The 10 Commandments of Self

1 – I shall not hide who I am – flaws, quirks, weirdness, beauty, intelligence, talent…all of it.

2 – I shall not pretend I do not have pain. I will acknowledge it, work on it, and learn to let it go.

3 – I shall not speak of myself negatively. I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and I shall stop calling God a liar.

4 – I shall speak words of kindness to myself daily, even hourly if need be.

5 – I shall nurture myself.

6 – I shall not take everything so personally.

7 – I shall give myself rest, mercy, and grace.

8 – I shall learn my limits; I shall not say yes when I’m overwhelmed.

9 – I shall not allow guilt to dictate my decisions.

10 – I shall forgive myself and let go, no longer beating myself up for past decisions, choices, and ideas that went wrong or simply didn’t work out.

After a tumultuous week of up and down, I almost felt sorry for my counselor. In addition to the purging of the past, now I wanted to dump the weeks’ events on her lap too. Thankfully, she can take it. I wasn’t sure I could.

“OK, so I want to ask you this: What did you do to nurture yourself after all of this?”

I blinked at her, not sure I understood the question. “Ummmm…”

“Everything you have shared with me so far of this week and your past has a running theme – you taking care of everyone else. So I’m asking you, what do you do to take care of Angela?”

She might as well have been speaking Greek.

“I don’t? I guess?”

I am not certain of my answers, of my thoughts. Do I? I don’t think so. I just move on to the very next thing. There’s always something new on the horizon; there’s no time to dwell for too long on what has already happened. (Which is not true, since I’ve sort of been dwelling on my wayback past for quite a while now.)

My walkaway thought this week is to figure out how to take better care of myself, to nurture myself, to be more tender with my own heart, to be kind to myself, to be the kind of cheerleader for myself that I am for others, to love myself.

Truth: This won’t be easy.

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