self-love

Struggling With Guilt Over How You Reacted? This Might Help.

January 7, 2019 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

You want to be loving. You really, really do. Especially with that one person who reliably displaces their fear and frustrations onto others.

You affirm your patience. You ask for guidance. You seek solace in your beautiful, heart-led intentions to be a generous and loving human being.

But you miss your mark in their presence, and quickly hone in on hopin’, and wishin’, and thinkin’, that you woulda’, coulda’, shoulda’ done better.

Good news: Guilt is a sign that you need to prioritize self-kindness.

After a less than stellar interaction with someone whose very presence is an emotional trigger, you need love. Because if you can’t be around someone without pain attempting to do the thinking and speaking for you, you’re still reeling from the past.

To heal from the past you need high-frequency feelings pulsing through your body, mind, and spirit, like love.

Love is…self-compassion when you miss the kindness mark in the company of certain people.

You know the ones I’m talking about…

We don’t need to try to eradicate our guilt. Nope. Nadda. Not productive.

We just need to notice guilt’s priceless message: “Psst! We need some self-compassion in here, Stat!”

Love up on yourself when guilt makes itself known. Notice it and breathe into it. Acknowledge your humanness and the timeline of trauma that has a tendency to interfere with your intentions to be kind on every occasion.

And vow to try again next time. 🙏🏻

This one’s tweetable:

Being kind to others might be your goal, but unless you make self-compassion a priority you'll always miss your mark. Click To Tweet

And this one’s Instagram ready. Right click & Save to share:

It’s never up for debate: You are loved.

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger from Pexels

Thoughts About Things Falling Apart

August 3, 2018 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

It’s Friday and it’s been one hell of a week. Maybe you feel the same?

Personal issues that have my heart feeling like a yo-yo? Check. Mercury retrograde getting me feeling a certain shade of yikes? Check. Sleep issues? Check.

I can’t help but feel like things are falling apart.

What do we do when things feel like they’re falling apart? I know what I used to do: Make a home in my pain. I felt the return of that act this morning. I was drafting a response to the awful response from the other party in a lawsuit I’m in the midst of when I felt a familiar sort of uncomfortable radiating from my stomach.

It felt constricting, and immediately took away my desire to eat or drink, and yet, I kinda liked it.

It made me feel shaky and sick like I wanted to throw up, yet still, I kinda liked it.

It was volatile, and wavered with intensity depending on the tone of the words I either typed or erased in the document I felt consumed with populating.

To be blunt, it felt fucking terrible, yet still, I kinda liked it.

So I asked myself the obvious: “Why do you like this? Why are you continuing to do this, even though it is causing you to suffer? What is happening here?”

I didn’t wait for an answer or try to diagnose it. I just stopped typing and the feeling went away. And when the idea came up that I should continue to type, the feeling returned.

“Not like this,” I said to myself, though the words didn’t seem to come from me.

I realized then that I was so very, very tired of trying so hard at things that caused me so much emotional turmoil. I was tired of digging my own emotional grave, and I wanted to continue my commitment to doing things differently.

Different to me means not causing myself harm; it means being unwaveringly kind to myself, no matter how other people might treat me. Choosing to take this path dictates that whatever brings me the opposite of that pit of dread responding to an essay of lies and personal attacks initiated is where I need to go.

So I erased the parts of the letter that were harsh, and replaced them with words that were lighter and more loving. And yes – I sent love to the person who tried to minimize me with misogyny.

This is a moment if there ever was a moment; This is profound; This Oprah “aha” worthy.

I am very, very proud of who I am and the strength I have uncovered through my research and my commitment to doing things differently. Every step I’ve taken has allowed me to witness my pain, instead of allowing pain to run my show.

I make the choices now – Not pain, and not other people who are in pain, either.

I am so very grateful for my capacity to forgive, even in the face of unwavering efforts to minimize me. And yes, this week has had some challenges – the last two weeks, really – but it’s all worth it because of this moment, and my capacity to sift the good from the unsavory.

That said, I truly care about all of you. I don’t need to know you personally to wish you well and remind you with my whole heart how important it is that no matter what you do this weekend, you be loving to yourself.

In the face of confusion or feeling like things are falling apart, self-kindness is the answer.

❤️

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Waiting For Bravery

July 26, 2018 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

The only reason we don’t open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don’t feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with.

