Taking Care of Yourself

Breathing With Your Heart


This has been a long time coming, and I almost let it go, but I was up with a nightmare anyway, so it’s time I write this. I’ve been having a hard time being kind to myself. I beat myself up on a continual basis for never doing enough and it never being perfect enough. It started in childhood, but I let it continue into adulthood, and I have let it ruin the way I view myself. A couple things recently changed the way I see myself.

My Facebook reels had been flooded with therapy videos to the point where I had been therapied out. Me, therapied out? I know, right!!! It happened. But a series that I first thought was really stupid but couldn’t stop watching was the Drew Barrymore Show. She talks a lot about being kind to yourself and really being enough to the point where you don’t need another person to fulfill you. She’s single, so she’s always taking dating advice, but her guests usually turn it around to self-compassion and being okay with being yourself. So of course the first time I heard it, I thought “these are people who just don’t want to work on their issues.” But the more I listened, the more I realized they had worked on their issues far more than I had to the point where they were content. They were happy being by themselves. They were happy with other people. I was discontented either way. And that problem wasn’t with other people. The problem was with me.

One guest they had on there said that there was one person we were born on this earth to take care of, to nurture and grow with, to cry with when things got bad, to feed, bathe, etc. And that person is you. You were born to take care of you. Nobody else is going to take care of you like you are going to take care of you. And I just wish that for you. I hope you take care of you with the same respect and love you take care of other people with if not more.

The other thing happened when I was falling asleep one day. I accidentally listened to a different meditation than usual, and this one said put your hand on your abdomen as you were breathing. I quickly switched back to my other one, but instead of putting my hand on my stomach, I put in on my heart. I don’t know when the last time you listened to someone else’s heart was, but isn’t there something special and connecting about listening to that person breathing and listening to the beating of their heart? I remember times when I listened to a person’s heart, and it made that person more special to me. But when was the last time you listened to your own heart? I’m not talking about in the middle of a panic attack or something like that. I’m talking about at rest, when you’re about to fall asleep, and you just think “this person is special to me.” It almost made me cry just thinking it. How often do we think to ourselves “I am special” and mean it? 

You are special. How can you take care of yourself today?

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