It is an amazing experience to see a client begin to love and accept themselves. When I accept myself as I am, I have the space to move forward.
Recently, a client wrote a compassionate letter to herself,
Dear _____, When you first came to see Becky you were lost, empty, unable to function. You felt alot of loss in every way. Stripped of so much. Not wanting to live anymore, just really be invisible because that is how you felt! So much pain! ...
Now, there is a sense of acceptance, love of self and others and a closeness to God and yourself. Consciously being in the present time, being grateful - not just saying it but feeling it...
Keep on keeping on.
Love, (client)
Can you see why I love my work! Amazing experience to experience this journey with someone.
This cnocept of loving-kindness to self can be a unique concept. Isn't that selfish? Shouldn't I focus on others?
As Dr. Gerner states in his book, The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion:
Self-kindness is to connect with our common wish to be happy, not to aggrandize the 'self', which only causes more misery. When we recognize within ourselves the instinct for self-care, we're more inclined to see it in others and to work for their welfare as well. If we active warmth and love within ourselves, we can often talk ourselves through difficult times. Self-kindness is not where the process stops -- it's the beginning.
The journeys of Becky, blind from retinitis pigmentosa, and her beauitiful guide dogs.
1 comment:
We've been studying this concept in Sanskrit, Lovingkindness, Maitri.
Kindness towards ones' self is a beginning and then to extend that in compassion through more kindness to others is everything. Here's a poem I love.
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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