-joke was to say "I'm doing this one on eagles' wings." The thing is -- it really worked. Driving an hour or two felt effortless, as if some other force were doing the work. The workshops and post-evaluations and drives home, the same. What had felt impossible, became possible without strain.
Many people (perhaps over centuries) have found a similar effect from saying "I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me." I think this requires a more specific belief system than saying "Now I'm riding on eagles' wings." Yet the two statements have something in common.
I have a story for another time, about how a prayer I was used to praying while driving enabled me to do something "impossible" when my truck's clutch went out completely in the middle lane of an expressway during rush hour. Same basic thing: surrendering the "impossible" to a spiritual force for the good.
I don't believe that offering ourselves to others in our weakness and poverty, of sharing from our suffering, is the same as pouring from an empty cup.
When I think about the phrases mentioned in the beginning of this essay (oxygen mask, empty cup, loving self), I think about very basic needs being met: every person deserves to live knowing his/her dignity and worth. Every person deserves to live as though they are worth being cared for. There are ways in which this knowldege erodes over time, in probably every life! But I see this erosion go unchalleged too often in professions and vocations often occupied by women. It's almost as if the message is that you know you're giving enough when you're too tired to care for yourself.
I have seen many people give and love in solidarity when they are tired, ill, weak. Is it always true that exhaustion, weakness, and illness mean one has an "empty cup"? I love the essay on Josephine Butler, learning about how she lived in solidarity with women who were struggling. It may be that she was weary with sorrow and exhaustion, but also that she was passionate about this part of her calling, which gave her the ability still to go out among these women and perhaps find herself in this giving. Butler seemed to see and honor the innate dignity in the women she served - did she see and know this dignity because she also believed it about herself, in the midst of her great suffering?
I think the self-care movement is more about (or should be more about) giving us permission to take time and energy to learn and be confident in our innate goodness and worth. The poor, ill, and tired can still give with great generosity if they live from this knowledge. At the same time, many who have an abundance of time, energy, and resources may be unable to offer solidarity if they don't know the source of their dignity and worth. I believe telling people, especially women, that they are worthy of being cared for, is important. If we know and believe this, we will be better able to give from a place of joy and confidence even if we're not "whole or healed."
> Have you ever found yourself dividing the world into givers and receivers?
Yes, yes, all caps (and in bold and a larger font) "YES!"
Well, perhaps "YES!" with one small modification... not "the world" but "MY world." And it's such an untrue dichotomy - and I've composed paragraphs in my head about the fact that it's an false dichotomy - but there you go!
Ughh, I feel a little ashamed to talk about what _makes_ makes me put one person in the "receiver" category, and another in the "giver" category, but here's something I _can_ talk about:
When it comes to the "receivers" - I feel very compelled to respond to if they ask for help. (But sometimes I will avoid them - while I know they have a need - if they aren't reaching out to me.) I have been pulled out of my own doldrums and discouragements repeatedly by engaging with someone's request for help!!
The "givers," I feel, "don't need me." And so I neglect a hundred opportunities for joyful camaraderie with friends who could spur me on, who could be my collaborators! (because I don't reach out to them often)
The title of this post gave me great delight. Right now I'm writing out something about one of my favorite books the world, "The Joy Luck Club," and pondering the ways the mothers of the story have allowed huge swathes of their identities be "erased" in order to move to America... well, it just fits really really well. (Also, hearing push-back against "You have to put on your own oxygen mask first"-style reasoning is kindaaaa cathartic!)
Giving when I'm empty is often a source of joy, and when I find someone so grateful to want to give back to me, I am whole. I believe we are made to love each other. Wonderful article, thank you.
Sometimes giving to others has been the only way I’ve kept going at all, the only way I felt like I had value. My cup was empty for me, but full for others. And I think....that’s ok? The demand that women give to the point of self-sacrifice can be toxic for sure, but yes, I have often found myself giving from my brokenness, not from my abundance.
I specifically remember a day when I was in the midst of the worst depressive episode of my life. My abusive marriage was unraveling, but had not yet entirely unraveled; I was in the thick of it. My main emotional support was my best friend, but his mother was dying in another state. Furthermore, a large chunk of the rest of my support network was wrapped up in a disastrous drama revolving around a years-old accusation of sexual abuse by one person I cared for very much against another person whom I deeply loved.
I’m a hospitalist and I was working on the cancer floor of the hospital. Every hour or so, I had to slip into the stairwell and sob. I would close my eyes and contemplate just driving my car off the overpass, or maybe into a road cut.
