It’s Ok to admit that it still hurts, that healing,
true healing takes time an immense amount of time,
an immense amount of honesty with self,
an immense amount of comforting to bring you into your own safety because not only are you recovering from the behaviour of others,
you are recovering from your own inability to protect yourself and you weren’t to know that back then but present day you have to make conscious decisions to keep choosing happiness and to keep choosing yourself, to keep loving yourself over harming yourself.
As Human Beings we are capable of harming ourselves in many ways and have done so for generations, for example, as women, not giving ourselves permission to be honest about our periods, Motherhood and quite simply our bodies.
Not giving ourselves the respect and time we deserve to nurture ourselves, to honour our instincts and honour our cycles.
Evidently, we had help nurturing this self neglect.
Another simple but extremely direct way we harm ourselves particularly in our early years is not having control over our inner dialog and the stories we make up to justify the things that happen to us.
A negative inner narrative can cause great suffering.
It takes strength to sit with yourself and figure out your needs, especially when for the majority of your life your needs have been denied, ignored, frowned upon and laughed at.
Some of us come from nurturing homes where there is love in abundance and some of us come from the depths of hell and have to do whatever possible to get away.
It takes great courage to rise everyday and nurture your worth when you come from a deficit.
It takes great courage to continue to pour into yourself when you no longer seek external reward.
Remembering that just being is more than enough whilst the world is hell bent on gaining more, taking more, fighting for more, there is great peace in being satisfied.
After homelessness, being stripped bare of everything, there is an abundance of peace available and you’d be wise to protect it.
True healing can take lifetimes especially if your wounds run deep from childhood.
Finding and creating safe spaces for yourself is very important for the mind may forget but the body holds the unresolved pain.
And so it’s of great importance that when the pain arises, you set it free, make a conscious effort not to beat yourself up or to behave in a way that merely replicates how others have treated you - you do not have to become them and you do not have to carry their dismissive voices in your mind.
Slowly and consciously make an effort to free yourself from unkind echos of people who not only failed to love you but quite clearly were not able to love themselves.
Whatever you feel called to do today, as long as it’s a loving act, do it. If you recognise it isn’t a loving act, take some time to work through what is driving you to behave in such a way and choose to do better.
One step at a time,
One brick at a time,
You are laying a new foundation.
Don’t rush that.
In our haste, we trip ourselves up.
Slow and steady does it because sometimes we are rushing, to no where fast.
I have always believed that the amount of time it took to break you is the amount of time you have to give back to yourself and sometimes in our haste, when new people come along and new experiences, we can throw ourselves all in without caution, from naivety and the rush of dopamine, the power of love or the idea of it - all the above are seemingly positive things and yet they can sometimes lead us to neglect our self work which can quite easily enable us to fall into an unsatisfying loop, where people, places and things seem new but are just old patterns presented differently.
Loving yourself is extremely important as it serves as a constant reminder that you are whole and whilst having extensions of yourself is a wonderful thing for some of us I know loving ourselves is far more important than seeking love from another;
for some of us, needing anything from others is actually quite dangerous.
You do not deserve dangerous - You Do Deserve Peace!
You will be astounded by what you can give to yourself and when you do not seek anything from others, you are a powerful force to be reckoned with because you actively go out of your way, to empower you.
You don’t put yourself down or try to live up to standards that not only aren’t suitable for you but make no sense to who you truly are, now that you nurture yourself and understand yourself.
Loving yourself means rising again and again and again, in your power.
Loving yourself is a most rebellious act in a world that denies truth, that marks some as more superior than others, all the while ignoring the importance of our cycles, nature and the crumbling of society as it has been.
Loving yourself is what charges your power.
So remember it’s Ok to acknowledge and admit you still hurt, your body if you allow it, is releasing generational trauma, you are choosing to do things differently than those before you, refusing to be rushed or have your age and gender biases dangled before you to scare you into conformity, refusing to act as though your period is some taboo thing and that you aren’t a maginificent being, deserving of care and kindness, understanding and respect.
It’s Ok to feel rage for the women before you who covered their eyes with wool to overlook disgusting treatment, to feel rage towards those who internalised misogyny so much so they would happily toss aside their daughters to enable a man.
It’s Ok to feel rage towards yourself for not knowing how to speak up, for merely wanting to maintain peace in spaces you didn’t cause disharmony, for seeing the best in everybody or for being so desperately low and dying time and time again after being raped.
It’s Ok to feel rage over something that will impact you forever.
And most importantly when you find the words and your voice its absolutely crucial you tell your truth because in telling your truth you will find liberation.
I hope you always have the courage to be who you are, no matter how or who tries to whip you out of you and I hope you have the courage to remember even in the sad moments, every time you sit with your feelings or whatever is arising, you are releasing bit by bit suppressed energy and giving yourself permission to rewrite what you told yourself whilst enduring.
That version of you that helped you survive didn’t have the knowledge you have now and wasn’t equipped to contend with what you were made to face but now, now you powerful soul, you know how to talk to yourself better, to love yourself and to use your voice.
Your Voice Is Your Super Power.
Be kind to yourself, each and everyday and keep taking the necessary steps to pull yourself through, keep showing up for yourself and be gentle with yourself whenever those moment of great upset arise.
They aren’t permanent feelings, they are feelings that need nurturing and you can do that for yourself, you can hold yourself in kindness whenever pain or memories arrive that ask you to revisit what was.
Keep remembering and honouring your greatness.
Love yourself always, in all ways. }|{
And Remember: “To Love Thyself Would Be An Awfully BIG Adventure.”
Lahayla Dahlia Lore
