The Weight of Responsibility
Here are the highlights of this episode:
[0.08] We're talking about the stress of breadwinning, making money, paying the bills, and the added stress of family responsibility, including taking care of the kids.
[1.33] It's crucial to pay attention to this because it's not just about making money. It's about the toll it takes on our mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Your feelings of stress and overwhelm are valid, and it's important to address them.
[2.32] This imbalance is not only in body, mind, health, and spirit but also between the masculine and feminine parts of one's self, and it causes problems.
[4.21] I understand why you feel worn out, tired, and stressed out, and there's no end in sight. And then we're constantly in this Monday-to-Friday cycle, where we're going into the weekend totally exhausted and exhausting ourselves more by drinking and all that kind of stuff.
[5.59] When I was younger, I felt like I had to always be responsible. I was an extremely responsible kid, and I was worried about my parents and them making money. Because I had all of this masculine, responsible energy, I attracted the opposite in a more relaxed, creative, expressive guy who didn't want to work.
[10.03] The struggle between I need to hold it all together, but I'm also stressed right out. And it keeps us away from our spiritual side. It keeps us from feeling into ourselves, from going inside and looking inside.
[11.53] Healing Shamanic Drumming Song.
[17.32] Join a group healing community with a once-monthly healing ceremony where you can come and receive shamanic healing medicine.
[18.52] I invite you to join this healing community.
Here is the Full Transcript for this episode:
We're talking about the stress of breadwinning, making money, paying the bills, and the added stress of family responsibility, including taking care of the kids.
Doing all of this work creates an imbalance and unbalance, and it's a source of our mental illness, physical ailments, pains, and aches. And it actually interferes with your relationships. So, this concept of being the breadwinner is important for both men and women.
Most families are double-income breadwinners and still struggling to keep it all together. If you've ever found yourself in a situation where you had to be the breadwinner to care for someone else, you know the added stress it brings. You're not alone in this struggle. Today, we're here to acknowledge and address these challenges.
Welcome.
Welcome to Receptive Radio™.
This is a space for coaches, healers, consultants, conscious entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, visionaries, and bridge builders-the pioneers of the new world. This show will help you tap into your potential, realize your purpose and power, and create prosperity by doing what you love. I'm Jennifer Sifert, a shamanic teacher, mentor, healer, and soul guide.
So, back to breadwinning. It's crucial to pay attention to this because it's not just about making money. It's about the toll it takes on our mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Your feelings of stress and overwhelm are valid, and it's important to address them.
Because when there's stress on you to make so much money, because you have all of these responsibilities to take care of, like paying the bills, the credit card, the loans, the debts, the mortgages, buying the groceries, paying for the kids' events, and then maybe you have some money left over to have some fun. This causes so much mental, emotional, and physical stress that we don't even think about having a spiritual relationship with ourselves.
How can we?
Because we're so focused on stress every day.
This imbalance is not only in body, mind, health, and spirit but also between the masculine and feminine parts of one's self, and it causes problems.
I'm going to give some stories and examples. I was in the CPA profession as an accountant, which was very focused and directional. Deadlines drove my life. So there was a constant stress of getting things done on time. And it repeated every month because every month there was a deadline. In the middle of the month, at the beginning of the month, and the end of the month, there was always a deadline every week. I had to manage the staff to encourage them to finish the deadlines so that I didn't have to pick up all the slack. But at the same time, deadline focusing is a very masculine-orientated thing. So, like focus, keeping direction is very much a masculine energy. And so for me to be consistently in that energy for eight to 10 or 12 hours a day, five to seven days a week, throws off my spiritual side, which is more feminine, creative, and expressive. And, you know, that constant focus on responsibility, being responsible to take care of everybody else's stuff and the deadlines, and then to be responsible to earn the money you need to take care of your bills and everything. It is a burden. It is very heavy to carry, and I get it.
I understand why you feel worn out, tired, and stressed out, and there's no end in sight. And then we're constantly in this Monday-to-Friday cycle, where we're going into the weekend totally exhausted and exhausting ourselves more by drinking and all that kind of stuff. We don't know how to rest and relax because our nervous system is always so stressed out.
So why is this important?
It's important because there's an out-of-balance situation, and we need to become more aware that we're out of balance. To become balanced, we need to pay attention to the masculine and feminine sides within ourselves. And there's this rise of the feminine right now, the rise of the feminine and that causes stress. Well, I don't want to become stressed out in the feminine. I don't want to be stressed out at all. Trying to push my creative expression into the world and then being the breadwinner as the feminine. It's very confusing. It's very confusing. It's even hard to discuss.
