Since channeling my book on love, my head has been spinning about relationships, divine love, and how we relate to each other as people in general. Something that I’ve been regularly reflecting on, especially since my last breakup, has been communicating  what makes me feel loved more clearly, in the context of romantic relationships. That’s definitely been the hardest place for me historically — to fully own what I need and, honestly, to require more of other people. That aside, a different angle of it came up for me this weekend. One of my close friends and I have been talking a lot recently about the type of support we want and need from people in our lives – really, our friends and our teams (in terms of business). I think we’re both in a period of reflection about who is actually contributing to our lives, and I know at least for me, I’m realizing how I really need to upgrade my boundaries and requirements in order to feel my best. I’ve gone in hermit mode the last few weeks to really reflect, and I realized that I was giving my away my peace by being a little too lax with who has access to my energy.

Anyway, this friend and I have similar histories with asking for support, hyper-independence, etc. and something we have moved through really well has been using each other to re-pattern the hyper-independence. I told her to ask me for exactly what she wants and needs – I LOVE to “serve” people I love. And when someone gives me the cheat sheet, (“I love when you do XYZ for me,” or “I love when we do XYZ together,” or “XYZ would feel so nourishing for me right now”) I am sooo grateful for that!

Anyway, I was telling her how upon reflecting I have realized that there are too many people who have “access” to my energy who do not show up for me the way I show up for them, and from there she posed the question, “What are 5 things that would make you feel supported this month from your friends that you could ask for?”

So I sat there and thought for a moment about what it would look like for me to actually feel supported. I came up with 6 things. Here is the expanded version of what I came up with as to what makes me feel supported / loved that I could express to my friends.

1. Express gratitude to me. Anytime someone sends me a personal note or public display of affection, it makes me feel so seen and appreciated. I am a big words of affirmation person and I save all the words of affirmation I get in a photo album on my phone to look at because it makes me feel good. For much of my life I pretty much received the opposite, so words of affirmation mean a lot to me. Often I feel like I pour into everyone but no one even notices / cares, which is absolutely NOT TRUE AT ALL, but my ego / inner child plays that game with me. The other aspect of this that came up in conversation was that it definitely would mean a lot to me if people shared more often on stories about my work, for instance, when it makes sense. And for a long time I didn’t let myself admit that, because I thought that was too much to ask, but I would be lying if I said it didn’t sort of rub me the wrong way when I see certain people showing a lot of public support for others but not for me, when I know they are getting much of their “inspiration” from our work together. To be more tangible, I have a lot of clients with large platforms, and sometimes they will make podcasts or posts where they are teaching exactly what they just reflected on either from one of my courses or from a session, and there’s no mention of “this came up in my session with my energy healer, Christina,” for example. Those little shoutouts mean a lot to me. I’ve had clients go through my Ascension Activator and each day pretty much verbatim share the daily lesson on their stories and frame it as their own thoughts – when it was exactly from my course, after just messaging me about what they got from the lesson. Or reading the book, messaging me about how much it has changed my life and what’s coming up for them, and then posting about a concept from it but not ever mentioning the book / where it’s from. It is what it is, but I realized that for me it really is important that I express to people how much it supports me, my work, and my business when they take an extra 30 seconds to share a screenshot of the book, for example, or if they’re going to record a 45 minute podcast episode about something they learned from me, to give a quick mention that it was inspired from a conversation we had together or something they read in my book. And where I used to tell myself not to ask for that because it was “too much,” I’ve realized that I need to ask for that, otherwise people don’t know how much that means to me.
2. Make a decision or plan something for me. I am making decisions all day long and I get exhausted. I am definitely in a more masculine energy pretty consistently in terms of making decisions, planning, holding space – for myself in my business, as well as in most of my relationships. And I get tired. (I will also add, I have been in that energy since a very young age, so that adds even more to the fatigue around it.) So when a friend asks me to hang out and then wants me to plan it, I groan. I don’t want to decide where to go for dinner, or what movie to watch, so on and so forth. It feels sooo nourishing to me when someone else plans something or makes decisions that I don’t HAVE to make for me. Even just a, “would you want to do this?” vs an open, “What do you want to do?” is appreciated by my sacral. I would rather just not do anything than have to decide. Haha. And to be honest, this has been one of the reasons I hesitate to ask for “support” or involve other people – sometimes I feel like it requires me to make even more decisions when I delegate or ask for help, than actually takes any stress off of me. I feel super supported when other people take the lead whenever possible.
3. Someone asks me to hang out without an agenda. I find that a lot of people only ask me to hang out when there’s something they want from me – they’re having a problem, they want advice, they need someone to listen – and while I love supporting people in that way, it is obvious to me when that’s the only time they reach out. What about spending time just to spend time? I find most people see me as the person to go to when they need a friend who can hold space, and then for the agenda-less meetings, they go to other friends. But then from my perspective, I am always getting the “problems,” which feels like constant work for me, so then I tell people I don’t want to hang out. The other part of this is “side door” energy – which is going through the side door when they should go through the front. For example, asking me to lunch when they really just want business advice. No — book a session. People will often try to have a “session” through asking me to go to coffee, lunch, dinner, etc. I have learned my lessons! Haha. It has really come to my attention in the last six months just how many of my “friends” should actually be clients. And that has been a tough pill to swallow. I also think that a lot of people think they need a reason to reach out – when really, I prefer the opposite. I love agenda-less hangouts.
4. Anytime someone takes something off my plate. This is related to number 2. It could be a decision, but also a task. This is SO RARE, but when it happens, literally nothing makes me feel more loved. Like, “oh I picked this up for you so you didn’t have to,” or “I found this person to do XYZ I knew you were looking for,” or “I took care of that XYZ for you.” OMG! My heart. One less thing on my plate is the best act of love.
5. Anytime anyone takes care of me. I love taking care of people – full out. If a friend comes over, I will literally cook for them all day, serve them any way I can. Growing up I would invite friends over and personally give them all facials, do everyone’s nails. I love doing people’s makeup and hair. Anything like that! It’s the same feeling as when you’re home and all you do is sit on your couch and your mom serves you hand and foot. (Shoutout to both my parents who literally don’t make me lift a finger when I’m visiting them LOL)! Anyway, when a friend makes me TEA while I sit on the couch, I feel so loved.
6. This is extra and sort of unrelated but I added this to the list – two whole days off. For me, if I even look at one work-related message, I don’t feel like I have a day off. Yesterday I had a day off – I gave myself a 10-step facial, did an aura cleansing bath, lymphatic drainage full out (sauna, dry brushing, enema, etc.), did my nails, went on a walk, drank lots of lattes and hung out with the guides. It was the best. And I felt SO recharged and inspired. I need two of those a week, minimum. Ha. My guides also told me that I need to really only be on screens 2-3 days a week and that’s been why I’ve been having certain head symptoms (accurate.) Getting there.

Those were the six things I wrote down in my phone, and I was sort of surprised when I looked back at it. I was just being honest. And I read them to my friend and she said, “Those sound great – now ask for them.” It was such a duh moment – I have been thinking about this so much in the context of romantic relationships, practicing communicating what I need in that context and seeing how well it’s been going, but then I had to think – well how do I want to be supported and loved by other people in my life? I think that so often we know what we don’t want but we haven’t been clear on what we do want. A lot of that I feel is judging ourselves for even admitting and claiming what we do want. It’s not too much. It’s just being honest.