The title of Kelly's recent video is Drink Your Own Wisdom. I choke on my own wisdom all the time. I know I give good advice but following it is what is difficult. This is one of the worst things I struggle with with self love for sure.
I put myself out there time and time again for people with advice and action and often it has blown up in my face so for the longest time I didn't allow new people into my life. I have recently, since my dad's death, started to open that closed off part of me back up. It has backfired a bit but overall I have some of the best friends I have had in my life. Two people in particular.
One of them needs a lot of support and at one point I felt I was being sucked dry emotionally on a certain topic so I did take my advice at giving myself a safe space and having soft barriers up. Her and I talked about it and being she is a good person, she didn't throw it in my face and we resolved it and we are stronger for it. Balancing the friendship.
The other friend, it is kind of the opposite. They support me time and time again at some of my worst times and they just stand strong for me while I am a hurricane of an emotional storm. I make it a point to give this friend a lot of verbal support such as advice and positive reinforcement, but hands down they are the tree I lean on the most in my life. They also have a good safe bubble and he calls me on it when I start pushing boundaries and I definitely need to hear it at times.
Kelly asked basically the following question: What was the last inspiring thing you have said to somebody and what would happen to you if you said that to yourself? Now I can't remember specifics, but I know I tell my friends I mentioned above, that they are strong people and that they shouldn't question their gut instincts/intuition about things be it about people or of a spiritual nature. Now I strongly feel I am not strong but both those friends tell me I am. It is hard for me to believe because of all the traumatic shit I have dealt with. I just feel like I endure. I would feel very uncomfortable. It would be like if I spilt that wisdom in my lap and it would look like I peed myself. That is the type of feelings I get from saying stuff like that to myself. I feel silly and stupid saying stuff like that to myself. I know I need to get to the point of finding that comfort level. The struggle is real.
The following are a few things that are in Kelly's words... "My jam" that gets my creative juices flowing and allows for some self appreciation when applied.
Reading: Reading a good book gets my writing mojo going and I go nuts with it when a new book hits one of those cords. When I am in a good state I can write for a whole day. I wasn't able to write creatively last year much because of my dad dying etc and then mourning. This year I have started again but it has certainly been a struggle. When I am able to write something I feel satisfied and good about myself when I successfully finish a project or a chapter in my never ending book. ☺
Art - Something I haven't really done in years... I have always loved hands on creativity such as playing with clay, painting, drawing even though I am horrendous with it. You would think having a kid I would have gotten back into it but not the case. It is something I know I have a desperate need to experience again but for whatever reason when I attempt it falls through and I never do it.
Eccentricities - I know that seems weird but when I run into something or someone who is not in the "norm" box, I analyze it or them and it gives me ideas for a variety of things. This includes funky clothes, make up, behaviors that are unique, etc. I am an oddball myself and I am proud of it, so I can appreciate things that are outside the box.
A good conversation - There are some people and some topics that if discussed, I can talk for many hours. I am talking like... 10+ hours consecutively! I tend to feel like my brain is a pitcher that the conversation is the water filling it. When it is done I have very full head and I want to "pour" that energies into something which allows for creativity in a few different forms especially writing.
Music and dance - I was raised in a household where music from The Doors to Sting, from Dave Mathews to Marilyn Manson was played. Singing and loud music was just a part of my childhood and still is a strong creative 'juice box" for me. I was also raised to dance in classes like ballet, tap, acrobatics, jazz, hip hop, etc. For many years. I have also learned that dance on my mothers side of the family is something passed down with professional dancing. Music, singing, and dancing, they are things I still use today (generally privately) to express myself or get creativity from. It is one of my most static creative sources that I think will always be there.
Learning - Social sciences in particular like psychology, sociology, etc. Learning always makes my brain tick and I love it!
Gaming - I know it is crazy but gaming.
Cleaning - Kelly talks about decluttering in her video. Weirdly enough I enjoy going through things and organizing. I had even considered doing it as a job for a few years! But it gives me energy and a way to decompress bad energies too.
I remember I used to as a kid repeatedly create paper boxes, write letters over and overs that I never sent, drawing in my sketch books even though they were awful, scrap booking bands and "things" I was interested in back when, playing with my clothes, jewelry, and make up. Most of these things I stopped doing.
I would say something in the last year that has given me energy and creative is new friendships. Yeah, yeah, I touch on friendship almost every post I got it lol. But at this point in my life I have been kind of stuck in a funk with the same people in my life. New people in my life have kicked me back into some sort of a gear with questioning things and finding new oomph for life because of them. Which in turn allows for creativity to come back as well. Especially when they are supportive about me trying to express myself.
