Learning to Love Myself

I feel like my life is changed. Of course I feel like that everytime I come back from a spiritual retreat. And everytime my life is changed. Whether I allow that change to continue or fall back into old habits is the question.

I spent 5 days at my spiritual school focusing on myself and my relationship with the God Within me. I barely remembered about fertility issues. I was just busy being intent on my disciplines and creating a new reality. I didn't think much about infertility, but I did think a lot about my addiction to stress, and did quite a bit of work on letting go. Letting go of the past, of stress, of doubt, of anxiety, of negative experiences. And I felt all clean and refreshed -- like my garden after today's thunderstorm.

The biggest challenge of the week was being around someone with whom I had a very negative interaction in April. I was verbally attacked, and he got me on all levels: emotionally, personally, professionally, financially, even fertility. I recently started some counseling because months afterward I was still feeling traumatized. So this week I learned to be present in the midst of chaos, to focus on me and my God and ignore this other person and ignore my desire to dredge up the past to have the emotional hit from stress, doubt, violation and anger.

Everyone in our lives are reflections of us, and I realized today that he reflects all my worst fears and doubts about myself. Fears and doubts that I let linger around in my subconscious and sneak out into the open when I least expect it. Learning to love myself and forgive myself is a difficult task.

But I came home to another reflection: my 3 best friends. My husband and my 2 dogs. I felt so loved and appreciated by all 3 of them, and knew this was their own genuine feelings for me as well as my own genuine feelings for myself. This morning, my dogs and I were having a nice walk in the woods, and they mostly stayed at a heel (which they rarely do off-leash), and when I stopped they would sit down in front of me and look at me with those big goofy dog grins. They just wanted to be with me this morning. Just like I was enjoying being with myself.