I am new inside today. I feel pink and tender, as if young tissue were growing within me. I have been willing to take an ultimate risk by looking at the state of my life and insides, not as I wish they were, but as they actually are. I have experienced an inner death. I
Cycling back and forth between behavioral extremes mirrors my own cycling back and forth between emotional extremes. It reflects the seesawing from agitation to numbness, from overwhelm to underwhelm that is part of the stress/trauma response. Over eating and undereating, over spending and underspending, over doing and underdoing reflect my own lack of ability to
My siblings and I grew up with a terrible disease. That disease became part of how we related to each other each and every day. That disease became much bigger than us and infiltrated our interactions and burdened our relationships. When our parents dropped the ball, we stepped in both to help by trying to
It is my right to love my parents. My love for them is not personal, it is a powerful bonding need of mine built into me through nature. When my parents behaved in ways that made it hard to love them, they were misunderstanding their role. They were taking my love for them personally and
I can let my guard down today because I have faith in my ability to feel pain and come out of it. Each time I dip into my own inner depths, I come out with more of me, with another piece of understanding of my own inner world and what’s in it. As I develop
The secrets that we keep actually keep us. Keeping secrets is a foolish attempt to stay safe from the truth. We tell ourselves we are sparing another person or protecting ourselves ,but what I need from me and what other people need in order to make sense of me is the truth. When I withhold that
I will get myself to a meeting today. I won’t go to hear anything life altering or to say anything brilliant. I will just go to keep my soles in the room knowing that my soul will somehow follow, even if I cannot fully see it. I will go to gather my senses, to hear
Certain passions—say, for painting, writing, sports, cooking, teaching or whatever activity we’re truly engaged in--can also allow us to enter what Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi of the University of Chicago calls the “flow state.
I will find a passion. Whether cooking, painting, writing, cleaning, golf, scrap booking, volunteering or something with gardening or animals, I will find something I truly enjoy doing and I will do it. When I engage in an activity that I feel at one with I sooth, challenge and nourish myself. It gives shape to