Because of the recent thing with my health insurance, I’ve had some “waking insomnia,” the kind where you’re OK falling asleep, but then wake up at three a.m. and can’t get back to sleep. I keep bouncing back to my fearful fantasies (Note to self: NONE OF WHICH HAVE OCCURRED YET! Just saying.)
So I got up this morning and decided to shift my mood. Here’s what worked today:
First I made coffee, a sacrament in my personal religious community of one. This task now involves my shaking my ass all over the kitchen while I wait for it to brew. And I shake thoroughly. I spin around as I wiggle my ass. I’m careful to leave no corner’s dust bunny undisturbed. I make sure to shake my ass to the right, and shake it to the left.
Shaking it to the left is getting easier. I’m getting better at it. Which means . . . I’m going to have to include some more moves to attain the requisite level of goofiness. (Note to self: Add a skill to tomorrow’s choreography).
Today, I added an activity to the caffeine twerking. It worked pretty well. To wit:
I’m drawing on the affirmations of Louise Hay. I’ve downloaded one of her books on mirror work. And I actually look myself in the eye in the mirror and say, “I love you, Karah.”
Coming from a tougher-than-thou culture that defends ourselves with sarcasm, I assumed this would be impossible for me, or that at least I would master the skill only laboriously, slowly, and with incredible difficulty.
Turns out that I was pleasantly surprised. (Note to self: Sometimes something is a lot EASIER than you expect it to be).
One of the first things I noticed when I looked at myself in the mirror and experimenting with telling myself I appreciate me: I learned that the look I give people when I look at them with appreciation and love, which I often do, is incredibly expressive. Accepting. Nonjudgmental.
I realized I love myself for that.
I recognize it. I’ve gotten this look from my dad, my sisters, brothers, their spouses. My grandmothers. My husband. Close friends.
I am very lucky.
I also credit myself for being able to accept this look, not negating, denying, or ignoring it. It takes work for a lot of us to be vulnerable enough to recognize genuine love and esteem when we get it, and to receive that tribute. To say, “Right now, this person thinks I’m awesome. Man, am I lucky!” rather than, “This person thinks I’m awesome, BUT it doesn’t count because he’s a blood relative/ because he has to think this way or else admit he’s wasted the last twenty years being married to me/ because she’s a kid, and so she doesn’t know any better/ because she’s my grandmother, so she has to think I’m great. . . . Isn’t that the law?”
Let me speak sternly to you here: If you haven’t been able to receive or accept love of appreciation from someone you trust, then you’re interrupting a circuit — a circuit that needs to be completed in order to fully circulate love and acceptance through the world.
I think the circuit needs to be fully connected, so that the Love That Moves the Sun and Other Stars can circulate through us all as strongly as possible.
So the mysterious force that drives everything can flow freely through the universe.
So its life blood can animate every particle in the known and the unknown world.
So that every corner of the cosmos, AND its dust bunny! can be as fully alive as possible.
We need it, now.
I need it. Now.
Please do your part to help the Love That Moves the Stars to circulate freely.
Here’s what I’m asking you to do:
If you haven’t been able to accept love from someone, I think you should try it.
Start by accepting love from yourself.
Are you as good at loving yourself, and at accepting and responding to that love, as you can possibly be?
I was afraid of that.
Try this experiment. You will learn something that surprises you.
- Get to a mirror, or pull one out of your bag. You don’t have to love the way you look in order to do this exercise. It works, whether or not.
- Look into the eyes you see in the mirror as though you are looking at someone you have been very close to for a long time. Look at her, with all her flaws and virtues.
- Understand that you don’t fully know, and you don’t yet fully appreciate, this person, in all her wonky complexity.
- Look into the eyes in the mirror and tell this person, “I love you, _____.” Just once.
- Keep gazing into her eyes for a minute. See how she responds.
- Tell her, “Hey. You’re doing good [or well, according to your idiom].”
- Notice the thoughts that occur to you while you are doing this experiment. Just notice them. “Hmm. . . That’s information.”
- Notice the feelings that come up in reaction to your daring such an audacious act.
- Notice that you didn’t die from doing this. It didn’t kill you.
You’re doing good.
I love you.
Think UP! 