Friends,  I just learned (remembered?) something important. It is not something that comes naturally to me as a sensitive, deeply contemplative soul, but it’s something equally as meaningful as all that soul searching I do. Fortunately something awesome was dropped in my lap this morning and it shifted my perspective. It is terribly basic but awesomely powerful:

Lighten Up

To be fair, I have a lot of heavy around me right now. Enough heavy that I have been buried beneath it. I will continue to get buried, I know. But part of calming the chaos and panicky upswing of anxious thoughts is to remember that these feelings are normal. I watched an awesome local momma vlog about her breakdown after dropping her two youngest children off at daycare. She has four boys so we already know she is in it. She talks about crying in the corner after feeling way too overwhelmed as if it is the most normal thing in the world. Because it is. She is unabashedly, unapologetically real about it without assigning shame to it. Meanwhile, I absolutely marvel at how she seems to have grasped this basic concept about life that I somehow missed lately.

I’ve spent too much time feeling bad about feeling bad.

Feeling bad about feeling bad just compounds the heavy. It adds shame and guilt and self-loathing. It punches holes in the very tools you need to recover from the heavy. It wounds self-confidence. It harms self-worth. It injures self-care. It’s the voice that isolates you and convinces you that you are alone and possibly unworthy of love or support or recovery. And that’s where the real sadness lives. It is ugly, friends, and I was doing it to myself all the time.

And now fate has stepped in and reminded me that there is a different way. A cleaner, kinder, more gentle approach. I know myself well enough to know that I will have to practice and work at this. The pathways of judgment and fear in my mind are well worn and I’ll have to remember to not take that part of my self so seriously. For good measure, I wrote it on my hand to help me remember. Hopefully my brain will get on board and I will stop punishing myself for feeling through the normal things we all feel through. 

Before I go, just know that whatever that thing is that you are struggling with-  it’s normal. We all feel like that sometimes, so give yourself a break. Bring your bad mom, crappy spouse, awful day, short temper, poor choices, not enough, anxious, fearful, wounded self over here for some love. It’s okay. We’ve got you.

Give ‘Em Hell