On the day I am thinking of, one of my patients was being worked up for a new and life-threatening diagnosis. There were all sorts of challenging logistical problems at play, largely because his care had taken place over multiple hospital systems. I must have spent at least four hours (probably more) phoning multiple hospitals and specialists, getting them to phone conference with each other, transferring imaging studies and lab reports from one system to another, and calling various family members to talk them through everything.
It’s always meaningful to me when family members thank me, but my patient’s daughter thanked me that day, and only the fact that I had made a fairly recent stairwell visit stopped me from crying, heh. Knowing that I could still give even when I had absolutely nothing was a gift I have never let go of.
I attribute this not to me but to grace, to be fair; I think when we give from our emptiness that’s often because, hmmmm, sometimes the times when we have absolutely nothing are the only times when we are able to get out of God’s way and let Him fill us. Thinking back on it now, I think one of the most important lessons from that day is that it’s never really me who is giving anyway; it’s always God’s love working through me.
I just realize it more when I myself have nothing.
It's often easy to think of suffering as a separating thing, I think, because sufferers tend to be seen as locked away within their own bubble: that we can't understand them, and they're unable to focus on anything other than their pain so they can't understand the rest of us who have *lives*. But of course that's not the case. I really like the idea of offering up our sufferings for each other, because, yes, you can have a bit of a bond with someone if you're suffering the same general kind of thing as they are even if nowhere near the same intensity (I'm thinking here of the example of myself and one of my aunts: she's been in enormous chronic pain for a couple of years and in contrast my day-to-day pains, that I've come to think of as ordinary, and which are hardly ever entirely disabling, is *nothing*), whereas perfectly healthy and happy people just don't get it. (If anyone anywhere ever *is* perfectly healthy and happy.) But when you deliberately turn your suffering to good use beyond the "oh yes, I can understand" conversation, and use it to pray for the other person all the time even when you're miles and miles apart, that can really bring you close.
Along another train of thought, it's comforting to know that even when we are empty cups, God can still pour Himself out of us. To take a tiny example, it's terribly difficult to get myself put together and out the door on time each day. I'm almost never right on time, let alone early, for anything, so on those rare occasions where I am, it's obvious to everyone that it wasn't just me making that happen. Similarly, I'm so clumsy and unskilled when it comes to helping people that when something I say or do does lighten their burdens in some way, it *has* to be clear that it was "not I but Christ who lives in me*. Which is reassuring to me in turn --- to remember that no, I'm not too broken for God to use. I don't have to worry about pulling the right things out of myself when I know they're not there.
I think that some of the most cathartic moments for me have been times when I squared the circle between ways I view relating to self vs relating to others. While for years I have appreciated the dignity, beauty, and worth in the sufferings and helplessness of others, it was only recently that I articulated to myself that my own suffering, failing, and helplessness is worthy of the same dignity, and for me that was a moment of such catharsis that it brought me to tears.
Perhaps a similar reconciliation can be made on the topic of giving through suffering. Even if I am struggling, if someone needs help and I am the best person to provide it, I dig deep inside myself and find the strength to do it. This necessarily must include being *able* to provide help--which is obviously not the case with all needs. Similarly, if I am struggling and *I* need something that I can only give to myself--some examples that spring to mind are exercise, meditation, and just being kind to myself--I dig deep inside myself and find the ability to do it. I guess in the case of both myself and others, I try to be called more by the existence of the need that I am the best person to fulfil rather than anything about my personal state at the time. I'm not sure that this approach would work very well if I put my own needs into some sort of separate category that required less (or more) prioritization.
I think it's important when people say to put on your own oxygen mask first to think about what constitutes oxygen. Oxygen is the stuff that gives us energy and life. That is different than what anesthetizes us. Watching a TV show or playing computer games may on some level de-stress, but it isn't oxygen.
Learning to recognize what acts as oxygen for me transformed a whole lot of misery. For me -- like Rosemary below -- the ability to help others is oxygen. So at a time when I had three kids in three separate hospitals, it was actually AIR to meet up with another mom whose kid was struggling with something my kid had been through. I could do something useful with all that pain, including alleviating someone else's. That gave me a sense of purpose beyond my suffering, in the midst of my suffering.
An empty cup requires that we look beyond ourselves. By asking for help or seeking out the support of others we are reminded that God has not made us to be wholly self-sufficient. The difficulty in our society is not the empty cups- that's a normal part of motherhood! It's the distorted expectation that we should be able to somehow fill our cups alone.
I love this whole answer to the "helpful and the helpless" dichotomy. The reality of human existence is that we all are a mix of both. It sounds like stating the obvious, and yet bears reminding, that we all can be - and usually are - needed and needy in different ways at the same time.
