The Art of Receiving

By Joy DettlingThe holidays are often called the season of giving and so many women I know are experts at it. We give gifts… and also our time, our care, our energy, and our hearts. We hold families, friendships, and countless facets of life together through our generosity. But when it comes to receiving — love, help, rest, praise, abundance — many of those same women are at a loss.

I’ll begin by admitting that I’m in the midst of a personal reckoning with my relationship to receptivity. It’s been a dance for me over the past several years. I’ve long been aware of my tendency to close off… patterns rooted in the past. Yet there have also been a few magical phases in my life when I felt wide open, in a flow-y, receptive state where everything seemed to align effortlessly.

Still, I can see how the deeper patterns of blocking my receptivity linger in subtle ways. I notice myself brushing off compliments, feeling a full-body discomfort when someone celebrates me, deflecting kindness, or quietly dreading my own birthday.

As I envision my dreams and work to bring them to life, I’ve noticed that life itself often doesn’t meet me halfway. In reflecting on why, I’ve begun to question whether the answer is really to do more? Or is the answer to soften more into the mystery of life? What if the universe has something to reveal that’s even more aligned, more beautiful, than anything I could have imagined on my own? These questions keep drawing me back to my exploration of receptivity.

Why So Many Women Struggle to Receive

When I talk to other women about this, there’s often an instant recognition. It seems many of us have inherited a deep conditioning: to be capable, self-sufficient, endlessly generous… but rarely open.

We’ve been praised for being strong and selfless, and conditioned to find safety in control. Many of us are familiar with the fear of being a burden. We equate worth with productivity. We believe love must be earned. Many, after lifetimes of giving, simply don’t know how to relax into being given to.

Let’s face it, receptivity takes profound courage. It asks us to let go of control. To open ourselves to being seen, supported, and affected by life in ways we can’t predict. Receptivity is the willingness to be changed by what meets us.

To receive means trusting that we are safe in our softness. That we don’t need to earn or control what’s meant for us. It can feel safer to stay guarded than to risk the vulnerability of allowing love, help, or abundance to truly land. It takes a quiet bravery to stay open when our old patterns want to close.

Starting with the Body

I have been observing the patterns of my own body to measure my receptivity. I have been noticing that receiving is deeply physical. It involves a bodily openness; the opposite of constriction and closure. I’ve begun noticing what happens in my body when someone offers me something; a smile, a plate of food, a helping hand. Do I open or contract? Do I accept, or do I subtly deflect?

I’m reminding myself what receptivity feels like. It’s in the warmth of sunlight on skin, the way the breath expands when we allow ourselves to rest, feeling loved.

Sometimes, receiving feels uncomfortable. But I’m learning that this discomfort is simply the body unlearning its old defenses; the ones that once kept love out in the name of safety. As I remind myself that I am safe, my ring of receptivity grows wider and wider.

Softening the Heart

Receptivity asks us to let feelings move through rather than hold them at bay. Many of us learned to numb or contain emotion as a form of control — to stay composed. Yet emotion is how life communicates with us; it’s our inner guidance system. And emotion moves us.

To receive emotionally is to allow emotion to be fully felt: tenderness, joy, gratitude, or even sadness, fear and anger. To let it touch us fully, without analyzing or pushing it away. When we let ourselves feel the love in a kind word or the grief of something lost, we become aware of life’s richness. I have found that emotional receptivity doesn’t weaken us; it strengthens us and ultimately deepens our life experience.

Releasing the Grip of Control

Receptiveness in the mind means I have to loosen my insistence on knowing, predicting, and managing outcomes. It’s easy to mistake control for safety and to believe that if we can just figure it all out, we’ll be okay. But the mind’s need to control often blocks the unexpected ways life wants to surprise us.

Mental receptivity is a practice in trust: allowing space for not knowing, for mystery, for new ideas and perspectives to emerge. It’s the courage to listen rather than fix, to wonder rather than decide, to believe that what’s unfolding may actually be better than what we had planned.

Perhaps the easiest way to access this is to just start with curiosity.

A Holiday Invitation

Let’s explore a new kind of giving this holiday — one that begins with letting ourselves be loved.

Let’s remember:

• Receiving someone’s care doesn’t make us selfish.• Letting things come to us doesn’t make us lazy.• Rest is not just a reward.• We don’t have to hold everything alone.• Allowing support is a form of self-care.• The more we receive, the more we have to give.

May we remember that receiving is not the opposite of giving — it’s what completes it. Every time we soften and say yes to what’s offered, we create space for connection, balance, and grace.

This season, let’s allow the gifts already on their way to find us — and when they do, let’s have the courage to open our hands, our hearts, and our lives wide enough to receive them.

Joy Dettling of Ignite Life specializes in helping individuals release unseen stuck stress patterns and embody their true potential. To find out more, visit ignitelife.net or contact joy@ignitelife.net