Self love is a life long journey,
and some days
I’m not very good at it.
by Rebecca L. Atherton
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Yesterday it was sunny
and I basked like a cat.
Today I am listening to the rain come down
while inside different parts of me cry.
by Rebecca L. Atherton
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Shhhhhh little bird,
don’t say a word;
the sun has risen
and the black bird is awake.
by Rebecca L. Atherton
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It’s the 2nd of December and all of a sudden Christmas is just a handful of days away, or that’s how it feels. I have been in Mallorca since Friday and am slowly settling in – adjusting to the temperature, the scenery, the way of life; putting long held things down and letting go of things that are tight. The people are friendly and I feel welcome wherever I go. The sky is blue and in the centre of the day it’s warm enough to sit outside. The streets are quiet, empty… and I do not have to clean my shoes each time I go out. There is less pollution. Whites stay white. Food is cheaper, fresher and mostly organic. Apples taste how apples should taste. Seafood is common and it is possible to eat out often without guilt. I am eating out. I do not feel guilty. I feel restless though and I am finding this hard to accept. I cannot sit quietly or do what I usually do; there are fears and thoughts filling my mind with the kind of things that go bump in the night.
I miss my home with its familiar surroundings – my pictures, my drawings, my ornaments, my Fimo unicorns and knitted mice, my crystals, my oracle cards, my pendulums and lucky charms, a tea for every day of the month, four alternatives to milk; gluten-free, wheat-free, dairy-free, lactose-free products; a wardrobe full of choice, drawers full of excitement, a bed with a mattress and sheets that have only ever been mine, a brand new everything inside an old but renovated space… I miss the bathroom I at first disliked with its traditional sink and cracked white tiles, the floors whose scratches I hid beneath rugs, the neighbour upstairs and his heavy feet, the washing machine whose spin cycle woke everything up. I miss the central heating, the insulation, the open space and tall windows letting in the light. I miss it’s countless memories and the special things I did there. I could sit still and calm in that space for hours, content to be alone. I was warm. I was relaxed and safe. I am a creature of habit. I do not like to deviate from or break with routine; it tortures me, from the centre out, undoing all that I have put in place, unpicking all that I have set down, challenging my beliefs.
Resisting the urge to rewind, burying myself deep in chocolate, tea and toast, over-sized omelettes and glasses of local wine, I try to love my hat, focusing on the importance of finishing that. But even while the comfortable click and clack of my needles soothes me, the simplicity of the project, the superficiality of its journey after that, fails to really get beneath.
Being mindful, I remind myself of how normal all of this is, how ‘okay’ it is to be a little spikey. In acting out I am speaking for the child within, the hidden part that is most often ignored. Like a dog, all she wants is a warm lap, a familiar space, a routine that caters to her every need and lots and lots of attention. Like an infant, she wants to play, existing solely in a space of love, laughter and light.
Maybe I will buy paper and coloured pens to paint my story out? Maybe I will buy thread and felt to stitch it down? I’d rather go for a walk on the beach, attempt to meditate with the sand on my skin, visit the cathedral, ride in a horse-drawn carriage, peruse the local markets, sightsee, explore, delving into each and every space, feeling, touching, tasting, really getting a sense of it. But I am trapped in another’s routine, rushing and rushing then sitting and sitting, counting the hours, avoiding the minutes, longing only for bedtime when, finally, I can shut it all out.
This will pass, as everything passes; for there is nothing in life but change. We cannot still. We cannot cling. We cannot stop, no matter how much we might want to. And in the meantime – while I grin and bear and occasionally grimace and growl – it is best to view it as a meditation, the acquiring of a new level of acceptance, patience and self-love.
Opening a closed heart can be dangerous;
especially if you have not adequately prepared.
Just look at Pandora and what happened to her!
In the end though, there is no other way:
denial only prolonging what will one day find a way out.
