{illustration: Jen B. Peters}
Hello friends and HNY! I know it’s been awhile since I’ve written something personal. After a life-changing adventure in India then holidazzling for days, I sort of couldn’t find my blogging bearings in all of the emotion and commotion. It’s a familiar challenge for me, overwhelm followed by total paralysis. The dirty little secret that I’ve eluded to here and here but never fully admitted to anyone, including a therapist (ummmmm), is that I am not very kind to myself. I’ve been living a lie in this department, albeit one that looks very loving and even luxurious from the outside. It goes something like this: When I feel sad/lonely/tired/confused/depressed I have a way of piling on more trips, more massages, more happy hours and more projects to make myself feel happy and productive. Instead, I wind up anxious, exhausted, and utterly depleted on a soul level. I am only now starting to take seriously my need to slow down and be still, not as an experiment or a resolution, but as essential to my well-being. In order to carve out this time for rest and reflection, I will face the biggest challenge of them all: Believing that I’m worthy of self-love for no reason other than I exist. With rare exception (and oh, these are the most joyous, peaceful days), I’ve been living in a way that only values my career achievements. When I’m not high as a kite on one of those, I start judging myself to th...