– Pema Chodron

Bravery isn’t always with us. Its variable existence is often why we do one hell of a job dancing between keeping our hearts open and closed to one another.

Sometimes we’re not ready to see what’s happening below the surface of our drive to call someone an asshole. Sometimes we’re not ready to hit up the “What’s alive in you is alive in me as well” sweet spot.

To not want to open our heart to someone is the path to opening it. We have to feel how much doing the same thing we’ve always done feels. We have to wait it out in that prickly spot of feeling confused and uncomfortable until bravery comes to guide us in the direction of, “She’s super impatient and rude and thinks everyone else has a problem but her, and I did the same thing yesterday to the hubby.”

Noticing that you’re keeping your heart closed is a great substitute for self-shaming in the absence of bravery to open it. Are you choked at someone? How very OK and human of you. Is it possible you might not be ready to dig into what’s going on below the surface of your anger towards someone? Heck yes. Is there a chance the behavior you witnessed is triggering you ’cause it might be emulating your own? Give me a hell yeah (when you’re ready to give one.)

To summarize: Go easy on yourself while you wait.

The Power Of Not Taking Things Personally

July 6, 2018 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

I was at an event recently when I came into contact with a self-admitted twitter troll.

The dude walked up to me, and followed up his hello by asking me what the name of my blog, Must Love COWS, was all about, and questioned why there was no theme to what I wrote about.

Being human, and having the life experiences I’ve had, I found his interrogation approach pretty gross. I mean, the reference to Cows instead of Crows was a dose of contempt that surprised me for sure – there are no cows in my logo. But I made a vow (Hah! We were at a wedding!) to let that shit go, and process it later.

But life didn’t like my plan to process it later. During a discussion with a cousin, I was interrupted by the dude again, with the question, “Why do you hire a copy editor?” I turned to him with a smile on my face and said, “Because sometimes I hire a copy editor.”

“Oh,” he said, his face softening ever so slightly. And then he began the descent into his admission of love for getting into arguments with people online.

That was the moment my frustration with his shitty behavior instantaneously melted away. His favorite pastime is picking fights with total strangers, I thought to myself. It all makes sense: His interrogation had nothing at all to do with me, it had to do with his own pain.

Thankfully dessert had just been served, so I left the table because I can do that, leave conversations I don’t want to be a part of, and swapped out the sadness in his words for a brownie. And while I ate the food I was already too full to eat I started up a mini internal self-therapy session that went like this:

I’ve experienced pain to the degree that I wanted other people to hurt, too. It’s been a long while since I’ve wanted to take it to the point of trolling strangers online, but I know what it feels like, to boil over with contempt as a result of internalized pain I was too afraid to process.

I started to make guesses about why he felt the need to be so aggressive, too, to help release the need to keep being pissed off:

When it comes to his seemingly calculated interrogation of me, maybe he thinks I need to be taken down a peg for being female and having a platform, like so many people like to do in the Huffington Post comments section?

Maybe he’s jealous, and doesn’t think I deserve a platform? Maybe he thinks he’s smarter, and more talented than me — that his name should be in the byline, not mine?

Maybe he’s lonely? Maybe he’s desperate to connect with others, but no one wants to because he is so aggressive? Because of that, maybe he’s willing to go to any means necessary to get attention?

Maybe he was raised in the absence of important lessons, just like I was? And maybe he doesn’t realize that true connection requires an open heart, not a latched-closed one, and that you can’t create connection when every word and action is led by fear? (’Cause dude is scared shitless of something.)

Whatever the reason might be, my experience, of feeling deeply offended and then quickly being unburdened by those feelings, provided a huge growth moment.

I realized — again — the power of not take things personally.

You can read books about it and know without a doubt in your logical mind that taking things personally is counterproductive. But it’s the stories we tell ourselves that have the power to help us move away from being habitually offended by everyone who is rude to us.

Being human, and living with the program I have running through my head means that I’m not done learning lessons in the Don’t Take Things Personally department. But the turnaround from being offended to knowing that there is always something deeper going on behind the scenes than our habitually hyper-defense tactics allow us to realize, is coming along quicker than it used to these days.

A mentor of mine recently told me something super non-spiritual that I loved, and that is that sometimes, people can be dicks. And there’s a reason they act like dicks, but it’s up to them to figure out why and do the work required to heal, not us.