Navigating extreme feelings –
emotions that threaten to overwhelm
the casing in which they reside –
I battle the urge to run backwards,
something external holding me to the floor.
Placing hands on parts I have for years now
happily suppressed – suffocating, starving,
ignoring… until they appeared to die –
I listen as they wake back up:
hungry, angry, needy.
Tears fall, sobs escape, screams wrench
and I keen like a mother grieving an infant: open, raw, exposed.
And while it might take a while,
for the denial runs deep:
even this small freedom is a respite.
by Rebecca L. Atherton
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Repeating the same mistakes,
I find myself returning to people and places that hurt;
then, angry, hurt myself,
seeking salvation in tiny red flowers.
by Rebecca L. Atherton
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Growing from the centre, spreading out; opening tired arms, reaching out… I begin to evolve; returning – slowly, surely, bit by timid bit – to my maker, to the one who conceived the thought and (albeit thousands of years ago), made my forebears who then lead lives that in a very protracted ‘meandering-around-the-fields kind of way’ (a bit like my writing) eventually led to me.
But who is that voice that’s calling? And why now? Why not before, when I first had need of it?
Was it necessary to be so beaten, so tattered and torn, so tangled and tormented, bereft? Did I need to lose it all before I could from the ground, the grey grit of the tired bedraggled pavement, start crawling back?
~
Praying, meditating, practicing yoga; spending quiet time, alone time, time with me: I pick up the pieces, attempting to reassemble the puzzle that – whole, complete – amounts to an entirety of something I am only now coming to know.
I try to remember that God loves me and that Jesus died for my sins. I try to remember too that other people have suffered, suffer, are suffering still, and that we are all battling similar things.
Only it’s easy to forget and then feel miserable, or perhaps act out, speaking from the lonely part, the child that has since we began been neglected.
~
Reading self-help books; studying religion, spirituality, philosophy, metaphysics… I move, crossing a landscape of boulders that was ‘once upon a time long ago’ green and vibrant.
Planting seeds; tending to the garden, praying to the moon and dancing for the sun: colour arrives and I thrive, rising up from the ashes of pain and shame to walk with grace and confidence.
And I try to have fun and to remember how to play, taking advice from children and the tiny inside me, the ‘me’ that I am only now really learning to see and accept. Fimo unicorns dance across tabletops, origami doves gather around lamps, felttip rainbows remind me to be kind to myself when all around me I’m staring at clouds. Having allowed what has been forbidden to surface, it won’t now be shut back down.
I was afraid that perhaps I wasn’t being mature enough.
I was also afraid that I had gone mad, losing my soul down a rabbit hole that, once entered, did not permit one to turn back.
Now I see that the answer is simple, that I have instead been forced to rewind, returning to parts that never grew, reconnecting with parts that were rejected.
Listening to her, seeing her, for the first time; looking with complete awareness, judgement-free: I slowly heal what was allowed to self-destruct. It is painful and slow. Strange how this journey began as one thing, as a new career path, as an evolution of ego – albeit with a good heart – and then turned into something else entirely that has, in new and nefarious ways, challenged me.
~
Walking in the light, I see that God had other plans and that, really, when it’s all peeled back, there is only ever one path, one way, and it is love.
Love makes us happy.
Love brings us peace.
Love enables us to forgive and thereby to finally heal.
Love enables us to reach out and touch and begin to restore, transforming hate and anger, cynicism and judgement, depression and pain. Little by little, the world begins to change.
It is a journey of a thousand miles. And, like all of you, each day I take another step.
by Rebecca L. Atherton
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My heart feels fragile and my emotions are like glass. I ache everywhere… from head to foot. Strange! I don’t know why.
Maybe I’m just tired? Every time I think I’m out of it: home free, laughing on the other side of what has been a long lonely eviction from all that’s warm and sweet; it comes crashing back, knocking until I fall to my feet. Not that I was ever arrogant about standing upright anyway: it has always been a challenge.
