I have a dear, long-time friend I trust completely. She remembers the actual date we met 30- some years ago, maybe because she was singing in a band for a big gathering or maybe because part of her knew we’d be friends forever. Rebecca is a ‘sensitive’ and can feel the energy of people and situations that most people can’t (yet.) She was my ideal choice to do this self love exercise with because I knew I could be vulnerable with her.

We both realized at about the same time that we needed to become more forgiving of ourselves, and self compassionate, in order to completely heal ourselves at the core level. It’s not the commitment to a strict diet, debt-reduction or exercise regime that will make us happy, we’ve discovered, but rather the commitment to finding a way to just give ourselves a little love when we feel we’re going down that old road of not feeling good enough.

I used to get exercise because I wanted to be thin for my first husband. He valued my thinness, which I never quite felt I achieved to either of our standards. Eventually I began to resent not being liked for who I was (or liking myself for who I was- crazy, huh!) I knew exercise was good for me and I wished I could have done it just for the love of it but that never truly happened until the ability to get exercise was taken away from me, as it has been with this lyme/polymyalgia rheumatic/whatever problem I’m dealing with now- all my docs have different theories. Continue reading →