Must Love Crows

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self-compassion

A story about recovering from relationship trauma

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a story about recovering from relationship trauma - must love crowsYesterday I ran into 2 of my ex-boyfriends. One online and one in real life.

The first one was via an email alert that said dude wanted to connect with me online for the third-ish time. And I was like, “Nawww dude. Nuh uhhhh. S t o p.”

See, this ex isn’t someone I want to connect with. Not necessarily because he cheated on me and treated me like garbage, but because for years I damaged myself even more than he did with his actions by taking ownership of the way he treated me.

I’m talking I thought up until a few years ago that it was my fault he was so awful to me.

The destructive narrative went like this: I shouldn’t have been so crazy. So uncool. He might not have dumped me and cheated on me if I’d acted and been different.

Time and self-love have taught me that you will indeed go fucking crazy if the person you love all of a sudden ghosts you. Like if he flat-out disappears from your life one day, and then shows up again weeks later, trying to get back together with you.

You will go another shade of crazy if you have prior abandonment issues from childhood that are triggered AF throughout this lapse of time.

The extra layer of icing on your so-called crazy label? When he follows up the mind fuckery by dumping you after cheating on you with a woman who has the gall to have drinks at the bar you’re tending after you find out. 🤯

Yes, all of these situations make it all the more likely that you will indeed get emotional as fuck, and people may throw the crazy card on the field in your presence (did I just make a football reference? I think so? I don’t know FA about football 😂)

Somehow, I got it twisted in my heart and head about who needed to take ownership of HIS CHOICE to be awful.

I made it about me, directing the shame about what he did and how painful it was to experience onto myself. And I carried that shame with me for years.

I made his issue my issue. And I tried to do what I was taught to do – be cool about how horrible he treated me.

I have a lot of experience with men behaving horribly and acting as though nothing happened. That everyone and everything is fine, and anyone who doesn’t feel the same way is irrational. With my experience with emotional and physical abuse in my pocket, I carried the shame of bullying myself for expressing how much pain I was in as a result of the abuse I experienced.

I stifled my feelings about how my ex behaved, to the point that I even tried to be friends with him afterward to somehow save face and disengage with the crazy label I was offered and took ownership of.

To be clear AF: I owned feeling ashamed of the strong emotions that surfaced as a result of being traumatized by the person I loved. When the person I loved abandoned me, both physical and mentally – when he abused me – I took responsibility for his decisions.

All that said, my ex is currently all, please connect with me online social and I’m all, hells no. ‘Cause I’m done with the enabling.

If I accept his invitation I’m enabling him.

This grown man is never gonna learn that what he did isn’t OK. And dude needs to learn and own up to his behaviour, ‘cause I wasn’t the only woman he treated like garbage.

He was nearing 30 years old when I had my experience with him, so there is no Oh, he was a young kid that didn’t know any better to use as an excuse.

Even if he was and is clueless about what he did, he doesn’t get a pass for being cruel. He is responsible for his choices.

An apology is required. And I’m not talking about a two worded “I’m sorry,” just so I can heal. I accept what happened and how it affected me. I don’t need his words to make me all better. I am my own healer.

What I’m talking about apology wise is that for the betterment of society and the healing of everyone, particularly him, he needs to get clear on what he did.

He needs to understand what he did and explain in detail what he is sorry for. So he can learn and grow from what he did, and realize it’s not OK to emotionally abuse someone. In the hopes that he will go out into the world moving forward and be a better human being.

All I can do on my end is focus on healing.

Part of that process requires taking stock of what I’ve done to cause harm to others and myself in the depths of my own inner tumultuous landscape.

I cannot and will not pretend I haven’t done some shitty stuff. But Lord knows that the answer to How do I forgive myself for what I’ve done? is not creeping on people’s facebook pages and liking their pictures, or asking the people I have harmed to connect with me without a conversation.

And two-feet-on-the-ground revelation: why is an ex contacting me, a married woman, anyways? What are your intentions, dude?

Unless it’s to have a conversation about what happened, there’s nothing pure going on.

If it’s anything like the dude’s from high school with zero boundaries who want to connect so they can poke me on FB at 2 am, my guess is there’s some dysfunction you want to hand-deliver me.

AND I DON’T WANT YOUR PACKAGE OR ATTENTION.

High school is where the other ex originated from. The heavy back story is that this guy is known for serially cheating on his partners. He learned to have no respect for women and run his life according to his penis. He learned to lie and cheat and minimize and manipulate. And I’m not going to enable him by pretending like we are old chums when he sees me in the grocery store anymore.

