On getting comfortable with not being liked

And how liberating it is!

Where my people pleasers at?!

If you’re a women theres a significant chance that you’re raising your hand right now. Our society tells us that to be considered attractive, useful, hell, even worthy as a woman we must be liked BY EVERYONE.

But do you know what, that is exhausting and is almost certainly a contributing reason why 83% of mothers are feeling burnt out right now.

I was chatting with a friend yesterday about my time at school and how whilst I had a handful of really close friend who were part of the ‘popular’ group themselves, I was not part of it.

I went to a new school for sixth form and grasped everything it had to offer with both hands; from choir trips, to leading roles in the musical and excelling at my studies. And this got some people’s backs up.

At the time I didn’t actually give a shit, but it was the reaction of those closest to me that made me think I should. Others worrying on my behalf that I didn’t ‘have enough friends’ that I wouldn’t get on in life if I couldn’t ‘play the game’ and make everyone like me.

So I started to read more in to the interactions I had, and started to worry about what I was doing that made these girls dislike me.

It didn’t take me long to realise its because I was doing well at something and that made them uncomfortable.

I still had enough youthful exuberance and belief in myself at that point to keep on doing what I was doing and finished school with still those same handful of friends having had an absolute blast and ignoring others projecting their insecurities on to me.

It was the 2 redundancies in as many years, being bullied by a female colleague that I considered a friend, and then all the anxiety and second guessing myself as a new mother that took a hammer to my self belief and confidence.

With my self worth on the floor I allowed life and the opinions of other women to toss me about like a zippy greenhouse in stormy weather.

My levels of self hatred were rising day by day and I was completely unaware of it, let alone had any idea how to stop them.

Because I hated myself so much I had started to people please TO THE MAX! Terrified that people would discover how terrible I really was if I showed them the real me.

I lived like that for more years than I care to remember and genuinely the only place I felt I could be my true self was in my garden.

Mother Nature didn’t care how messy my mind was, if I made a mistake sowing seeds, spoke my mind or if I didn’t do something in time to meet a ridiculous deadline. She accepted me for who I really was.

For a time she was my only true friend. She helped me to rebuild myself, to start to trust others again and to start to feel confident to show who I really was to the world.

When I got backlash, because there will always be someone who doesn’t like that you’re claiming your power back, she held me close, dried my tears and soothed my tormented mind.

She urged me to show my true self to new people I met, celebrated with me when our bonds grew strong and helped me to move on with grace when they didn’t.

I shared a post on Instagram this week about who I was not for.

And it was because of the bond with Mother Nature that I’ve cultivated over the last 10 years, that I felt able to post it and not feel worried about the fact that people may decide they don’t like me because of it.

So this is a kind of thank you letter to her if you will, for letting me be comfortable with the fact that I’m not for everyone and neither would I want to be. (I literally have space for 2 more Create your Dream Garden clients this YEAR, so theres no way I could cope if everyone loved me and wanted my support in their garden!)

If this resonated with you and you’d like to start cultivating your own bond with Mother Nature in an intentional way this year then I have a really simple system to share with you.

It’s exclusively available to my paid Substack subscribers for less than £1 a week.

And remember, you can be the juiciest peach in the bowl and they’ll still be someone who doesn’t like peaches.

Hope you’re having a good week. And if not, get out in your garden, it always makes things seem better.

Kendall xx