When we realize it’s not our job to reprimand and correct, we don’t have to work so hard at coming up with sarcastic or equally dick-ish ways to clap-back; rather, it becomes about being kind to ourselves by noticing our feelings without creating more shame to process, and giving the truth some time to surface.

And trust me, the truth will surface. Sometimes it even shows up at the same time dessert does. 😬

Dressing Room Deficiencies

April 25, 2018 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

More often than not, I eat to heal my body and mind. Though as the “more often” suggests, it’s not always the case.

I have a very human inclination to want to look good. Diagnosed with anorexia in my late teens, I am mindful, if not a bit concerned at times, of my steady concern over what I’m eating.

But the sprinkles on that learned, need-to-be-in-control-of-everything cupcake (mmmm cupcakes) is that these days I recognize and value the difference between eating to be healthy and eating to look a certain way.

Today, weight loss isn’t the primary focus. Rather, it’s a welcome side effect of committing to healing my body through the foods I eat.

And I gotta say, it’s been incredibly freeing, to stop worrying about how much cardio I need to do to work off a burger, to stop being scared to eat a piece of fruit, and to retire the tendency to worry about getting enough protein at every meal. (We don’t need that much.)

As a result of eating healthy, my waist size is what it was in my early 20s. The difference being that I got there through a desire to be well, not a low-carb-based obsession with looking a certain way.

For me, age has brought wisdom and self-love, which is a welcome departure from self-loathing and feeling insufficient at every turn. It’s helped me put my health first.

Unfortunately, the garment industry hasn’t followed suit.

Imagine, if you will, late 30-something me, attempting to find jean shorts.

I love jean shorts. They are my go-to summer attire. Presently, none of my old pairs fit me, and sadly I didn’t save any from my early 20s (which is a good thing and of benefit to society.)

So I’m on the hunt for shorts. You know, something that doesn’t show off my goods (no one needs to see your hoo-hoo ladies) but doesn’t cover up too much, because I’m not a nun either. I want to feel the elements on my gams.

A few dressing rooms in, and I’ve squeezed myself into a large sampling of ill-fitting pairs. I’m talking gaping at the waist so you can see my goods shorts, with thighs squished in like sausage casings. Super attractive stuff, said no one, ever.

I start laughing because this is some funny shit. I mean seriously, how inadequate can these inadequately designed shorts be? And what’s more, I’m at one of the most popular stores around when it comes to price point and selection. How are none of their shorts made for regular folk, aka, women who know that thigh gaps are a sign of malnutrition?

“If these shorts could talk,” I think to myself, “They’d say, “How dare you try me on. Stop assaulting me with your bratwursts. I was made for supermodels.”

I peel them off and laugh at my butt, which is on full display. That’s how tight those suckers were over my legs and hips: they fully undressed me without even asking.

30 seconds later someone abruptly pulls back the curtain on the dressing room. I laugh again because really, why not?

This whole interaction with those shitty jean shorts is profound because for 20-ish years I would leave dressing rooms like this and get busy shaming myself.

I’d turn poorly designed products that don’t consider the end user one fucking iota into a personal deficiency. Maybe you can relate.

I’d commit to eating less. I’d ruminate on the need to stop adding a splash of juice to my vodka soda’s (that’s how much I believed sugar was the devil AND how committed I was to getting wasted.) Then I’d run through everything I ate in the previous week and chastise myself for any and all digressions from my no-sugar, no-carb high protein diet.

BARF.

I would determine the existence of a deficiency, internalize it, and brand my psyche with the words, “You aren’t good enough – You suck.” All because of an overpriced pair of jean shorts that were designed with only one body type in mind.

It’s REALLY important that we take the time to witness these small blips of insanity for what they are: totally insane.

We were taught to seek out deficiencies and live within them, full-time. But living within, for, and by these falsities only serves to help other people prosper financially.

Living outside of limiting deficiencies helps YOU prosper, on every level.

SIDE NOTE: when you prosper, the entire world prospers. THAT’s how powerful you really are.

Dressing rooms can be a source of deep-rooted, psyche-disrupting trauma, but they can also be a source of hilarity.

It’s so undeniably absurd what people try to sell us as acceptable, and we need to take the time to acknowledge the ridiculousness of it all, rather than taking ownership of it.

So the next time you’re feeling shitty about not fitting into something, acknowledge the insanity of an industry designed to make you feel inadequate.

Then, picture me, trying to stuff my thighs into a ridiculously designed pair of jean shorts, and realize you’re not alone.

🖤

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