He never owned up to his cruelty. He never took ownership of his terrible behaviour. And without him taking ownership by exhibiting some form of understanding of what he did and how it harmed others, my door is sealed shut.

Dude hasn’t earned the right to be in my space.

He must understand that I’m not into being his friend by now because when he saw me yesterday he left me alone. A swift change from last year when he eagerly came up to me with the insecure cockiness of his 16-year-old self.

Or the years ago when he kept trying to message me, and I inherently knew it was an attempt to have sex with me, even though he was married to the same woman he cheated on me with in high school.

Straight up: dude’s don’t just randomly message their married exes. They wanna have sex with them. At least that’s been my experience so please don’t come at me for speaking my truth.

With all that heat in me and a commitment to protecting myself from people who haven’t earned the right to be in my life, I saw my ex walk out of the grocery store yesterday and the strangest thing happened.

I felt a tidal wave of empathy for him. I felt overwhelmed with emotion and almost started crying right in the store.

I pictured him as a little boy who was taught to be shitty to women – who was taught that cheating, shaming, minimizing and trying to manipulate his way into a married woman’s life so he can possibly fuck her is OK.

To demoralize the trust in a relationship, and lie, cheat and steal his way into feeling a sense of power and belonging in this hyper misogynistic world – that is his idea of normalcy.

And all I could think was how devastatingly sad he must feel inside, to feel compelled to act in such a soulfully wounding way.

So I let myself feel that for a minute and the shock of the significant inner shift from disgust to compassion. And when it was over I silently said to myself, “Thank you.”

Why thank you? Because I was so damn grateful for the reprieve from all the years of loathing him and all the men like him.

I have been incapable of picturing the little boys who learned to normalize shittiness up until now. And the sadness of empathy felt like freedom.

It was fresh air bursting into my chest cavity, cracking open my heart so wide that the pain of the betrayals, the shame, and the devastating humiliations and abandonments could begin to detach from my being.

I know the little kid in both my exes must be so scared and confused and hurting. You have to be all those things to not comprehend that what you did warrants ownership, not friendship requests.

You can’t be an asshole and be OK. Inside, your spirit is being starved.

Every single time you go out into the world with the intention to serve solely yourself, your ego, and/or your dick, you harm others. That is sadness incarnate.

And I know sadness.

I know how it feels to feel empty inside and try to fill yourself up with shitty behaviours because you don’t know how to survive the emptiness.

I know the fear and desperation very well. And I might not have a dick, but I know what it is to learn how to be shitty out of survival.

I also know how to unlearn it. I know how to own my pain and break the cycle of displacing it. I know how to call out the bullshit I was taught. And I know how to call out the men I used to love.

Because I’ve done the work. And it’s time for them to do the work, too.

A

Everything is NOT in its place (and that’s OK)

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Everything Is Not In Its Place And That's OK - Must Love CrowsIt was 2 am and I had to pee. But I didn’t want to get up because I didn’t want to wake up my cat. 😂

If you’ve got kids, cool, you know what I mean.

Nothing worse than them waking up in the middle of the night thinking it’s time to get up and do day time stuff when you’re trying to take care of business.

Except for me, instead of a human child, it’s a long-haired black cat/parrot.

(The parrot reference = he mimics our voices which is equal parts hilarious and cute).

Jack the cat likes to assume that my late night shuffles down the hallway are invitations to get chatty:

Oh hey! You’re awake! Come on, let’s talk! Also, I need Food!!

That’s what happened last week. He heard me with his hyper Vulcan hearing and came chirping and dramatically meowing down the hallway.

And he wanted stuff from me.

He wanted to be petted and brushed, followed by treats and food – ASAP.

Jack the cat, committing sock felonies and leaving his DNA (read: fur) EVERYWHERE

Hard not to want to oblige – he’s pretty cute.

But he already had food, he just wanted his food a certain way.

His preferred way of being fed is freshly out of the can with the dish placed directly underneath him on the chair (which happens to by MY chair! 😂)

This is funny because it’s not like he has a discerning palate. He’s been busted eating garbage multiple times.

And he doesn’t know the difference between a few hours old and fresh food. I trick him by mixing up his older food, pretending like I just made it, and he falls for it every time!

The real issue is that he wants things a certain way or else he deems them unacceptable. 

Cat idiosyncrasies might be cute during the day, but at 2 am when you’re tired and need to pee, they’re overrated.

