What's even the point?

 Please make a deposit.  I've never really thought about how I can make deposits and withdraws from my own emotional bank account.  I watch the numbers in my money accounts rise and fall, it's factual. logical. you spend the money, you earn the money the numbers don't lie.  When I have something happen that drains my account, nearly empty, I need to fill it up again before I can keep going. I feel drained right now. It took everything I had to do the planning session for the week. Kids here, kids there, money, schedules. I was running low and now I'm empty. So how to fill up my account? How to bring my feels to where I am able to give myself and others the compassion we all need and deserve.  This is the moment to go inward and upward. This is the time I get to give myself what I need.  It seems like this is the part that should come easy. What do YOU want Andrea? What things are going to serve as distraction and what actions will fill my pitcher? Which of ...

 Having the space to see clearly. To sit comfortably with yourself and your thoughts and not be weighed down by the anchor that is heavy emotion. To let go of what is troubling you, but in a way that is not forceful or passive. To feel relief at the passing of a thought. To be content to surrender to the idea that you know nothing. To let the waves wash over you and push you into a rock. To feel the spray of the waterfall as you float by and just let it hit you. Make you cold. Startle you into aliveness. It is liberating to allow your mind to wander freely to all the possibilities that might come your way. Maybe something will happen, maybe nothing will happen.  Maybe today is one of the days that you get to appreciate the stillness that is an uneventful day.  Maybe something exciting, sad or scary will happen.  Love whatever it is that will come your way. Notice it. Acknowledge the passing of the sun over your head and surrender to the life that you have no control ...

 but not like a morbid or foreboding kind of place. I'm in a quiet, dark, warm, resting kind of place. One that is safe and calm. Like me.  I'm at rest inside myself. Tranquility is my companion. I'm not afraid of the dark anymore, literally or figuratively. I used to be so afraid of the dark when I was a child. I tried to come up with a way to turn off my lights from the safety of my bed. I hated the walk from the opposite side of the room turning off my lights to get into bed. I didn't have a lamp near my bed always, so I would rig strings and pulleys to try and flip the switch from my bed. my skills have never really been in engineering, and so naturally, it never worked.  I just had to flip the switch and run for it, lest something get me in the 4 step walk to my bed.  It was a small room.  I did get a lamp to have by my bed eventually.  It was a pretty little thing with a frosted glass lamp shade, and a gold metal frame.  It was a touch lamp, whic...

inadequate, like I was not very good at this "adult" thing.  I would tell my husband, " I feel very unbelievable as an adult." As if I was an imposter, everywhere I went, even in my own home. I felt wishy washy, unsteady, I couldn't feel the shaking of the ground beneath my soul. Insecure, unaware, unable to see the hairline cracks, so I continued walking on them until finally they broke open.  I broke open.  I opened myself. In a way that reality was calling forth for me.  I can see it so clearly now. The things I am learning are coming from all the places I felt I was missing something.  self-love  education sexuality emotional intelligence body image self-compassion motherhood marriage I was walking along, following a script, a routine, a life story when the earth opened up and swallowed me whole.  Here I lay beneath the ground.  resting. sleeping transforming becoming metamorphosis quieting meditating shifting calling on all the ways that need...

 To live, then I'll imagine things are just right. I can only be in one place at a time, but my mind is anywhere I want to go. I can zoom in to whatever I want in the room inside my head. It can bring me a smile if I choose or I can find the saddest and most morose feelings of dread and let them be my companions. I can't control so many things, what funny beings we are to think we can. As I sit I dwell on what's ahead instead of what's already in place. I don't know anything, I really have no solid ground. I find comfort in that, knowing I can't change much about my circumstances, save my attitude alone.  Some silly things I in my presence right now: fake flowers, maximum occupancy sign with 113, an empty happy birthday poster. What fun we have trying to make things pleasant, safe or make sense when less might truly be more.

 but because we feel bad.  Self compassion does help us to feel better, but if in a moment of suffering we put our hand on our heart or say kind things to ourselves with the intention to get rid of our pain, it becomes a hidden form of resistance that will just make things worse.  What we resist, persists and grows stronger. Instead, we must fully accept that things are painful, and simply be kind to ourselves, BECAUSE they are painful." -Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion   I'm learning more from this book than I had thought I would when I first started it. It goes along with what I am already trying to learn and what others have told me and been trying to teach me. Angel told me from the beginning "What we resist, persists" this thought told to me again in this book in the context of self-compassion, has brought to mind this thought.   I used to write down my thoughts first thing in the morning when my brain was a mess. I would believe some or all ...

 you've ever written something that in the moment you wrote it you had no idea how much it would help you in the future.  This is I guess a big reason why I have journaled for most of my life, to help me remember things that were significant to me in the moment. I even remember thinking when I was very young and writing about my day that I would one day want to remember the little parts of my day that didn't seem like a big deal. Like getting up and eating whatever I ate for breakfast.  Life and journaling is not just about the big stuff that happens, it's also about all of it.  I found my old blogs that serve as journals from my early days of being a stay at home mom.   I read my journals from the time I was 7 years old until I was a teenager.   Something I wrote when I was 14, that was a big deal to me at the time, but that had long since left my mind as significant, has been a huge piece of getting me through these last few months.  I can'...

 staying alive until the sun goes down and I can go to sleep. If I have to put forth effort to make it a good day then I'm likely fighting something or someone out of my control and the harder I fight the longer it sticks around.  I need more therapy.  I need more sleep. I need something to motivate me to make the first days of public school awesome for my kids. I need something to make me care, just a little bit.  good news, it's already 4:15pm and soon I will get to excuse myself from consciousness for a little while.  side note, I did actually enjoy my time at the lake today. The sun was warm, the water cold, my new swimsuit was comfortable and so was my skin. If nothing else matters today and I don't wake up tomorrow, I was allowed a day to not judge myself in my new suit.  cheers. 

 what more I could have done to seize each day.  Every moment needing to be busy, needing to prove something to myself or those whose opinions I value. A quick glance around my house sends my thoughts into a spiral of self-deprecation. "Why did I just sit there and watch the news, I could have been cleaning the living room, or folding the laundry" "When my husband comes to get the kids to take them to his place, he's going to see the mess in the house and wonder what I did all day." To be fair, I have been sick, like sneeze out a lung and coughing, fevery kind of sick.  That doesn't seem to stop my thought train from deciding that I should have been doing more to prove I'm not a helpless stay at home mom.  So while my brain has checked out of reality, for now, because my ears and sinus holes are full of mucous (mucus?) and everything is a little sweaty, I somehow found the moment that is "THE POINT" for today.  I complied with my son's requ...