I do need to make time to get "out" and allow myself to experience things to give me more mojo for creativity. The last time was when I went to the ocean the last 2 times in the past year. It kind of drew my energies out.
I have the same routine all the time and my goal for the following year is to make resolution to get out to somewhere new once a month. Not a crazy goal but totally doable.
One of my biggest issues is putting others in front of my own needs. Also, putting myself in situations where I ask for others okays and thoughts rather then making my own decisions independently. I will also touch on getting out of toxic relationships with people.
This has been one of my biggest issues on self love. Having low self esteem, I tried finding it through other people and unhealthy relationships. When I was young, in grade school, I would put everything into what I thought was friendships to the point that it was annoying to those friends who pushed me away because of it. By middle school, I found a group of people who accepted me for me but were very unhealthy individuals. They were from extremely tumultuous households understand respect of others or appropriate emotional expressions, some did drugs, and so on. So I was not generally around unhealthy environments and people who weren't really in a good place to have healthy relationships. When I was in high school I chose to be more selective about my friendships but I certainly wasn't great at choosing people even then. I was getting into romantic relationships because I felt that was expected and behaved the way I thought I was supposed to and eventually got into an unhealthy marriage because of that.
This was one of the biggest unhealthy relationships I had been in to date. It was an emotional and verbal and bordered on physically abusive due to his bipolar disorder and the way he was raised. He unintentionally conditioned me to on egg shells and always ask for permission to do things which I haven't fully broken the habit of today. I also have a bad habit of apologizing and looking for others approval due to this relationship. My biggest self love experience through that whole situation is getting the strength up to divorce him. Which I finally did.
It has taken a lot of time to get to where I am today from that low point, but I still have a lot to work on still.
Currently, my biggest struggles are putting those I love and care about before me even when it isn't necessary or even when they call me out on it and tell me to stop it. It is a bit of a compulsive reaction for me. My happiness generally derives from making others happy, not myself.
I have a friend in my life currently who calls me on it when I do it more then anyone has and tries to nail in the fact that my needs are more important then anyone else. My friend tells me many positive things about myself that I either never hear or hear very rarely from those I care about and it has a major impact on how I view myself. It is kind of like relearning how to have healthy relationships and this friend is kind of steering the way. I am learning things about myself that I didn't know, or that I haven't dealt with and thought I had, and so on. It is interesting how one person coming into your life at the right time can flip it upside down and have such a large impact on it, in a positive way. Though some negative habits have popped up and my friend just figuratively shakes me and bats my head to get me out of those habits. Sometimes you need another person to give you a hand up but when it comes down to it, this is something I will eventually need to continue alone.
It is a never ending process.
Today's topic is self parenting and acknowledging our inner child.
So I will start by discussing my relationship with my parents. As briefly touched on before in the last blog, I was very lucky to have great parents. Were they perfect? Nah, but they were as ideal as I could have expected parents of mine to be. Both hippies who raised me and my sister be free spirits with in reason and safety. Never kept realistic views from us even if they were negative. Such as discussing sex at the dinner table! Ha! My dad before I was born, was a partier and drinker and certainly continued to smoke pot until he died but he was a functional pothead where you really couldn't tell he was stoned. They used my dad's experiences to give us warnings on why doing certain things are a bad idea. Such as drinking and rolling a car. Yeah, not so good. My mom though experimented before we were born was very straight edge, not even drinking after we came around.
Both parents came from households that had father's who were alcoholics and with my dad, an abusive father. So they both as adults went quite the opposite. They were both raised Roman Catholic so I feel they both kind of felt tthe need to not have me and my sister have a super strict up bringing with the guilt associated with many religions. They let us choose our own path. Hell, dad went pagan and my mom associates with Native American beliefs.
They were very affectionate, would listen to our problems and treat us both like people rather then just kids, and though we were low income they always found a way to make holidays special.
Overall, they gave my sister and I a lot of freedom to grow but enough limitations that we weren't wild children. Even in our teens and certainly when I was gothed out and emo they didn't restrict much there either.
Were they perfect parents? God no. My mom certainly gave me my neuroticness when it comes fears such as heights. We actually experienced this last weekend when we went to dump my dad's ashes in the mountains and her and I (not my sister) were wigging out over the heights. She conditioned a few long time fears of mine. For sure. Also, she had a bad habit of not showing softer emotions like tears so I have often felt the need to hold mine back since my teens. We definitely had strife in my teens but we are very close now particularly since my dad's death.
