I am willing to acknowledge that I am hard on myself. I have a voracious inner critic and its taken some years to become aware of just how little slack it cuts me. I have now a much clearer idea of the work before me. I simply must take care of me. As a compassionate person I send out a signal to others and they gravitate towards me at times, but I can end up quickly depleted. I sense deeply into the heart and am conscious of this as others chatter on. I just left a lunch meeting with my cousin, someone I love very dearly but she does not draw breath the entire time we are together. Today I am tired so I got overwhelmed. I had to terminate the meeting after 2 hours, probably 20 minutes longer than it really should have gone on. A while back I could not have done this, I would have ended up feeling pinned to the spot. I was crying all the way back to the car as I was so tired from supporting my Mum yesterday and drinking two cups of coffee to keep me going in the emergency ward. Its not good for my body.
I am home now. I need to set in place a self care plan. I am tired. Its my birthday on Saturday but I am not planning any get together. I told Mum today its too much for her as she knows. Tomorrow is the first anniversary of my breast cancer diagnosis. I am conscious I have not been taking care of my body as well as I should. I simply must.
I need to accept the deep emotional abandonment that was passed down to me by my Mum. I need to see and change the fact that often I can emotionally abandon myself by not taking good care and setting good boundaries. I need to accept that some suffering and loneliness is part of this and let the grieving work its way through. I need in short to take care of me and acknowledge me, its pointless to complain if others cannot and will not (and many of you will care and acknowledge me here) in the end self love, self care, self support all rests on me. That is the simple truth.
Emerging From The Dark Night 