Taking More Gentle Care of Our Selves
Giving our selves permission to let opportunities pass when their timing feels wrong for us, knowing that Spirit will continue to send us more/better opportunities until one that feels just right shows up.
Acknowledging that beginnings inevitably involve endings, we come to understand, to honor and to embrace the intertwining of grief and joy that we experience at such thresholds.
Choosing to become curious witness-observers exploring the intricacies of our own ways of being, feeling and doing allows us to become more gentle and generous toward our selves.
Choosing to listen to the quieter voice deep within that asks for us to go only as fast as the slowest part of us feels safe to go – so that we may be more gentle and cherishing of our tender selves.
Honoring the vulnerable parts of our selves by committing to listening to, comforting and providing for them whatever they need in order feel safe to move forward when they're fearful.
Honoring the courage it takes to risk living in the middle of our healing journey – learning to love, accept, know and enjoy our inmost selves – in a world that does not support or value this choice.
Framing more broad open-ended intentions (instead of specific goals, affirmations, visualizations) as a way of honoring that we may not yet know what's really right for the who-we-are-becoming.
Committing our selves to making room to safely feel all of our feelings, no matter how "extreme, unreasonable, immature, not like our selves" we or others may think they are.
Reminding our confused/doubting selves to stop doing, thinking, talking, figuring; remembering, instead, to take breaks, to make time to be still, to listen inward for the knowing in our belly feelings.
Opening our hearts to embrace our less than perfect selves with generosity and compassion, knowing that this is what will grow us, open us to deeper knowing and help us to heal our woundedness.
Recognizing when something we're engaged in is no longer (or not from the get-go) nourishing or enlivening to us; finding permission to stop or not to start engaging in these processes that feel like "too much work.”
Discovering that as we come to value our own ways of being, no one else has much trouble with these ways.
Becoming more gentle, loving and generous with our frightened selves, especially when it appears "there's nothing to be afraid of.”
Valuing our inner timetables enough not to move forward with anything (however inviting) for which we don't yet feel ready or safe enough.
developing the practice of loving, cherishing, acknowledging and honoring our selves just exactly as we are right now.
Accepting that the dismantling of self-hatred is always an inside job and then devoting our selves to a daily practice of compassionately, unconditionally and fiercely re-mothering our selves.
Finding permission to give to our own selves the exquisite devotional caring we all too often give away to others (who also need to learn to give this kind of caring to their own selves).
Turning our well-acculturated sensitivities and sense of responsibility for the caretaking of others toward our very own selves.
Calming Our Inner Critical Voices
Committing our selves to the practice of speaking kindly and lovingly to our selves; trusting that change and growth flow more readily from tender nurture than from drill-sergeant criticism.
Honoring how much more richly we grow and flourish as we practice being kinder, gentler, more acknowledging and celebrating of our selves.
Becoming more generous with the pace of our unfolding as we come to understand that growth is an ever-ongoing process, not an achievement or the reaching of Nirvana.
Recognizing that what looks like procrastination (to outside eyes) is usually a sign that either we're asking our selves to do something that's not right for us to do at all, or not right for us to do at this moment.
Practicing to hold our selves safely in the face of resentful responses to our acting from our empowered fullness in a world in which power is typically perceived as power-over, as limited in availability.
Claiming and honoring our vulnerable, emotionally responsive, relational natures even as the patriarchal white male paradigm encourages us to devalue and disown these sources of our deepest empowerment.
Understanding that the loving acceptance we so desperately seek from others can come only from our very own selves.
Accepting that we are always doing the best we can with the consciousness available to us in this moment and celebrating the baby steps along the way of our unfolding.
Recognizing that what we judge in someone else is most often something we have disowned in our selves; using such times as opportunities to acknowledge/embrace those disowned parts of our self.
Becoming more spacious and generous with our selves and others around differences; learning that difference need not be directional (e.g., good/bad, more than/ less than).
Not shaving off parts of our selves to become the person we think that others will like or accept.
Learning how to cope with and to heal the harsh inner critical voices; understanding how they've come to be so powerful.
Staying Safe Through Difficult Times
Staying with our selves in the middle of (rather than rushing away from) difficult emotional processes, we dare to feel, release and organically come out the far side of those processes.
Finding permission not to push our selves into forgiving those who have abused or wounded us when such forgiving feels like it re-violates our tender, wounded selves.
Understanding that as we practice becoming fiercely protective, unconditionally loving mothers to our selves, our view of our selves becomes more independent of others' opinions of us.
Learning not to measure our selves against what others are doing or what the culture prescribes; coming to trust that our own process of unfolding is the right one for us.
Recognizing the importance of listening to our own inner knowing place, even in the darkest times: a story of enmeshment and emergence from an emotionally abusive relationship.
Honoring our right to claim all the time and space we need to make it safe to feel our "dark" feelings, to uncover the knowings, wisdom and truths in their depths.
Giving our selves permission to be just where we are while we're there so that we can be fully present to these trying, challenging, difficult times and can learn what we need to from them.
Practicing becoming a consistent and fierce protector for our vulnerable selves, trusting that we must act from what is so for us in the moment, not from what is supposedly "really so.”
Honoring the active, empowered and empowering process of giving up the struggle of resisting what-is-so without forcing our selves to give up our feelings about what-is-so.
Recognizing that angry, nasty, mean-spirited feelings are signals that something "not good for us" is going on; listening inward to discover what that something might be and what we need to do about it.
Claiming mistakes as a normal, unavoidable part of the process of life that can offer us opportunities both to see more deeply into and to grow our selves.
Recognizing that most often it is our own comforting for which we are yearning; then giving our selves permission to apply our exquisitely honed nurturing skills to our very own wounded selves.
Claiming our right to our own fears: listening to them, taking them seriously, honoring them and taking good care of our selves in the middle of them.
Learning to accept that angry feelings are a part of being human and finding safe ways to release them.
Discovering the richness, comfort and nourishment in surrendering into feeling sorry for our selves and pulling the covers up over our heads.
The Magic of Rest and Going Slowly
Understanding and embracing our differentness as something valuable, honorable and empowering about our selves in a world that presses always to make us be "just like everyone else."
Claiming the right to allow our selves to rest whenever we feel tired – regardless of whether we or anyone else believe either that there's "no reason to be tired" or that there's "no time for rest.”
Giving our selves permission to move more slowly, care-fully and cautiously when we feel scared or anxious so that we may honor, protect and gently encourage our fearful selves.
Acknowledging not-knowing times as important, empowering parts of the cycle of growing; holding our selves gently and compassionately during these sometimes disquieting seasons.
Understanding the importance of listening to our body and belly (gut) feelings; recognizing these as messages from our inner being's direct knowing.
Focusing on the thinnest-slice-of-now to keep our currently unprepared selves from feeling overwhelmed by visions of the changes that the who-we-are- becoming will be ready to meet.
Learning to lovingly, patiently and compassionately witness the old patterns we are repeating when we are not yet able to change them.
Reclaiming the natural cycles of ebb and flow, coming together and coming apart, expansiveness and withdrawal in our everyday lives.
Learning to recognize and acknowledge even the smallest steps in our own growing process.
Opening to and valuing the magic and wonders of non-doing, empty time/space in which to nourish our body, mind and spirit.
Valuing the empowering and healing richness of intentional or serendipitous periods of still, empty, fallow time.
Reclaiming rest as an urgent, meaningful, honorable, significant, enormously productive choice to create time/space for the richness of our inner lives to blossom.