The word "believe" has been coming up for me in a lot of places lately.
This is a page from a book I am working in. I have trouble believing that I am enough. At first I thought that statement "I am enough" meant "I am tough strong woman who does not need anybody or anything to make it through life." One night I was lying it bed and out of nowhere, it became crystal clear to me that "I am enough" really meant "I am (fill in the blank) enough. I am smart enough. I am creative enough. I am good enough. I am pretty enough. I am brave enough. I am strong enough.
You probably have your own things you could use to fill in the blank.
So part of the focus of this journal is to name the places where I am good enough. It is my hope that I will eventually be able to believe the "impossible things" not only before breakfast, but also all day long.
The other part of the work I will be doing in this journal is to make a list of the qualities of the type of woman I could respect and then to work on trying to become that woman. This was an idea from a friend of mine.
I've made the lists: "annie is a woman who ..." and I was all enthused and gung-ho when I started but I have not been back to it since I made that list!
I have issues with self-worth and I am way kinder to everybody else than I am to myself. So of course one of the things on the lists is that "I am a woman who is gentle with herself." That I can work on. "I am a woman who is secure in who she is" will be a bigger challenge.
And then there are things about the creative things I do. One of the things is that I want to work on reopening my Etsy store and doing something with my photographs and my "thangs."
I got kind of stuck on how to organize it after that so I've been thinking about what I want to do. Thinking about how you want to do something is an excellent way to procrastinate on actually doing that which you are thinking about!
And I have to remind myself that I don't need to work on everything on the list all at one time. I need to focus on one or two things at a time so that I don't get overwhelmed and quit altogether.
I won't bore you with those details but I think I have figured out what I am going to do and will probably work some on the list this weekend.
I would like to see you be as kind a friend to yourself as you are to me. You'd like you immensely.
ReplyDeleteYep, Cyn is right. :)
ReplyDeleteYou remind me of some of the stuff we've been teaching in our DWI offender class - not everything is a crisis, not everything has to be solved right now, not everything has one perfect best solution. Just do "enough".
Thanks for the reminder that we are enough.
You are an amazing woman and you ARE enough... you just have to accept it.
ReplyDelete"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure."
<3
D
Thank you, Cyn! I'm working in that direction!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Rach! You don't know how often I've thought I could use a lot of what they teach in those type classes!
Ha! D! Thank you! Haven't we talked before about how hard acceptance can be? :)