So I said hello to him, peed, and peaced out behind my closed bedroom door. Then I woke up a few hours later to a startling realization:

I AM EXACTLY LIKE MY CAT.

I am rigid about how things need to be. Sometimes I even reject things because they aren’t the way I want them or expect them to be.

Some of those expectations are in my best interest.

For example, I expect the people in my life to be supportive and loving, or else I don’t allow them into my life.

Boundaries are an important part of the whole mental health mystery. If they aren’t in place, you’re gonna struggle.

But getting caught up in how things need to look and feel and be in other areas is really siphoning the joy out of my life.

I have a lot to be joyful about, just like Jack the cat does. I have good food, good love and support, rewarding work, and stuff and things I’m grateful for.

I am hashtag blessed, yet I let strict expectations run my show, blurring my ability to relax and enjoy all the beauty that comes with the unexpected.

I want to go with the flow more. I want to enjoy the process of life.

I want to experience joy when it’s happening.

To make that happen I need to ditch my drive to control how everything looks and feels.

The 2 am wake up with my fur child has inspired me to investigate my default settings. I’ve begun asking myself some squirm-in-your-seat questions:

Am I allowing the joy to come through in this experience?

Am I shutting myself off from joy by gripping to rigid “ideals” that are anything but?

It can be really scary to accept that your default response is causing you to suffer.

All it takes is one unsolicited should-based response from a stranger focusing on your perceived failures instead of the courage it took to be honest about the fact that you don’t have it all figured out, to compel you to clamp your heart shut on stuff that needs to be addressed.

But living with a closed heart is an expensive way to live. It siphons from your ability to experience joy.

So instead of buying into denying or ignoring your issues, focus on taking your power back.

The next time you get uncomfortable about the idea of inquiring into the existence of your own counterproductive default settings – particularly how being truthful about them might be perceived by others – percolate on this statement:

Unless you’re in the arena, too, Brenda, I’m not open or interested in your opinion.

(No offence to any Brenda’s out there. It just felt like the right name for this example.)

If you’re doing this kind of work, you’re on a different wavelength than the should-ers.

Unrequested (and unsupportive) critiques of your journey are coming from people who are not in the same realm of thinking as you, so their comments don’t have a place in your life.

Walk on by unsupportive comments.

Don’t take ownership of them. Just step on over and past them, and keep on walking.

Keep being courageous, ’cause that’s what these kinds of inquiries require: Courage.

FYI: the quote above (minus the Brenda reference) is from Brene Brown’s new Netflix special which I highly recommend you watch.

Watching TV can be self-care if it’s lighting you up like Brene’s show did for me. 😍

I hope something within this post resonated with you. You are loved.

xo

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Pssst: If you liked this post you might want to sign up to receive the occasional email from me (anywhere from 1 to 2 per month max.) That’s where this post originated. 🙂

Why I Let Go Of My Fear Of The Comments Section

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Why I Started Reading the Comment Section - Must Love Crows

I’m taking a course right now which is requiring me to do something I usually avoid like the plague.

No, it’s not dairy or gluten, or high fructose corn syrup. 😂

It’s reading the comments section!

I’m being prompted every day to read and interact with other students in the comments.

At first, I flat-out dismissed the idea, and with good reason.

I’m not into keeping tabs on what other people have to say when I’m taking a course. I’m trying to learn, not find out what Sara from Idaho thinks about what we’re learning.

I don’t want other people’s opinions in the mix while I’m taking in information from the experts. Right now I’m learning from a world-renowned psychologist and meditation teacher, and I don’t want anyone or anything getting in the way of me absorbing every last ounce of what she has to share.

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t address the fact that the comment section scares the shit out of me.

I’ve had a small yet effective-at-freaking-me-out sampling of shitty comments over the years.

Misogyny from both men and women? Check! Ego driven passive aggressive grossness? Check! People who don’t even realize they’re being assholes? Check!

Mix mucho passive aggressive responses with a bevy of volatile life experiences, and you’re going to get the blinks whenever you’re perusing the wall of potential ignorance that is the comment section.

So those are some legit reasons why I feel compelled to avoid the comments. It can be volatile territory, a gathering place for ignorance and aggression.

I feel this duty to myself in the name of self-compassion to not entertain that kind of stuff. I don’t want to give it my energy any more than I’ve already given it in this lifetime.

