Love & Glitter

Ten Steps Forward, Five Steps Back

Yesterday was MAHOOSIVELY AWESOME in so many ways, I stopped counting at fifty. I do this thing these days where every time something GOOD happens, I write it down. It's Andrea Schroeder's fault, really. She recommends this in her Creative Dream Incubator, and while I usually REFUSE TO DO HOMEWORK, I was compelled to take this practice up.

I'm so glad I did.

Something is happening. Shifting. My awareness is no longer sucked into the vortext of OMG DOOM as easily as it once was. Shit happens, and more often than not, I find myself shrugging. Okay, well, whatevs. What juicy bit of HAPPY can I find in the next ten minutes?

It's not denial. Denial feels all jaw clenched and taking it. Imagine me dressed in a kilt, wielding a sword, covered in blue woad paint...THAT'S it. Right there. Visual sweet spot. This feels like freedom. FREEDOM! FREEEEEEDOM!

***

Today is NOT one of those days. It's an anxiety day. I'm all "OMG DOOM" despite my best efforts to curb it. I think I need to move my body or something. Move that adrenaline out of the blood stream. Sweat it out. And I will. But I wanted to make note of this:

Change happens in fits and starts. 

(Effyone, are you listening?)

It's all ten steps forward and five steps back. 

And that's okay. I can be gentle with myself. I can let myself do this dance without self-recrimination because I am unfolding as I meant to. Some of my conditioning is really stubborn. Some of it has taken decades to unravel. I can TRUST that it will unravel in good time, but not if I bludgeon myself over the head about not unraveling it fast enough. It's unraveling as it should. I can trust that. 

I know why I'm anxious and I'm doing my best to fix it but it is something that isn't within my control. (I HATE THAT!) I am afraid I upset someone without even knowing when or how. I am filling in the blanks where silence is. I am all "WHAT DID I DO?" 

Probably nothing. 

But triggery girl is triggery, and I need to roll with it when the anxiety kicks in. No amount of talking myself out of it works. Movement helps. Arting helps. Self-care (of the EXTREME rose absolute in the bath water, candlelight, chocolate and soothing music variety) helps. 

This lovely meditation helps to. In the spirit of inviting the flow of goodness and ease and relaxation back into my anxiety addled body, I want to share it with you. 

 

I'm off to soak in rose absolute and then I'm going to art this out. <3

UPDATE

See, Effyone? It was totally nothing. *grins sheepishly and goes about her day* 

I Love Myself Best...

There's a prompt up at Wild Precious Studio in which I invite my lovelies to build a page around their feelings about self-love. As I added the video and wrote the blurb for the studio, the prompt whispered to me; softly at first, and then a little louder - Effy? You MUST play with me. You MUST! Out came the glitter and paint and gel medium and off I went. Here's the video: The thing about self love is that even thinking about it can set us up for hard times. We try to be self-loving, and then find ourselves thinking things like - I'll feel really good about myself IF I behave in a certain way or WHEN I achieve a certain goal. This might not even be conscious; it might be a message that some critical part of ourselves whispers at us from the vault of our subconscious mind. I have this voice, and it has a history of saying mean things to me when I contemplate self-love, or when I think about self-care and being kind to myself. "Well, aren't you full of yourself?" It sneers. "Who do you think you are? A saint? A GODDESS?" Blah blah blah. I know this voice is self-protective and that it exists for a reason. I love that my internal cast of characters includes such protective parts. But! They haven't yet learned how to work with me, you know? They still gang up on me in their attempts to keep me safe. The public eye, they tell me, isn't safe. Tooting my own horn isn't safe. Telling the world I love myself isn't safe. Because, they say, it puts me out there. It makes me a target for wounded people who can't stand the thought of anyone thinking highly of themselves. And yes, it's true. The wounded people sometimes arrive on cue, and sometimes they say mean things that get my dragon scales all up in a fiery mess of defensive. It's all right, though. It really is. The more you put yourself out there as a self-loving person, the braver you become. Your strength increases and you find yourself feeling more compassion for the wounded than ever before. You know the mean stuff isn't personal, you stop taking it that way, and you give yourself hugs and glitter-filled art journal pages and ice cream cones regardless of what so and so says about it. I love myself best when I consider that I am mostly four years old just doing my best to live in a complicated and scary world. I love myself best when I make an accounting of my failures with compassion instead of derision. I love myself best when I embrace myself as always in process, impossibly flawed, never close to perfect, and blissed out on life anyway. I love myself best when I remember my humanity.