Neediness is the Antidote
I’ve been reading some blogs about how to market my services to you according to the social media masters. The number one thing they suggest is definining my niche client and then constantly telling you how much you need my services.
They say to tell you how much your life will change, how lacking you are without my services, what problem you need me to solve for you, and really that you’re just deficient in general without me.
I’ll admit I started down this path for a sec; defining a niche client then remembering that other person I work with who’s nothing like that. Then getting more general but realizing that maybe I want to work with different folks than I already have. Finally I gave up on the niche client exercise and just took a moment to enjoy all the strange wonderful folks who have come my way before moving onto the “Why You Need Me” list.
Do you need me because my theology is really good? In truth, everyone I work with has been a new revelation of Spirit to me and actually adds to my theology.
Do you need me because I hold the secret key to healing? Well actually, I can just send you to my own teachers and sources and usually do just that with clients. Not to mention, (shh!) you’re already healed!
Do you need me because you’re lost and need a guide? Well in my sessions the only guide I ever follow is your own essence who’s whispering in my ear exactly what you already know but maybe forgot.
Do you need me because I know how to decipher the scripture? Honestly I’m just the last in a long line of lovers of sacred scripture and I’ll happily share all my websites. In fact here they are because I’ll never get to all of scripture on my own and I need you to do some inspired digging too!
Here’s the Interlinear Bible with the original Greek
Here’s a line by line of the Gospels that delights every time
Here’s a weird ass website that I’m kind of skeptical of but still sends me down great rabbit holes
All of which just led me to the truth of what’s really happening here; I need you! Not the other way around. Sorry, social media marketing geniuses; I’m a marketing failure.
Because I really do need each and every one of you. And that neediness is hugely antithetical to, ummm well, the entire American culture. It’s been studied extensively but basically the entire modern American project functions on the myth of self-sufficiency, do-it-yourself-ness, pull up those damn bootstraps, and don’t forget to purchase your own individual washer dryer set while you’re at it.
In the process, people who were built for community and neediness and togetherness get cut off from each other and get very very sick. Yes, I’m talking about mass shootings, addiction, mental health crises, and the destruction of our miraculous green planet.
So I want the antidote. And even though the social media marketing masters were trying to teach me to say the opposite, I really do need you. Yes, you reading this right now.
How do I need you? Let me count the ways; I need you to be able to see my own blind spots, to be able to understand my impact on those around me. I need you to show me what kind of person I am by what kind of people are drawn to me and the community we get to be in together. I need you to illuminate my growing edges.
I really do need you even when we’re doing a healing for you because I get the exact same healing you do and there’s no way I’d get through all that material on my own. That’s the true healer’s secret; when you give a healing you get a healing. Try it, it works!
I need my counseling clients because you’re so loveable and remind me of how loveable and perfect and delightful we all are in every way, even when we think we’re lsot and messing it all up.
But mostly I need you because I enjoy you, I have so much fun with you, because my greatest prayer is Thank You For My Life and that life is you, people, friends, teachers, clients, sacred community across the earth.
So I do have some teachings coming up, and some new workshops to announce in the next few months, and I will be telling you the benefits of these offerings. But I wanted to put right up front that I’m the needy one here. That I’ve learned my neediness is actually deeply tied to my belonging, and my gratitude, and how much fun I get to have.
As a client said to me recently, “I have an excess of gratitude because I’ve always had an excess of need.” So thank you, deeply, all of you. I humbly bow before you, I am so grateful for your willingness to work with me and walk my path with me, and I hope, for the sake of your soul, that you get the experience of being just as delightfully needy all the days of your life.