But this course is really poking at me and pushing me to dig into that discomfort. I mean, it’s a course about facing your fears. If ever there was a time to face them, it’s now, right? 😂

Yet still, I began the program wanting to avoid the comments in the course.

Except its part of the program to look at them and contribute to them, so I HAD to stop avoiding them. AHHHHHHH!!!!

An initial “hard pass” on perusing what other people have to say has recently turned into engaging a bit, which has turned into me possibly changing my mind about reading comments altogether.

The catalyst for my shift? The responses my classmates offered to the question, What are your fears?

The answer everyone gave, in both direct and indirect ways, was the Fear of not being good enough.

In this case, comment sections can help us realize that our fear experience is not an anomaly.

They can help us realize that fear is not solely our own experience, it’s a shared experience.

When we are free of the belief that our fear is an anomaly, we are unburdened by a great degree of heaviness.

Case in point, consider the degree of fear you’re carrying when you believe the lie that you are alone in feeling afraid.

To believe you’re alone in your experience, you’d need to believe that you’ve got a serious abnormality – an inherent deficit going on. So you’d end up with the initial fear, plus the fear that you’re alone, and then the fear that you’re intrinsically flawed.

That’s a lot of heaviness to carry with you, right? No wonder you’re tired and anxious all the time!

After reading the comment section in my course it’s clear to me that a lot of our fears can easily be proven wrong.

My mind wanders to imagining the degree of transformation that would come if we all dug into working towards becoming conscious of the fact that EVERYONE is afraid of not being good enough.

In this case, reading the comments can help us disentangle from the lies we tell ourselves about our fear experience.

It’s not “Our” fear, but “The” fear – A fear felt by the collective.

If we become deeply aware of this truth, we won’t feel the need to be so harsh to ourselves and others when we felt afraid.

We could let go of some of the judgment we carry. Wouldn’t that be amazing? 😍

Becoming deeply aware takes work, of course.

Meditation is required. Our brains are wired to focus on judgement first and foremost.

It takes a commitment to keep coming back to noticing fear through meditation in order to change the default setting within us.

But it is absolutely possible to experience a great amount of peace through this work. I am proof of that!

Some days will be smoother sailing than others. If you’re not sleeping well, or have the flu, or someone’s behaviour is triggering fear within you, it can be hard to stay the course, and tough to remember how to be kind to yourself.

But there’s an instantaneous self-compassion catalyst I’m sharing with you today which you can reference whenever you’re feeling lost in fear:

The memory of all those comments, posted by people from all different backgrounds and ages, courageously admitting to their deepest and darkest fear: That 9 times out of 10, they are afraid of not being good enough, too.

You are not an anomaly, you are part of the collective. Therefore, you are not alone.

Also: You are loved. It’s non-negotiable.

xo

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

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Struggling With Guilt Over How You Reacted? This Might Help - Must Love CrowsYou 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 Instagram ready. Right click & Save to share:

Struggling With Guilt Over How You Reacted? This Might Help - Must Love Crows

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

xo

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Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger from Pexels

Advice For Difficult Seasonal Transitions (From A Chronically Seasonally Depressed Human)

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Seasonal transitions have always proven to be tough for me.

I love the sun. I thrive when it’s warm outside. When the temperature drops, and it’s no longer weather appropriate to be bare-legged in a lounge chair with my computer, notebook, or latest non-fiction obsession, I enter into a period of mourning.

I don’t anticipate quite the difficulty as I’ve had over the past few years, but I’m still a bit weary. I’m not sure what will come about when the skies get grayer, and Vancouver Island starts to live up to its reputation as a rainforest.

I’ve recently upped my belief in the fact that everything is going to be OK, and that I will be OK, no matter what happens in my life. So that’s comforting when I start to feel uncomfortable with all the changes weather wise.

But that doesn’t mean the transition to fall isn’t capable of rocking me to the emotional core.

Something inside has a tendency to fight what is this time of year. It’s prone to clenching and refusing the universal need for the leaves to fall, the temperatures to cool, and the diminishing amounts of sun to be available to baste my body.

Something within doesn’t want to accept the changes.

I experience a lot of uncomfortable physical symptoms in the fall, too. Digestive issues (Will spare the details and you’re welcome for that); super dry skin; heavy depression; intense anxiety: all of them come on strong and are hesitant to let up on demand.

Remembering that everything is temporary when experiencing all the discomfort is, well, comforting. Sitting with how I feel isn’t. Letting things get emotionally messy is messy, and I don’t like messes.

