It’s important to take a good look at yourself every once in a while. Not the way you look at yourself while you’re getting dressed or putting on makeup. Not the way you look at your thighs or sunspots or chin hairs . Not that way. You need to look dead into your eyes- at your real self. You need to make sure there are no lies there. You need to make sure the eyes in the mirror are the eyes of a woman you respect. . As I looked I asked myself: is the decision to continue abandoning yourself really what your children need from you ? . Mothers have martyred themselves in their children’s names since the beginning of time . We have lived as if she who disappears the most , loves the most. We have been conditioned to prove our love by ceasing to exist. What a terrible burden for children to bear- to know that they are the reason their mother stopped living . What a terrible burden for our daughters to bear- to know that if they choose to become mothers, this will be their fate too. Because if we show them that being a martyr is the highest form of love, that is what they will become. They will feel obligated to love as well as their mothers loved , after all. They will believe they have permission to live only as fully as their mothers allowed themselves to live. If we keep passing down the legacy of martyrdom to our daughters, with whom does it end? Which woman ever gets to live? At the wedding altar? In the delivery room? Whose delivery room- our children’s or our own? When we call martyrdom love we teach our children that when love begins, life ends. This is why Jung suggested : THERE IS NO GREATER BURDEN ON A CHILD THAN THE UNLIVED LIFE OF A PARENT.