Sustaining Hope

I have a page a day calendar written by Geneen Roth related to her book Women, Food and God.  Her entry for today says “I ask my students to remember their own children and how they come into the world already gorgeous and utterly deserving of love.  They nod their heads.  They realize that brokenness is learned, not innate, and that their work is to find their way back to what is already whole.”

I agree that children come into the world already gorgeous and utterly deserving of love.

Yet I feel broken.

Do I feel broken because people or events broke me?

Or do I feel broken because someone told me I was broken?

I need to start believing that I am not broken.

You are Beautiful

I ache all over.

I took three vacation days for a mental health break and to do some projects around my home.  The aches come from painting my bathroom and the other home projects.  I was aware of my headache and all the others aches as well as a voice inside saying “You are just a wimp! Quit complaining!”  When I was painting near the ceiling, I lost my balance and fell.  I am lucky I did not break anything or incur a serious strain.  Yet the “You are a wimp” voice was still there.    I really had to wrestle with myself to be able to say ‘You have done enough.   You can do the rest of the items on your To Do list at a later date.’

This is also true in other areas of my life.

I need to have more kindness for myself.

(from hannahstumberg.wordpress.com)

I have worked long and hard on my recovery from abuse and yet I feel that it has only been recently that I have realized the extent of the damage that can be done by emotional abuse.

Today I received the Spring Print Edition of the Domestic Abuse Project newsletter.  www.domesticabuseproject.org

The following is a portion of that newsletter.  The newsletter does not have the italics.  I added them.

“At DAP we believe that domestic violence can be perpetrated in four different ways:  against the body through physical and sexual abuse, against the mind through the threats and intimidation of psychological abuse, and against the heart through emotional abuse.  The broken bones and bruises of the physical violence are easy to identify as abuse.  However, it is the emotional abuse, the slow erosion of a person’s sense of self-esteem and worth that many survivors of domestic abuse identify as most damaging.

Ongoing emotional abuse is a tactic that an abuser can use to convince his or her victim that he or she deserves the negative treatment or is worthless or is so flawed that no one would ever see value in them.  This tactic furthers the sense of hopelessness and isolation that victims of domestic violence already feel and leaves them vulnerable to continued abuse and exploitation.”

(from spirituality.org)

Recently I was listening to Iyanla Vanzant on Oprah and I also had contact with two career coaches.  It seems to me that they assume that you are starting from a point that you know you have worth.

How do you know that you have worth?

What if while you were growing up, there were 10,000 ways you were told that you had no worth.  As an adult you probably have similar people in your life.  It is like seeing a reflection of yourself in a fun house mirror and not knowing that the image is distorted.

It seems that these coaches assume that you somehow have this internal measure that tells you you have value.

Do they think you are born with it?  Are we born with it?

Do you feel God’s presence and love?  Do you think that God loves all of us unconditionally?  It seems that some people sincerely feel God’s loving presence.

A friend recently suggested thinking about a baby.  A baby has worth and his or her worth is not dependent on the circumstances of their birth or their accomplishments.

Perhaps feeling your worth does not come from a knowing but a decision.  I can make a decision each day that I have worth and so does everyone else. 

And if I am struggling with seeing my worth or someone else’s, I will think of babies.

(from centenary.bahai.us)