journal 03: questions
Sunday, June 11th, 2023
Every so often, I find journaling challenges online. They offer various prompts and questions and only ask that you find a few minutes once a day to put pen to paper. It is a great way to ensure you visit your journal, especially when inspiration wanes and you notice that it’s been catching dust.
I wrote these responses last year.
What is self-compassion? How do you practice it?
Self-compassion is grace. It seeks to understand instead of to blame, shame or cut down. It is generous in its appraisals. I am not really sure that I knew which self to be compassionate to, let alone how to practice it. I have had to discover myself first and foremost- unearth all the bits, particularly the unsavoury bits that were hiding afraid. I have found a voice inside, or perhaps not found but found again? Quieted everything else so that I was able to listen. That to me feels like compassion. To give the self space to come forward and to trust in it completely. To love into courage, to listen into expression and to follow… boldly, unreservedly, miraculously into something like the rest of your life.
What makes you feel like powerful? At ease? Like you have your life together?
What is “having your life together” anyway? You might think it is a destination you finally arrive at, something you achieve if you strive hard enough. Then life throws a curveball and changes everything. I am constantly reminded that I can’t have everything figured out. None of us can. All that matters to me is remaining brave as I go. All that matters to me is cultivating a safe place within myself and with the loved ones around me. All that matters to me is that we are committed to figuring it out together.
What do you need more of?
Compassion. Those who ask genuine questions. Those who are genuinely interested in the answers. Fries with mayo. Anything with mayo. Maybe a glass of wine with that. Dinner parties and potlucks. Community. Early morning movies where I sneak in tea and a croissant. White t-shirts that I steal from my dad because they somehow fit better than any I buy. And cheaper. Hugs from my nieces. Family shoots with babies. And toddlers. And extended families. Library books and vintage dresses- things that have lived an entire life before me and have stories to tell. To be treated with tenderness. To be kissed. To be touched where the touch gives and gives freely. To be cared for, not because I can’t do it myself, but because I can and have my whole life and because it is a kindness to take care of the things we love. Adoration. I want to be absolutely adored simply because I deserve it, but I really want this after I have been seen. In a very human way. I want someone to know me and to adore me and I need this to be something I can count on. Looking at this list and realizing how many things involve other people and although independence is a skill, we have always been meant to love each other.
If you could relive a moment in time, where would it be? With whom?
…Maybe I’d bring him back to age ten. He could see the magic of my family’s country home, the reason why I love a porch. The way you can turn up the music inside and hear it dance out through the open windows. We could play tennis and stay on the lookout for deer. Or maybe the blue heron that frequents the pond. We could pick lettuce and tomatoes from the garden for dinner and eat outside in that beautiful screened-in gazebo. How it had the perfect view of sunset over the hayfield. He could hear the things she said to me and then he could finally understand the way that I am, why I get quiet and retreat inside sometimes, why I worry. Why it feels that being myself always comes at a cost. And then we could leave, together. To find a porch and a garden of our own. To walk barefoot across the grass, hand in hand, towards something as safe as love.
Where do you hope to be? In one week? Six months? One year?
In one week, I hope to be feeling better. This flu-like sickness is abysmal. I am reminded of the blessing of health.
In six months…March of 2023…I hope to be even more connected to that voice inside. I hope the stillness of winter has allowed me to honour myself. I hope to have done more writing in my seasonal hibernation.
In one year, I hope to be filled with and surrounded by warm love. I hope to have partnerships that grow and nourish. I hope my house plants are still alive. I hope that I will be more myself with unabashed conviction. I hope all of this authenticity strengthens my art, my photography, my writing. I hope to give the gift of acceptance to others. Loving them for all that they are, being loved for all that I am. I hope I can quiet my mind a little more- notice the whirl of thoughts and let them pass. Live in the present, release attachment to outcomes, relinquish control. And be really proud, of all of it.