But the alternative, of looking to the not so recent past and feeling bummed out over how fast the summer went, and wishing and hoping for more time in the sun, always proves to be a tempting, albeit terrible, idea.

Until I’m ready to see what was with lightness and look at summer with gratitude instead of fear over its passing, I need to leave it where it lay. I need to get to acceptance of what is first; Acceptance of right now. And I always get there, but not until I go through what feels like a spiritually led mourning period.

I believe this: That there is more to the struggle I feel during the seasonal change into Fall than just the passing of summer; That the feelings are too heavy and deep to be from missing my favorite river or lakeside spot alone.

Regardless of the origin of my feelings, my goal this year is to get outside the realm of discomfort over what is with greater speed. I don’t want to set up shop with depression and anxiety. My plan to make sure that doesn’t happen?

Do things differently than I’ve always done them during the seasonal transition.

If you’ve read much of what I write about on the blog, or in the twice-a-month-ish emails I send out, you’ll know that doing things differently is what I’m all about these days. Because doing things differently is the key to emotional growth. 

Which is why recently I’ve been scanning through the last couple years, to the times when seasonal depression and anxiety started taking up square footage in my body like a great dane in a studio apartment. Not with a critical, self-shaming eye, but a clinical one. And I’ve asked myself:

What did you do when you struggled with difficult seasonal transitions in years past?

Here’s what I came up with:

I stopped posting and connecting with people on social media. I couldn’t think of anything positive to write about or share, ’cause I felt so down, so I just stopped posting altogether. I was gone long enough that friends started messaging me, asking if I was OK. So I isolated myself from my community and it definitely didn’t help me out.

I ate shitty food. Gluten much? How about Gluten too much. Plus dairy, pork, canola oil, corn, refined sugar, and salt: You name it, I ate it when I was feeling depressed. I’m a huge follower of the medical medium and have seen incredible results from following his suggested eating plans via his books, which you can read about in this post. So I know from repeated food-related emotional and physical upheaval throughout the year that September is not a good month to be trifling (Damn, I love a good trifle) with all the stuff on my “Don’t Eat This Stuff” list.

I was less active. Recovering from drug and alcohol addiction and the depression and trauma that fueled them taught me that when I’m experiencing heavy doses of depression I need to move my body. Which is tough because when I feel depressed I don’t want to be active. Case in point the last few years, when I dialed back my work out routine substantially in the fall, ’cause I had zero motivation. Needless to say, not doing anything made me feel worse.

I ran from my feelings by buying stuff. The last few years I’ve done a fair bit of running. Not around the block – I’m talking running from how I felt via emotional purchases. Tons of cash spent at the vitamin store for supplements in order to fix how I felt; make-up counter visits in hopes a new product would make me feel (and look) better; a surplus of books, some of which haven’t even been cracked yet: none of it helped. It just kept me busy while siphoning my savings account. Yuck.

I didn’t take time to be grateful. I was so consumed with fear over how uncomfortable I felt that I couldn’t see how it could ever get better. I stopped practicing being grateful and it made things way worse.

After all that investigating, it became clear that I needed a plan this year. Even though I feel like a different person – stronger, more empowered, and grateful than in years past – I still need to be ready, in case the same symptoms come about again.

So I made a plan for the transition to Fall and it goes like this:

Remain open to my community. I’m going to share what the transition teaches me on social media and on the blog. I’ll be mindful of the delivery, ie, keep my heart open, and ensure I share empowering yet honest content. And I’m going to make plans with friends, for the near and faraway future, instead of hanging solo all the time. Adding fun stuff to the calendar always feels good, no matter how far away it is (TGFJ = Thank God For Jen, who likes to plan ahead like I do.)

Write it out. I’m going to use how I feel as content inspiration for my blog, my book, and my workbook. This is a good chance to get introspective about what I’m feeling.

Not let depression make choices for me. Depression isn’t something I need to be listening to for health advice, so I’m not going to listen when it makes the super shitty suggestion that I numb my brain with entertainment shows, lay in bed all day, shop away my feelings, or eat bags of cheddar popcorn. Nuh-uh. Nuhhhh-uhhhhh.

Up my healthy eating game. The proof is in the dairy-free pudding (I’ve never tried making that but it feels like it’s google worthy): Shitty food equals a shitty frame of mind, body, and soul. I’m going to cut out the crap when I feel like crap and keep my house stocked with healthy foods so it’s easier to dismiss depression’s suggestion that I start eating cake at every meal.