Would you agree? Put your hand up in the comments. It's tough to discuss. The balance of masculine and feminine energy is a very touchy matter.
Now, I'm going to tell you a story. When I was younger, I felt like I had to be responsible all the time. I was an extremely responsible kid, and I was worried about my parents and them making money. Then I grew up, you know, worried about getting good grades so that I could make money later. That kind of thing, and then I ended up getting into a relationship with somebody, one of my first relationships where they were more the slacker, more irresponsible. Because I had all of this masculine, responsible energy in me, I attracted the opposite in a more relaxed, creative, expressive guy who didn't want to work.
And then, I married this guy, moving from Calgary to Vancouver when I was 21 years old this month. Yeah, it was in August that I got married, and we got our first place; I got a job right away as a waitress. He wasn't making any effort to find a job.
And, you know, we had some money in the bank because we just moved and got married. One day, I came home from the office from my waitressing job—Fogg N’ Sudds on Broadway and Cambie Street.
And there was a letter for me. And this letter felt very ominous.
And it had a lot of responsibility in it. When I picked it up, the weight of that letter was extremely heavy. And as I started reading it, I felt a thunk on my shoulders. And that letter said that he had no intention of getting a job. And that it was my responsibility to figure it out. He had no intention. And I was just like, what the $%$! You know, huh?
At 21 years old, getting that responsibility dropped on my shoulders, and it's my problem to pay the rent, feed us, work, and all that kind of thing. Well, I had a flip-out. I was not going to put up with that. And, I should've just got in my car and drove back to Calgary and annulled the marriage, but I didn't; for some reason, I stayed in the marriage, and it, it went into, him telling me, okay, okay, I'll get a job.
But then, every couple of weeks, he'd quit that job and the pattern of him not working. And me being responsible for everything was just like piling on top of each other, piling on top of each other, piling on top of each other. So, at 21 years old, I'm a breadwinner and waitress. And lo and behold, you know, I made the most money I'd ever made. And I was able to keep it all together. And then that pattern stuck inside of me. When I finally got out of that relationship, the following relationship was the same thing. I was still responsible, taking on all the money issues and ensuring everything was paid. And then, after that relationship again, it happened multiple times. So, this masculine energy inside of me was out of balance.
This responsibility, which I needed to hold together for the whole family to take care of everything, was out of balance. And I know that other people in this community and in the world have this out-of-balance going on inside of them.
The struggle between I need to hold it all together, but I'm also stressed right out. And it's something that we need to bring up and talk about more because it does cause mental illness. It does cause physical pain and cancer and all kinds of ailments and physical problems. And it keeps us away from our spiritual side. It keeps us from feeling into ourselves, from going inside and looking inside. And it causes us to blame everybody else for our problems because we have to take care of everything.
And so I want to give a healing for this because it's very important and we're in a very powerful time. Not just today, not just this month. We're in a powerful time where we can make significant changes. But that's a lot of responsibility. That's a lot of responsibility for us to save the world. And as I understand it, we need to take care of ourselves. We need to save ourselves so that we can save the world. Imagine a place where everybody takes care of themselves and the world gets automatically saved.
So, I want to offer a drumming healing song to restore the balance between the masculine and feminine inside you. Inside of myself and inside of anyone who listens to this podcast in the future. So, if you're watching live, thank you for being here. And you'll have this recording for infinity as long as it's inside the internet. Close your eyes. Relax. Open to receiving. You don't need to do anything. Just go into your heart space. Notice yourself inside your body. Connect your feet with the ground. Sit in your chair. Relax. This is for you.
And that's just a sample of the kind of healing work I do.
We need unconventional methods to bring the masculine and feminine back into balance within ourselves and the world. If you're feeling the pain of being the breadwinner and having so much responsibility at home, at work, and in your family life, I want to offer you an opportunity to transform that.
So I've created a group healing community with a once-monthly healing ceremony where you can come and receive Healing medicine, like that drum, for 30 minutes. And every month, I have a new theme. This Monday, the theme is Blue Moon. So, on Monday, the full moon is here, and it's blue. So, it's the 13th moon of the year, a rare lunar eclipse or event. It's not an eclipse. The moon is powerful enough to help us with our emotional bodies. Balancing the feminine and masculine, supporting all of our responsibilities, and taking an opportunity to receive extra support from the universe, the earth, the sun, the moon, the stars, invisible support you don't usually get in everyday reality.
So, I invite you to join this healing community.
The first healing is free, the first month is free, and then it's $20 a month afterward. I've experienced tremendous support and community. It's an opportunity for you to transform things that are bothering you without having to figure them out.
I'd love to see you there.