My dad was always great, but when he had cancer the first time 15 years ago, his moods certainly were affected. The chemotherapy messed with his health almost worse then the cancer did and it was for the rest of his life. He was in chronic pain and obviously that caused moods to be unpleasant at times. This was during my teens as well, so during my teens was difficult for various reasons even at home. My sister was out of the house in college at that time but I was kind of left to my own devices and got into some things and some relationships that if things were more healthy in our household, probably wouldn't have. Also, though this is a positive as well, my father was always someone who gave people many chances and was the parent that wasn't afraid to show emotions like crying. This though a good thing, also can cause some issues and is certainly thing I struggled with for a long time.
I still struggle with some of those issues I had with them today but it is in my mind very minor. My biggest focus is that I don't push my fears onto my own child who is 10 now. I think I have done a good job. Also, I have shown him physical affection and feeling the feels is okay. Especially since he is autistic. Most don't like physical touch. He isn't bothered by that so that is a huge deal.
Through my 20's, I locked my emotions down because I do tend to feel a lot and allow those emotions to steer my behaviors. I was successful at keeping a lock down on this until my dad's death. Also, a new friend of mine has also pushed me to break through those barriers I put up and to just feel and respect what I feel. I had thought I had dealt with many issues, but realized through this friend that I had just put them in a box under my bed. It was out of sight and mind but was still present.
I need to be able to acknowledge my feelings about a lot of things and accept them, because they are legitimate feelings. Having a support system, even one person to hold my hand through this journey makes a huge difference. Though this path is my own, company always helps with the harder terrain.
I appreciate all the many positive things my parents have given me and implemented in my personality and experience. Those few things that I struggle with though, they are big issues. I probably need to take some serious time to myself and really feel all those feels I hid during my teens in particular, take them in, process them, then let them go.
I am participating in Self Love September challenge started by our beloved Four Queens, Kelly-Ann Maddox. You can find out more about this challenge on her YT channel by the same name.
Today's focus is on our self love journey. So I figured I would just give as brief as possible run down about my ongoing journey to accept myself and love myself because at this point, I am far from having a healthy relationship with myself.
So let's begin...
I don't remember a time where I was happy with myself or accepted myself until somewhat recently. I grew up in a loving accepting home which one would think would allow for healthy growth of one's self perspective. If this were the case i would probably have a huge ego! ☺ This wasn't the case though. Through my childhood into adulthood I was constantly harassed for various reasons. Being legally blind one a big one, coming from a low income family where we would have to shop at Goodwill for clothes, being a bit of a non-conformist by nature, dressing bizarrely, and having the hyperactive-annoying energy level that puts a lot of people off. There was an abundance to choose from to be picked on for. Hell, even today, my friends say I am easy to give shit to because I am so reactive to things. It is just how I am.
People called me ugly, stupid, weird, annoying, blindy, and plenty of worse things even for no reason other then I stood to close to them. It got bad enough to the point of attempting to kill myself in middle school and my parents sending me to the "blind school" in our state. I learned quickly that though they can't make fun of my eye sight, they still could make fun of everything else. I learned to have a thicker skin there and eventually I returned to my public school with a bit of a strong sense of self. Still very low self esteem that came out by being promiscuous, bad choices in boyfriends, dabbling in some bad behaviors, and trying to please others rather then myself all the time.
It snowballed into getting married right out of high school to someone who was verbally and mentally abusive. During my senior year I had actually gained some self esteem by going back to the blind school for academic reasons because they had a better program to get ahead in. I was a part of many school organizations and sports and I felt that I was finally if not on top, near the top of my capabilities at the time. So I thought getting married to this guy was another step up because of course I could fix his faults. Obviously that didn't work. That relationship lasted for almost 3 years and was one of my lowest points in my life where I was considering doing what I did in middle school. I finally had to stand up for myself and I divorced him.
During almost a year of living on my own and dating some of course, bad men, I did learn to rely on myself which was another positive. I also went back to school which gave me purpose. I also met my current husband while in college and was one of my best choices to be with him. Needless to say, this guy is a patient man. We ended up having a child within one year of being together but instead of causing drama it brought us closer.
