Be Enough

 

Some Bibliotherapy

 In keeping with my explorations of bibliotherapy, the transcribing of significant excerpts to beautiful pages makes this doubly therapeutic.   True art therapy.  

This part in particular sang to me.

To Embrace Life

When I was in the planning stages before starting this new blog, I decided that the title "Embracing Life" best described what I hoped to do. 

Whilst looking for a term that would best describe things (you know, how often the Japanese have words to describe particular effects), the only thing I could find meant something quite different.  If you Google the term "embracing life/to embrace" life usually describes finding reasons to live (in other words those without a wish to live).  

That is not me.

I felt that it was important to clarify that.  My situation has always been very different.  I struggle with guilt about existing. 

I was raised to feel like I was a burden, that there was something wrong with me, that I was unlovable. 

Nothing I ever did was able to fix that.  Essentially, my childhood was the first trauma of my life (hereby classified as Big Nasty Trauma #1).  It is only with therapy that I have begun to understand just how much damage was done to me in my formative years.  It's a lot to unpack, and I am just beginning. I know what I need to do.  I am going to re-parent myself:-

I want to nurture my heart and embrace my life, every little bit of it with love, joy and compassion.

This is my manifesto... and I want to share my experiences with you.

Enough

 

Bullet Journal!

 A fun new concept I wish to try 

I started using this awesome app called Canva a few months ago.  It was very useful ( and a lot of fun) when I was running the social media pages for the library.  Now it is for my personal use and I am having fun exploring the possibilities.  The hands holding the heart have become something that I envisage as my mission statement.  Embracing my heart, embracing my life.

Applying Self-compassion

 

Managing the Spoons

 

This is the final day plan that I have arranged on the SpoonieDay app.  On good days I manage to check off most of the boxes, and on others I practice self compassion so that I don't feel so bad about having a rest.  It's complicated and sometimes very frustrating to not have the energy I used to have. 

It's going to take a lot of time, patience and self referral to adjust to the new way of doing things.  

So until then, I am keeping it simple.  Everything planned is geared towards mental and physical health (I will explain some of the entries in later posts). 

I saw this image two years ago (on Facebook) when I was deeply depressed and it spoke to me...gave me some perspective finally on what might be happening to me.

Tiny Buddha