Born into a mould that was different; teased about this and that; poked and prodded until my paper-thin broke: I have learned to hide rather than shout. Like the church mouse, I creep and sneak. Like her sister Cinderella, I pick up and dust. I often think I was born to serve. I do it so well.
Perhaps my role is not to stand out, not to change in any overt external way, but, instead: to lend, lever and prop up? Maybe I am just the wingman: fixing what is broken in others; healing what hearts, bellies, minds cannot stomach, see or tolerate? Not a bad task. A task I actually rather like. After all: what comes easily and cleanly; what feels natural, an extension of self; what reaches out and into one’s own heart, bringing one into presence, demanding one turn up… is hard not to like.
I’ve always had this desire to help others; this calling to protect, shield and heal. It’s something I’ve done ever since I grew up. Something I endeavoured to do even in childhood. I used to think: if I can’t fix me, if I can’t protect my own damaged and broken self: then at least I can apply the knowledge, the learning, the ‘advice too-hard-to-take’, to those around me.
And yet…
Tripping over my own misguided self; falling flat on my long-ago disowned face; finding myself alone with my mind and my body – things I hated, things I feared; nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no anything to take me: the all that I had been avoiding, the everything that I had fled, the darkness and dirt disowned… caught up. And somehow – in the eye of that nightmare, in the vortex of that storm, in the deafening noise of that aloneness, that isolation from friends and family, world and self… I found myself a miracle: quiet, small and full of grace.
Slowly, I learn. Slowly, I see. The road is long; the horizon unclear. It is often dark and it is often wet. But there are stars 🌟 and rainbows 🍭 too. And the sunsets 🌞, when I manage to see them, are incredible.
I live according to a routine, keeping it simple. I don’t overly tax myself. I keep interaction to a minimum and travel to where I can get to outside of rush hour on foot. I don’t expect. I don’t demand. I listen to my body and do what she wants. We draw a lot. We make things out of paper, silk, clay and wool. We listen to the radio and we read, educating ourself, ourselves, in all things spiritual, metaphysical, holistic, helpful and healthy. We sing 🎤 and we dance 💃🏼. We do yoga. We meditate – with essential oils, with crystals – hands on heart, on abdomen, on head… addressing each injured part, each softly screaming object, each rejected bit of once-upon-a-time integrated ingredient, bit by painful bit.
I begin my day in front of the mirror, greeting myself with love 💋. It is hard work and it makes me uncomfortable. I don’t want to do it; I want to run away 🏃🏼 and pretend like everything’s ok, like everything’s usual. But I can see how it affects my life and I am encouraged by the results.
I work on releasing anger 💥: forgiving, accepting, letting go🎈of things I have too-long been holding onto.
I am learning to say “no” and not to beat myself up for having done so. I am not a bad person and I deserve to be loved.
I am starting to listen to myself and act from the silence and in doing so I am learning peace .
I am shining my light and allowing others to shine with me. This is incredible: I had forgotten how much, when in alignment, when balanced and grounded, when in sync with authentic self, I glow.
I am welcoming abundance and paying attention to the guidance 🔮 that I receive. I am practicing accepting 🎂 along with giving 🎁, allowing an even exchange. This really has been difficult.
Slowly, I am letting go and learning how to surrender.
I see the shadow that stands behind me, the pain on her face and the suitcase 👜 she holds in her hand. I sit with her on quiet mornings and together we go through the contents: sifting through old clothes 👗👘👚👕, forgotten garments 👙, things I have not seen or thought about for many years.
My wardrobe grows, accommodating things I now wear instead of hiding deep inside me. I wear my shame with pride and slowly she glows 🏮. Life is richer, brighter, more intense. I don’t dance around the permimeter of the person I want to be. I step in fully and completely.
It’s a long journey, but daily we are getting there. Happiness 😊 is a choice I make and I am making that choice upon rising ⛅️ every day.
by Rebecca L. Atherton
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Rebecca L. Atherton 