My own best friend

After all the deep sadness of this week, I feel I am finally coming through. Its okay that things are as they are, I can accept them. I don’t think my family have any deliberate intent of any nastiness towards me, and should they really include me in their lives when the sad fact is that due to staying close or coming back to be with my sister who was ill and mother who have now died I did not manage to sustain a relationship or build my own totally separate life? Isn’t that now my purpose for the next part of my life? Haven’t I over the past 18 or so years just turned inwards to come to a deeper awareness and understanding not only of my personal self, but of the familial and collective elements as well as a history of trauma which is both multigenerational and archetypal? And this I know I AM MOST DEFINATELY NOT ALONE. OTHER PEOPLE GO THROUGH EXACTLY THE SAME THINGS, EMOTIONS, JOY, SADNESS AND PAINFUL FEELINGS AND HEALING IS ABOUT EXPRESSING IT, MAKING SENSE OF IT AND REACHING OUT TO SHARE ABOUT IT SO OTHERS CAN RECOGNISE THEIR OWN STRUGGLES AND COMMON HUMANITY TOO?

The truth is that most feelings can be borne if we are willing to face them. The problem comes when we don’t accept the reality and struggle with it because then we become bound to the past instead of learning and taking those lessons on to move forward.

God knows I have had to bear a lot of pain in my life. Sadly I could not move forward often in my life. Things pulled me back or held me back and my body mirrors and gives expression to all of this at times with the ongoing panic attacks, almost as though a force is holding me down at times.

But the way to overcome all of this is to be my own best friend. I know it might sound like a bit of a new world cliché but its when we refuse to befriend the way we feel and contain it that we cannot move on or transform things. We then don’t allow anything to move through us, we become paralysed by it. But when we accept it and turn a tender glance towards the small child inside we automatically feel better. We can talk to ourselves in either a loving or self criticising way. And being our own best friend doesn’t mean we need to indulge ourselves in things that will not be good for us, but that we find ways to nurture our growth, accept our flaws and recognise why they exist, that we forgive ourselves for our mistakes or when we feel we fall short don’t beat ourselves up. And only then can we extend this same gift towards others. Learning to love our crooked neighbour with our own crooked heart in W H Auden’s words.

Being our own best friend requires extending nurture and comfort to ourselves and treating ourselves kindly. It means seeing within our own heart and soul deeply and not dismissing or invalidating either.