My preferred response to the oxygen mask analogy is that, true, you won't be much help to the person next to you if you're not breathing. But you also won't be helping if you first secure your own mask, then fix your hair and makeup, then make sure all your carry-on luggage is conveniently assembled, etc. etc. all while the person next to you is dying of asphyxiation.
This may be tangential...but I keep thinking of a story I want to share about pouring from an emtpy cup. Long ago, I trained and supervised a small group of volunteers to completely retrain other volunteers in a nonprofit organization. Many of the training sessions had to be scheduled in the evenings, from 6 to 9, and most of us had worked a full day by then. Many times, those of us teamed for an evening session would view it as nearly impossible: a long drive? to lead a group of trainees who were apt to be resistant or even hostile? When we were already exhausted. Yet...we had a mission we believed in.
What became a sort of in-joke was to say "I'm doing this one on eagles' wings." The thing is -- it really worked. Driving an hour or two felt effortless, as if some other force were doing the work. The workshops and post-evaluations and drives home, the same. What had felt impossible, became possible without strain.
Many people (perhaps over centuries) have found a similar effect from saying "I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me." I think this requires a more specific belief system than saying "Now I'm riding on eagles' wings." Yet the two statements have something in common.
I have a story for another time, about how a prayer I was used to praying while driving enabled me to do something "impossible" when my truck's clutch went out completely in the middle lane of an expressway during rush hour. Same basic thing: surrendering the "impossible" to a spiritual force for the good.
This is a very interesting idea, thank you Leah!
I don't believe that offering ourselves to others in our weakness and poverty, of sharing from our suffering, is the same as pouring from an empty cup.
When I think about the phrases mentioned in the beginning of this essay (oxygen mask, empty cup, loving self), I think about very basic needs being met: every person deserves to live knowing his/her dignity and worth. Every person deserves to live as though they are worth being cared for. There are ways in which this knowldege erodes over time, in probably every life! But I see this erosion go unchalleged too often in professions and vocations often occupied by women. It's almost as if the message is that you know you're giving enough when you're too tired to care for yourself.
I have seen many people give and love in solidarity when they are tired, ill, weak. Is it always true that exhaustion, weakness, and illness mean one has an "empty cup"? I love the essay on Josephine Butler, learning about how she lived in solidarity with women who were struggling. It may be that she was weary with sorrow and exhaustion, but also that she was passionate about this part of her calling, which gave her the ability still to go out among these women and perhaps find herself in this giving. Butler seemed to see and honor the innate dignity in the women she served - did she see and know this dignity because she also believed it about herself, in the midst of her great suffering?
I think the self-care movement is more about (or should be more about) giving us permission to take time and energy to learn and be confident in our innate goodness and worth. The poor, ill, and tired can still give with great generosity if they live from this knowledge. At the same time, many who have an abundance of time, energy, and resources may be unable to offer solidarity if they don't know the source of their dignity and worth. I believe telling people, especially women, that they are worthy of being cared for, is important. If we know and believe this, we will be better able to give from a place of joy and confidence even if we're not "whole or healed."
> Have you ever found yourself dividing the world into givers and receivers?
Yes, yes, all caps (and in bold and a larger font) "YES!"
Well, perhaps "YES!" with one small modification... not "the world" but "MY world." And it's such an untrue dichotomy - and I've composed paragraphs in my head about the fact that it's an false dichotomy - but there you go!
Ughh, I feel a little ashamed to talk about what _makes_ makes me put one person in the "receiver" category, and another in the "giver" category, but here's something I _can_ talk about:
When it comes to the "receivers" - I feel very compelled to respond to if they ask for help. (But sometimes I will avoid them - while I know they have a need - if they aren't reaching out to me.) I have been pulled out of my own doldrums and discouragements repeatedly by engaging with someone's request for help!!
The "givers," I feel, "don't need me." And so I neglect a hundred opportunities for joyful camaraderie with friends who could spur me on, who could be my collaborators! (because I don't reach out to them often)
The title of this post gave me great delight. Right now I'm writing out something about one of my favorite books the world, "The Joy Luck Club," and pondering the ways the mothers of the story have allowed huge swathes of their identities be "erased" in order to move to America... well, it just fits really really well. (Also, hearing push-back against "You have to put on your own oxygen mask first"-style reasoning is kindaaaa cathartic!)
Giving when I'm empty is often a source of joy, and when I find someone so grateful to want to give back to me, I am whole. I believe we are made to love each other. Wonderful article, thank you.