Many years ago I was talking to my therapist and she suggested that maybe I needed to bring what I was working on in therapy to my creative life. At the time I said no, I thought I needed to take my creativity into my therapy life. Many years later, I am realizing she was right, I need to bring what I have learned in therapy and created into my creative world (which is with all of you). My therapist loves to give me creative tasks to do as I process stuff and, truthfully, I'm not sure if she does that with everyone or just me because she knows being creative is something I love. As I have thought about this the last several months while I've been on what I'm calling an "accidental sabbatical" while I worked through things that were happening in my life, I thought about the different projects I have done in the past and ones that I still want to do as part of my therapy. You all know that I truly believe that Cute Matters and as I thought about that and how I wanted to share what I have and will be creating for my continued healing, I realized another belief I have is that healing matters and more than that my whole healing process has become what I call my Breathe Strategies and creating helps me Breathe. I want to continue to "Create to Breathe" for myself and for you so I'm going to be sharing past and future Create to Breathe projects with all of you Because Healing Matters.
One of the first things that I did was work on understanding who I was as I had no idea. At one point I had one of the darkest times of my life as I really didn't know who I was, what I liked, or even who I wanted to be. As I worked through this time in my life, I created a lot of different projects that helped me rediscover who I was and I want to share these projects with you. This series of posts I'm going to be sharing I'm calling "Learning To Be Me." Since I'm a scrapbooker, the very first thing I created was a mini flip album (which is now in a book). I started by going through photos of me since I was born and picked ones that I actually liked, then I added quotes I had been collecting as I began the learning process in therapy. In the attached video I go through it with you and below I have all the quotes that I used in the book. I hope that you will join me on this journey of Learning to Be Me and create your own projects. This month I would challenge you to do what I did, start with photos of yourself that you don't hate and put them in a mini album. You can add quotes of your own or use mine or even do some journaling of self discovery. Let me know if you have any questions and I would love to hear from you in the comments.
Quotes from my Mini Album of Me:
Before we were born each of us talked over with God our special purpose in this world. Our sealed orders are something we agreed to in the context of a loving dialogue with the God who created us. They are not a task we are to complete, but rather our special way of being. -Sealed Orders
We go back until we discover the exuberant, unencumbered, delightful, and lovable child that was, and still is, in us. And once we find it, we love and cherish it and never let it go. -Beyond Codependency
Your artist, like a small child, is happiest when feeling a sense of security. As our artist’s protective parent, we must learn to place our artist with safe companions. -The Artists Way
The good must be emphasized and embraced with every breath you take … the best way to handle life is … to enjoy what is and endeavor to be flexible and creative enough to take on life as it unpredictably rolls along. -In praise of Stay at Home Moms
The quality of life is in proportion to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention. -The reward for attention is always healing. -The Artists Way
Dynamics of creativity: playfulness, spontaneity, coming ability to live in the now, ability to express wonder, ability to concentrate, and the capacity to be one’s own focus of evaluation has a sense of satisfaction with oneself. -Homecoming
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond imagination. It is our light more than our darkness which scares us. We ask ourselves - who are we to be brilliant, beautiful, talented and fabulous. But honestly, who are you to not be so? -Gifts From The Sea
To honor the self is to be willing to know not only what we think, but also what we feel, what we want, need, desire, suffer over, are frightened of or angered by - and to accept our right to experience such feelings. To honor the self is to be in love with our own life, in love with our possibilities for growth and for experiencing joy. -Gifts From The Sea
As we lose our vagueness about ourselves, our values, our life situation, we become available in the moment. -The Artists Way
You can soar if you find out who you are and why you are here. There are two important days in a woman’s life. The day she is born and the day she finds out why. -Elaine Cannon
Femininity is taking responsibility for our bodies, so that the body becomes the tangible expression of the spirit within … it becomes our friend, and because it understands the instincts better than we, it becomes our guide to a natural, spiritual way of life. -Addiction to Perfection
Self acceptance entails our willingness to experience … what we think, feel what we feel, desire what we desire, have done what we have done, and are what we are … to think our thoughts, own our feelings, be present to the reality of our behavior. -The six Pillars of Self Esteem
When what is inside naturally comes together with what is outside, that is a miracle. -Codependency No More
Recovery from codependency in essence involves learning to love and take care of yourself. It means giving at least equal time to your own needs alongside the needs of others. It means setting limits on how much you will do or tolerate, and learning to say no when appropriate. -The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook
We love, and that love goes into the daisies we are arranging, the omelette we are cooking … without the true … love within, no inner life exists. -Addiction to Perfection
It is heroic and life-saving to learn how to not react and to act in more healthy ways. -Codependent No More
If a feeling comes our way, we feel it … we don’t censor, we don’t run from, we don’t talk ourselves out of feeling it, we don’t pass judgment on the feeling, we experience it, we allow the energy to pass through our bodies and we accept it as our feeling. -Codependent No More
We give in to the physical body because it veils the thinking of our spirit … thus [who] we appear to be, because we’re living under a veil, is not who we really are. We are God’s offspring. -Odds Are You’re Going To Be Exalted
I want … to be at peace with myself…. What is the answer … . I must find a balance somewhere or an alternating rhythm between these two extremes; a swinging of the pendulum between solitude and communion, between retreat and return. But how? Solitude … every woman should be alone sometime during the year, some part of each week, and each day…. It may not be an enormous project or a great work. But it should be something of one’s own. What matters is that one be for a time inwardly attentive. -Gifts From The Sea
I felt God reaching out his hand to me, asking. me to give him everything … and to trust that He would both give me back the portion that would be for my blessing and tenderly care for the rest. We do not just struggle to give him our assets; we also struggle to give him our deficits. His request that we give him everything - holding nothing back - can be a great blessing. -Forgiving Ourselves
We are safe now. We are protected. We are free now to live our lives and love ourselves. -Codependence and Guide to the 12 Steps
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