repainting the interior walls

lots of great inspiration this week about being true to oneself. my roommate came home with a book about why working on yourself doesn't work. i haven't read it so i won't recommend it, but the premise was an interpretation of the law of attraction which for once, didn't irritate me (stop telling me how to manifest a mansion in an age of seemingly endless greed, thanks). i won't sum the book up, because again, i haven't read it, but i will say that it helps to consider that i might not be best served by moving a mountain of strange childhood. instead, just notice where on the mountain i am right now.

that kind of simplicity accounted for most of my weekend. the simplicity of it is almost as amazing as how easily i forget how simple being happy can be. even as i was writing about it, i was forgetting: surround yourself with the things that actually make you happy, like food and friends and co-creation. these things are inexpensive, they are locally found, they are common. then i found this great TEDtalk about how intimacy is healing. guy went and proved it! ah, life is sweet. so i emerged from my cocoon of misery. and connected with an old friend in a way that renewed my trust. i love it when my trust gets renewed without any pressure on the part of my ego.

finally, today i found a neat blog with an inspirational string about changing habits and setting goals. and i realized that through the healing i have been giving myself, i actually feel way better about my body (and how it deserves to be healthy, not because it's my responsibility, but because my body is a clean, lovely awesome piece of earth, not the dirty garbage society claims it to be).

i found that when i allowed myself to really, really feel crappy, things changed. but it was hard to just let myself feel that way. not dwell in it or rationalize it, but not try and solve it either. what happened was something along the lines of me listening to myself. and once my two-year-old, ten-year-old and twenty-year-old all felt listened to, they could stop repeating their fears, crimes and sorrow.

i have no doubt that the emotional self-care i've been practising for years helped that process. but the actual healing involved no journals.