You were born worthy

I think midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear:
I’m not screwing around. It’s time. All of this pretending and performing – these coping mechanisms that you’ve developed to protect yourself from feeling inadequate and getting hurt – has to go.

Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts. I understand that you needed these protections when you were small. I understand that you believed your armor could help you secure all of the things you needed to feel worthy of love and belonging, but you’re still searching and you’re more lost than ever.

Time is growing short. There are unexplored adventures ahead of you. You can’t live the rest of your life worried about what other people think. You were born worthy of love and belonging. Courage and daring are coursing through you. You were made to live and love with your whole heart. It’s time to show up and be seen. ~ Brené Brown

I hike most mornings with a friend whose marriage is on shaky ground. No affairs. Just a husband who has long avoided childhood issues (sexual abuse, the refusal of his parents to acknowledge it) and who has made his wife the lightning rod for everything that's wrong in his life. The good news is she and her husband have both – finally – found a therapist they each like. The bad news, I told her, is that it's likely to get a lot worse before it gets better. Why? she asked. Well, I explained. It's like when you have a nagging headache but you're distracted by other things and not really paying attention. But when you finally acknowledge that your head is throbbing, suddenly you can think of nothing BUT your headache. It's excruciating. It's pounding. Why won't it go away.
Yep, that's what the beginning of therapy can feel like. You're finally acknowledging the pain. The emptiness. The throb of loneliness. And you can hardly think of anything else.
Like most of us, she wants to do something. She wants things better. Now. She wants him to stop being cruel to her. She wants him to realize how lucky he is to have her. She's afraid that he's going to fool this therapist into believing he's the good guy and she's the problem.
So I gave her something to do. Take care of yourself, I told her. Be kind to yourself. Be gentle.
She's a cancer survivor. Someone who still deals with issues around her medications, someone who looked death square in the eye and said 'not today, buddy'.
She's strong. And loyal. And kind.
It goes against her nature to stop trying to make things better. It goes against her nature to put herself first. It feels...wrong.
But it's not. There isn't a more right thing to do than to take care of ourselves. To be kind to ourselves. To be gentle. Because from that well of self-love and self-care, we find what we need to be our best selves out in the world.
It will feel awful, I told her. You will fail many times. But if you manage to focus on self-care just one in ten times, instead of trying to fix someone else, instead of trying to change other people, then that's one time more than usual. 
And, with practice, it will get easier. It will begin to feel...good. You will notice that the world feels more manageable. When we stop trying to control everything around us, it frees us to control the only thing we've ever been able to control. Us. 
When we stop, as Brené Brown says, worrying about what others think of us, we realize something we knew all along: That we are worthy of love and belonging. We always have been. There's nothing about a partner's betrayal that changes that. It never will.
Start where it matters: Within your own heart.
Get ready to be seen in your full glory.
Because, my dear betrayed warrior sisters, adventures await.