Recognizing When Generosity Is Actually Self-Abandonment
This is how I reclaimed offering as something chosen, not expected. #PrideOnThePage Day 17 (June 17): OFFER
#PrideOnThePage Day 17 (June 17): OFFER
✨Offer something that can’t be returned. Let your creativity carry it.✨ What have you given freely, because it came from the center of who you are? This prompt invites you to write the moment of offering—when you crossed a threshold with open hands. Focus on what moved, what opened, what lingered in the space where the gift once was. Let the act speak for itself.
A word arrived. I paused. I let it sit.
Offer.
I found myself irritated, unsure, confused. What was it? Why was I confused?
I felt into it. Offer,tThat word lived in me before, yet held a different shape, as the one, my own prompt asked for. I felt that shape in my body before I could name it. I followed the feeling, curious.
Years ago, I lived as though offering meant existing in a state of being constantly available. My time. My knowledge. My care. My presence. Always open, always accessible. Not through clear decision—through pattern. Through early adaptation. Through the longing to be seen as worthy. I gave everything. Every insight. Every hour. Every fiber of readiness. I thought this was generosity.
It wasn’t. I was leaking from survival.
The truth lives in how it felt—drained, dispersed, undefined. I became a shape formed around others’ expectations. A vessel with no base. A resource on call. They asked. I answered. They reached. I was already there. It defined me because I had nothing else to hold onto.
In those years, there was no grounded self, only reflection. I understood myself through how others responded. Their needs guided me. Their praise or withdrawal defined my success. I mistook constant readiness for connection. I mistook depletion for value.
When I sat with the word offer this time, I felt something different. The old resonance clashed with what I know now. Back then, it wasn’t offering. It was being on offer. Like a product. Like a servant. There was no freedom in it. It followed the shape of power. Hierarchy. Obligation. Gendered roles. I gave because I didn’t yet know I could choose.
Now I do.
Today, I live in a different awareness. I hold the knowing that I am worthy. Nothing alters this. No role, no praise, no absence, no presence. Worth lives here, steady, available, whole. I no longer scan the outside for definition. There is nothing to define. There is only this: inhabiting who I am.
Worth is not performance. It is not earned. It is not granted. It simply is. Like beauty. Like belonging. Like wholeness. Like interconnectedness. We do not chase these. We return to them.
When I write about this feeling, I return to my own metaphor. The Canyon.
The Canyon never tries. It doesn’t perform. It doesn’t seek. It holds its form through time and weather and witness. People visit. People leave. The Canyon remains.
Even when shaped by human hands, even when scarred or interrupted, the Canyon never loses its essence. Worth. Beauty. Belonging. These cannot be extracted. They cannot be removed.
This morning, I felt a new grounding. A word met me again: Anchorage. Not as concept. As experience. My day began rooted in this clarity. I imagined a ship settling into safe water. I felt that anchoring in my body. I met the moment from that steadiness. This is what I mean when I say I live as the Canyon.
Anchorage allows me to give freely now—from fullness. From clarity. I offer what I carry not to earn a place, not to avoid rejection. I offer because the shape of this moment invites it. The giving holds no strain. No leak. It rises from what is already steady inside.
Later this morning, I found myself holding the Crowley Tarot book. It opened to the page on personal cards. I had calculated mine before, years ago, yet something nudged me to revisit it now, from this name. Jay. A name that came through a quantum shift, a choice that aligned with a deeper truth in me. I calculated again. J equals 10. A equals 1. Y equals 10. Twenty-one.
The Universe.
That card carries everything. Completion. Presence. Wholeness. No seeking. No waiting. The Universe contains itself. I felt resonance move through me. Not as surprise. As confirmation. I live this truth. I am the universe experiencing itself through breath, sensation, memory, movement. I hold nothing separate. There is no gap between what I am and what I offer.
This is where today’s offering came from.
I gave language. I gave reflection. I gave warmth through word. I placed something in the world not to persuade or explain, only to be. Like leaving heat on stone. Someone may come across it. They may feel its warmth. They may carry it with them or pass it by. That part is not mine.
The offering holds no demand. It doesn’t wait to be validated. It doesn’t require applause. It lives in the open. Whoever meets it may take what resonates. They may leave the rest. It invites presence, not transaction.
This is how I give now.
I am the Canyon. I am the ember field. I hold my shape. I welcome those who come with care. I remain whole, even if touched. My offering is not a sacrifice. It is a gesture. A presence. A truth that doesn’t bend for acceptance.
I long for intimacy. I long for contact. I hold boundaries. That longing meets clarity now. I don’t contort myself to be held. I don’t dilute my truth to be heard. My form remains my own. It can meet others in resonance. It can remain whole in silence.
To offer from this place means to live in alignment with worth. Worth that asks for nothing. Worth that reflects not performance but presence.
This is my offering.
I give it without tension. I give it with breath. I give it because it lives here, and I do, too.
Thank you for walking this path with me and for each and every contribution, tiny or big in #PrideOnThePage. I cherish each and every one of them.
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I love your beautiful words, and was smiling in complete recognition by the end. ❤️
I have also recently decided to say NO MORE to what was no longer bringing me Joy.
I will never stay in a job that does not fill my own cup.
Never have, never will.
I am well aware of my worth, whether others see it or not.
I am now among Others who DO. 😉🏳️🌈🦋🫂💫🇨🇦
This is so beautiful and freeing, Jay. I like the way you described offering in the past as being on offer. That really resonated with me, how often I’ve allowed myself to be treated in an extractive way, and how true agency means giving only from a full well or a grounded space.