Wanting It Isn't Selfish. It's Allowed.

This week my list looked like this: clean out the closets, organize the house, see the friends I keep meaning to call back, put together a new webinar, set another Meetup date with Mayra, and buy bushels of tomatoes for my sauce.

Somewhere in there, without meaning to, I'd already sorted it into things that count and things that don't. The closets count, they're productive. The webinar counts, it puts me in front of real conversations with women going through what I went through. The Meetup counts, that's community.

The tomatoes didn't get a reason. Every end of summer, I buy more tomatoes than any sane person needs and spend a full day making homemade sauce, the way my family always has. I used to do it with my mom and dad. Since my mom passed, I still do it, just without her standing next to me at the stove. My dad still gets his jars. So does my husband, all winter.

For a second, while I was writing the list, I almost didn't count it as a real reason. It doesn't build anything. It doesn't connect me to anyone new. It's just mine.

But it's the one thing on that list I would fight hardest to keep.

The Question I Didn't Know I Was Asking Myself

If I'm honest, I've spent most of my life needing a reason for wanting things. Not just any reason. One I could point to. Something that helps somebody, moves something forward, shows up as a result.

The sauce doesn't do any of that. It keeps my mother a little bit present, every September, in a kitchen that still smells like hers used to. I never called that a real reason before. I'm calling it one now.

Where That Comes From

Psychologists call it contingent self-worth: when how much you value yourself, and what you let yourself want, depends on meeting some outside standard, being useful, being productive, showing results somebody else can see. Most of us learned this early, and learned it well. Nobody sat us down and taught it on purpose. It seeped in, from the compliments we got for being helpful and the quiet we got when we did something purely because we loved it.

What It Costs You

Run your whole list through that filter long enough and something quiet happens. Every want on the page starts needing to prove itself, needing an audience, a purpose, someone else's approval before it's allowed to matter. And the wants tied to people you love or people you've lost don't come with proof. They come with a Sunday in September and a pot on the stove. Those are the first ones to get pushed off the list when it gets long, because they don't defend themselves the way a closet full of donations does.

That's how your calendar fills with everything except the one thing that actually holds you together.

Susan's version of this might not be tomato sauce. Maybe it's a recipe box that was her grandmother's, or a call to her sister every Sunday that doesn't accomplish anything except keeping them close. Same pattern, different kitchen.

The Tomato Test

Here's the question I'm asking about my own list now, and you can steal it: would I still want this if no one ever knew about it and it never accomplished a single thing?

If yes, it stays. It doesn't need to prove itself. Not to anyone, including you.

Try This Before the Week Is Out

Add one thing to your list that will never show up as a result anywhere, that moves nothing forward, that exists purely because it matters to your heart.

Do it anyway.

That's it. One thing, kept for no reason except that it's yours.

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My tomatoes are getting bought this week, and the sauce will be made the way it's always been made, minus one person standing at that stove.

What's on your list that doesn't come with a reason, but matters anyway? Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.

Wishing you more joy, less stress, infinite possibilities,

Chrissy D' 💜