:O)
I love this description. This is what I am working toward.
I think it is a more difficult struggle when it is your child who is in danger. And I think it is especially difficult to accept our children's situations because they are choosing the dangerous, often pointless lifestyles.
It is crazy-making.
True.
Ouch.
This is what I mean by telling them, again and again, that they are better than who they have begun to accept themselves as. Good job, Echo. Great job. Volunteering can change everything we think we know about ourselves, about everyone else, about the world as it is and about our potential, and responsibility, toward it.
Recovering's writings of this nature have helped me to face what is, have helped me to understand and accept that there may be a purpose here I know nothing about.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes!
:O)
I have been circling around that concept of trust just lately, too. It's a multi-faceted thing, trust. Trust of self, trust of God, trusting that all will be well.
True.
Hard to accept.
Yes.
I have felt this way too, Echo. There are times though, when I can see that it is a kind of hatred for myself, come of failure. (Based on what my family looks like, I have failed ~ abysmally so.) Just lately, I am viewing myself and my choices, so similar to yours, Echo (and with the same built in combustion points!) with something like compassion and acceptance and even, approval. I fought the good fight. It sounds like you did, too.
I like that about myself.
It becomes too easy to justify self hatred, self ridicule, self deprecation, when we have lost the lives we dreamed for ourselves in the ways that we have, here on the site.
I feel so fortunate and appreciative to have developed that little grace of compassion for myself. I did make that intention my New Year's resolution. Remember? I chose to try to be kinder to myself. It was my only resolution, and I didn't (and still don't) know what that looks like. But...every so often Echo, I will find myself smiling into the mirror, or really cherishing the way a breeze or the sun feels, against my skin. When those things happen, I flash back to that choice I made to be kinder to myself.
If you have not made such a commitment Echo, please think about that so simple choice. It changes our direction, I think. Maybe, it counters the hatred and judgment we (I) feel, for having failed.
I know you guys aren't going to like that I said that. But at the heart of me?
I do feel that.
Me, too. Only I would generally beat myself up about that, too. Without saying a word to anyone about it.
I love this, Echo. True, true, true!!!
:O)
This bothers me all the time, too.
Grrr.....
Me either, too. That is what I mean when I say "coldly" decide to survive. Those feelings have to be let go to follow their own courses.
I love this.
Ouch, Echo.
YES.
That is a beginning of a new way, of a different kind of perception of the same situation.
To do that, we must first declare ourselves of value.
True.
Yes.
Okay. I finally managed to read through the whole thread.
An excellent topic, Echo.
Thanks!
Cedar