He went back into the military and during his deployment we found out our child was autistic and I hit another low point. I was so incredibly depressed I went back to counseling which I hadn't since I was in school (mind you I was in counselling almost the entire time in school). I also got diagnosed with adhd and bipolar 2. This explained a lot of things and if I had been diagnosed sooner I probably would have been in a better mental state through some of my younger years. After this point, when my husband returned, we moved out of state for a few years and overall things have since been alright. There have been some low points of course in the last decade with him but we have a pretty strong relationship.
I recently, after my dad's death last summer, hit a rocky point where I recently chose to get back on what I like to call my "mental meds". The death triggered old mental states that I knew I needed help dealing with.
So that is where I am at in my life experience and through that I have had some growth to where I no longer think I am ugly but just average, that I have a few traits I like about myself, that I am good at a few things, rather then thinking I am useless and have nothing to offer. I also have never felt weak for getting on my medication either like some people do. If I need it, then I need it ya' know?
I have had a very uphill battle in my life with just about everything with a few plateaus where I feel contented, but never really fully happy. I am not sure I have ever felt pure happiness about myself or life in general. Nor peace. I think it is obvious why.
I am hoping that this challenge I can achieve in part some new perspective of myself that will allow a better sense of self, love for myself, and a smidge of happiness.
Feel free to comment or ask questions, I am really an open book.
At the bottom of the page is a link to a video that corresponds to this topic and may better explain my thoughts. So check it out! One thing I feel gets lost in the focus to become more attuned with spirituality is the friendships outside of the path you follow. We all understand how a coven or spiritual group and even family can have an influence on your spiritual growth. But how often do you consider your non-spiritual friends or those not of the same path? Or those who are still searching for their path?
So for me, other then the occasional theology discussion with my non-pagan friends, there hasn't been a large or noticeable impact on my life. Also, at my age, most of my friends have determined what path they have chosen to follow. Other then expanding their knowledge, they are all fairly well rounded on the spiritual front.
I have a friend who I have known a few years and who is younger then me who has not determined what their path is but is very intrigued with the metaphysical and asks me many questions about my own path and things about metaphysics and my opinions on it. I really don't get these types of questions because, though I have been a witch for years, I am certainly no expert and I am eclectic so my path is my own, not one following a religion.
This friend asked me questions big and small about my path, what my beliefs are, and some of the questions I had not really been asked before. We didn't just talk about the superficial of the question with a quick answer but had long conversations about each topic. This allowed me to understand my beliefs on a deeper level that I hadn't considered before.
For example, one of the things that are a hot topic is our discussion about dreams, astral travel, and lucid dreaming. My friend can almost never remember his dreams, while I dream almost every night and can remember most of them, including lucid dreaming. As for astral travel, I am still not very good at it. So I was able to discuss the basics with them and how to take small steps to get to their goal. First step, trying to remember your dreams. Use a journal and write them down immediately as you wake up. Do this for weeks and months until you notice a change. When you realize you are dreaming, attempt to change things small rather then big. Such as picking up a glass you see rather then ignoring it as just background imagery. Stuff like that. Things I had already been doing for some time.
My friends excitement at these new ideas, since they are new to metaphysical things and outside the box ideas, is so refreshing and has given me a better connection to the things I believe. There have been times I have asked, why do I believe t his anyways? And having these conversations not only help them, they help me. Another example is that I have been in a lull with my tarot readings or connecting with tarot in general. One day they asked for me to pull a few cards, which turned into HOURS of tarot readings from me. This got me reconnected to why I love them so much. My friend is now my tester to see how quickly I connect with a deck if I do at all.
I have wonderful friends in the craft I wouldn't change at all, but those friends outside the craft I have grown to appreciate even more at time because they just don't accept a simple answer, but require a full explanation that is in depth. This friend has also got me excited about getting back into nature. Not to mention they also are one of the few who understand my way of thinking which can be hard to understand for many, even my own family and husband ha. This helps relieves stress which allows my mind to focus on more important things.
To round it up, don't forget those friends who are outside the practise of your spirituality and don't allow yourself to become stagnate in what you have always enjoyed before because sometimes you just need the right person in your life to, well, jump start your spiritual batteries.
It has been almost a year since being on this blog. Life has been crazy since then. My big break stemmed from the passing of my father in August which snowballed a hiatus on a lot of my projects. Being it is close to almost a year since my last post I am considering doing at least a blog once a week again. I think stepping back from sharing videos unless they are particular interesting, they seem to clog most of my blog up. I believe I will be focusing back onto spiritual topics again, but also regular life things as well such as my process in my weight loss experience that I am going through. I also intend to include updates on my writing as well. I hope you all stay in touch and check me out more often!
