Month: February 2019

Remember who you are….

Posted on by Rachael

I’ve been partnering a lot with an organization called “Girls Who Can”, they are a social media network that connects women with online resources in the hope of empowering, inspiring, healing, and guiding today’s women. I was instructed to write a 200 word post about self care and what it means to me.

Often times when I prepare for writing I create a mind map to hash out all of the details and get my mind focus As I was prepping for this post a fun comparison came into my mind about what self care means to me.I kept toying with this idea about “remembering who you are” and thought, in’t this a Disney thing? Obviously I think in Disney comparisons.
Anyway I remembered from The Lion King, Simba was bullied into leaving Pride Rock by Scar and he leaves and grows up in the jungle with his new friends. He then gets a vision from his father who re centers him chanting “remember who you are” With the help from Nala and the new found strength from his visit from his dad. He goes home to ride rock to make things right. 

Self care is about digging down, and re-connecting with who you are. Rather, who I am. It’s providing space for your human self to be itself. That looks like a lot of different things at different parts of my life, depending on what my soul, body or mind needs. Some days it’s a bath; bubbles, epsom salts, and hot water. Some days it is meditation through bread making. Often times it’s me laying in bed under my covers still and quiet.
I do want to emphasize that self care may look different for everyone, all though people can do a lot of similar things to reach your goal of taking care of yourself. Self care also can also be things that we do not always want to do. It could be that we are tired but we know that if we cook a healthy meal, we are taking are of ourselves. So we do that, regardless of what else is going on. It could also be us taking a walk at the end of the day. We do the things or should I say make the time for things we don’t want to do, not to torture ourselves, but we know that if we do it, we will feel better about ourselves on the other end.

The opposite of Scarcity is Abundance.

Posted on by Rachael

I had this appiphony recently about scarcity. Recently we got snowed in here and it brought on this chaos for people. When the media sounds the alarm for winter storm warning the community reacts, the shelves go bare and people freak out. (I am sure there is a word for this, but I don’t know what it is) Anyway, this thing happens where people start to panic and think the accopolyps is coming. When we loose some control, or we think we’re going to loose some sort of control in our lives, it creates a panic. Our body and mind responds and we are left with anxiety and fear. Anxiety is something that our body feels, and fear… Fear is made up in our brain in reaction to things that are happening around us. 

When snow happens, especially here, people are fearful they won’t be able to leave their house or even have power. Because of this, people react, they buy things. People will spend hours at the grocery stores in line to get their needs met. They buy shovels, generators, flashlights, batteries, food… Etc.

There is this scarcity factor that kicks in, and people surround themselves with abundance. 

I have been seeing someone lately, and all though I don’t see it as a forever thing we really do enjoy each others company right now. Something happened recently that triggered this response I wasn’t really prepared for. He had stopped engaging with me for a while and shifted this routine we had started. I started to get anxious and fearful. My body turned into a wreck. I was shaking, binge eating and not being present. I was being irrational, not thinking clearly, and really relied on instant gratification. At some point I just expressed to him that I thought he was just being nice, and letting me off easy. When I said this to him, he reported back that he wouldn’t do that because we agreed to communicate when we were done, at least where we were at along the way. 

After sitting with this for a while I took a trip down memory lane. I have felt scarcity in multiple relationships, and situations. When things are in chaos and or feel out of control, I have over compesated with abundance of lots of things; Food, people (wether they are positive or not), belongings, other buying and drinking…. All impulsive behavior used in excess in order to compensate for what I was not getting. I was coping with substances, and using that to cover up and hide the things that come with scarcity. 

And that is where I am at. I don’t have any sound alive about how to overcome this at this time.