I have been having a rough couple of weeks. The kind of cold that leaves you feeling run down but never develops into anything bad enough to make you lie down. Chilly weather. A kid that just started Kindergarten, then was sick for three days and lost his enthusiasm for the task. A couple of disagreements with people that are unlikely to be resolved, yet I felt compelled to to try.
I was at a real low.
Then I read this blog entry by Briana at Blisscovery and I felt so much better. She’s talking about an incident that left her feeling horrible and how she went through a series of steps to feel better. Step 5 is where the magic is.
Her step 5 was to give herself space to feel what she was feeling. She didn’t try to talk herself out of it, she just felt hurt, sad, and upset. And she let herself feel that way. And then, and then, she STARTED TO FEEL BETTER.
So, after reading that I decided to give myself some room to feel bad.
I feel weird about my kids being in school, and how that changes the amount of time they spend with me, and how that’s going to keep changing as time goes on. That’s not necessarily bad, it’s not necessarily good, it just is. And I’m not going to try to talk myself out of that.
I’m probably going to keep disagreeing with those people. Neither of us is right or wrong, we are just not on the same page. And that’s frustrating. But I’m not fighting it. It is what it is. And I’m sitting with it.
When I don’t get enough sleep, when I don’t eat right, when I get a low-level cold, I skate around the edges of low-grade depression. It’s a fact, and even though I try to eat right, try to get enough sleep, sometimes I won’t be able to and I may feel bad. But that’s not permanent, and it will pass. I don’t have to fight it, because that just ends with beating myself up about how I ended up here again. I can just be right there with it until I feel ready to step back on the path.
Thanks, Briana.
