I’d like to share some
thoughts I had early on in my recovery journey as I was just beginning to
create my relationship with myself in a healthier way. I had always wanted to be able to just be
myself, having always been a people pleaser and a person who tried to put on
the correct mask for whatever the occasion.
In December 1995, I never got around to writing a Christmas letter so in
January 1996, I wrote the New Years letter below and sent it out to all my
family and friends:
I
am celebrating the experience of starting to know unconditional self-worth, of
discovering a new relationship with myself, living in the moment and being more
alive and thereby being on the way to a great future in 1996.
I
feel I have a right to be for the sake of being. Where does this sentence come
from? I have always felt I was alive to
prove my worth and thereby find it in some activity, status, achievement,
award, etc. Unconditional worth was a theory I gave lip service to but could
not comprehend.
I
want to smell the pine needles and feel the wind blow. As leaves brush against
each other, I will run down the hill while my hair blows into my face. I want
to feel what it is like to have my hair in my face as opposed to lying on the
side of my head. I also want to notice what it is like to see through strands
of hair instead of straight though my glasses.
It is so easy to live without noticing you are alive. Small things are often more important than
big things.
Life
is too short to worry about what people think.
It is too brief to be concerned with how my life should be. If I let my
life unfold, let my spirit dance, and give myself freedom to be myself, then I
will become who I am supposed to be.
Being
myself is not looking for the right way to look. It is just looking, thinking
and wondering. It is not trying to make my eyes a different color. It is taking the eyes I have and seeing. This means seeing the world with my opinions
and my idiosyncrasies and my dreams. And
if I am color blind I can know it is not a defect but a gift. No one else in the whole world can see like
me. Some people could choose to label color blindness as a negative trait
because they don’t know the positive things about it because they are not color
blind.
Part
of what it means to be alive is to hear with a confidence that doesn’t ask for
approval. In the past I have thought, “What am I supposed to hear?” I was therefore distracted from hearing,
living and discovering. The self dies
when she thinks her natural way of hearing is flawed, and when she believes she
must hear in a way she is uncapable of hearing.
My self is being reborn; my relationship with myself is starting anew.
I
used to define myself by the classes I took, the grades I made, the major I was
in, any awards or accomplishments etc. I
think defining myself is limiting thing because I may stop not realizing I can
grow beyond those words. If I was an art
therapist, I could say, “I am an art therapist.” But what does that really
mean? Each art therapist is a unique
individual like any other person in any other profession. I am not what I do; I am a human being, not a
human doing. I have tremendous power by
believing in myself more and more, in more creative ways and in stronger
ways. That is the key to my future.
This
is my first year to send a letter and not list every activity I was doing, each
class I took in school, etc. I did not
do that because, for me, that would have been a way to prove my worth. The news I value the most this year is what
is going on inside of me.
Happy
New Year! Let’s reach for the stars! Won’t you come and celebrate with me?
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