Move my body. This is one of those cases where I have to get tough love-ish with myself: Even if I don’t feel like doing anything when I’m feeling down and out, I need to do it anyway. I’m not saying I need to sign up for CrossFit (though if that’s your thing, go get ’em, babe.) I’m saying move my body a bit, ie, walk around the block, or do one beginner yoga class per week – something that gets the blood flowing. Nothing good comes of stagnation, mentally or physically. I know this VERY well.  Lighter equals, well, lighter. And I’m not talking about my waistline. Everything feels a little less heavy when you make time to move your bod.

Sit with my feelings. I’m going to notice when I feel like running by eating or shopping and sit with my how I feel instead. I’m going to go all Buddha on that “Hey – you should do this thing that will make you feel worse!” suggestion that I KNOW will be coming my way on the regular. Will it feel great to sit with how I feel? Not likely. But it’s temporary, and the sooner I am courageous enough to do so, the sooner my discomfort will pass. (I wrote more about this idea, of sitting with your discomfort, in this post.

Meditate more often. One of my Instagram friends, @remindmeditation, recently said: “Meditation isn’t hard. Learning organic chemistry is hard. Winning an Ironman is hard. Giving birth is tough AF. Meditation is easy. You can meditate.”

And Jaylee is right: You can meditate. We can all meditate. And while I don’t think meditating for long periods of time is easy, I DO think we sabotage ourselves by saying it’s too hard to even attempt. I do it to myself sometimes, particularly when I’m feeling depressed, and that’s an everyday meditator admitting that.

A way around the “I don’t want to, even though I know it’ll help me” is by lowering the bar. Making 1-5 minutes of meditation the goal is much less daunting than trying to force 20 minutes when you’re just not that into it. And it makes it more likely that you’ll actually do it. So less self-sabotage + more doing what feels doable = self-care, self-love, self-empowerment. The math checks out. I checked it.

Seasonal transitions can be tough. What makes them even tougher?

When you don’t have a plan to deal with the issues that might come with the changing of seasons.

Experience has taught me that waiting until things get hard is not a good plan. Having a plan is a good plan.

You might need to look at what didn’t work for you in the past, like I did, to sort out what helps provide relief, empowerment, and motivation when times get difficult.

One thing you can do right now?  Share something you plan to do this year, to help you mentally transition into fall in the comments below.

You never know who you could be helping by doing so, so please take a moment to share your thoughts. And after that grab a copy of my One Minute Meditation Guide, which is a great tool to add to your Fall Wellness toolkit.

Now, I’m going to give Fall, cause it’s truly here on Vancouver Island, a warm welcome, even though it’s not exactly warm, and offer a reminder to you:

Be kind to yourself during seasonal transitions. It’s so very human, to struggle during times of change.

xo

A

The Business of Being Kind To Yourself When You Feel Terrible

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When you feel crappy, you might instantly get worried and wonder, “Is this terrible feeling mine to own? Is it here to stay, forever?”

I used to go that way about any and every feeling that was tough to sit with. Insta-crap (you know what I’m talking about, the “my life is perfect, #blessed” only accounts) has given feeling anything other than happy and grateful a shitty label, serving up the dysfunctional belief that if we are not happy and grateful all the time, then there’s something innately wrong with us.

In reality, having a bad day is part of the human experience.

When we take ourselves on a jaunt down “I’m a bad person for feeling bad” lane, we suffer more, and so do the people around us.

Everyone has bad days. So enough with the “no bad days” bumper stickers already, Mmm-kay?

We have to have hope. That is, we need to put our hope eggs in the “this too shall pass” basket, instead of the “the fact that I feel shitty means there is something really wrong with me” bin.

I want us to get in the business of being kind to ourselves, and being kind looks like us acknowledging that bullying ourselves for feeling terrible is unproductive.

Take some logic to the self-bullying, and ask:

“Am I human?”

“Is it normal to have days where not happy when you’re human?”

In case it isn’t clear, the answer to both questions is yes. Now, if you’re feeling unhappy every single day of your life, that’s a different story – one that I’ll be discussing in my upcoming book (yes I’m writing a book – sign up for my newsletter for updates.)

But overall, being kind to yourself means not discriminating when it comes to your feelings. It looks like you, allowing yourself to feel the full spectrum of emotions, not just the ones you prefer.

Being kind to yourself means allowing yourself to be human.

I talk more about this subject in my One Minute Meditation guide. Sign up for my newsletter below and I’ll send you access.

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