One of my older sisters gave me a really great piece of advice in July 2011 that I still think about nearly every day. I was living in Manhattan, and she was visiting the city with her husband and two little girls (now they have 5 girls and 1 boy). They were staying in Midtown and one afternoon we decided to kill time looking at fine jewelry at Bloomingdales on East 57th. I didn’t buy anything because I had just moved back to the city from Philly and was living scrappy. She was 5 or 6 months pregnant with her third daughter and it was all hot and sticky while we walked back. On our way back I said something like “I can’t afford to buy that stuff right now…”. She responded with “I get it, and also, buy yourself one new piece of jewelry every year to remind yourself that you don’t need a guy to buy it for you.”
When I was young, I looked up to both of my older sisters. They’ve always been strong, determined, smart, grounded, beautiful, creative, and gifted with an intuition they both trust and follow. They were (are) different, magnetic. They’re 10 and 8 years old than me, respectively. When they’d come home from college—or while visiting them wherever they were living—like a sponge, I’d listen, observe, soak in their thoughts/actions/perspectives/opinions. I always thought to myself, “It must be right if they were doing or saying it”. They introduced me to the art of a road trip, personal style, freedom in relationships, quality over quantity, thinking/being different, and the importance of prioritizing myself. That last one took me a little longer to learn, but better late than never.
Over the years I struggled with self-love, self-respect, self-worth, self-compassion—all those important “self’s”, but then I’d think of them and remember that it’s possible. For a long time I wondered why I couldn’t seem to live by these standards that seemed to come so naturally and easily to my big sisters. One big reason is that we grew up in different homes, but recently I’ve accepted (and believe) that all of us live our lives on different timelines.
We’re gifted with siblings, partners, parents, friends, and extended family members—souls—that support and guide us toward learning the lessons we signed up to learn in this lifetime. It’s less about when we get there, and more about just eventually getting there. Instead of repeating the same patterns ad nauseam, I look to the people I love and respect to remind myself of what’s possible. Nothing changes without working on myself, but even more changes when I look to my core people for inspiration.
And I still buy myself one piece of nice jewelry every year—as a reminder that I can do it for myself.
