We can choose a self care response when we falter.
What do you do when you falter?
Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back up? Collapse inward, chastising and berating yourself? Shake it off and let yourself learn, and maybe even laugh?
It’s important to know your falter response. I’m prone to collapsing and chastising. Ruminating. Sometimes even berating. If you listened to my last podcast with depression expert Dr Stuart Eisendrath, you already know where ruminating and berating can lead. If not, let me tell you – it’s not sunshine, happiness and unicorns. It’s the path to depression.
This past week I’ve been chastising myself for calling this Laura’s Daily Letter. I didn’t mean to miss a day, then two, then three! With the long weekend, before I could catch my breath, it’s been a week!
The easy solution would be to change the name. Lower the bar and let myself off the hook. But I’ve never been one for easy.
On the up side, I’ve kept my commitment to writing, but in a different, semi-public forum. I’ve been writing a deeply personal, hairy story. A story that may belong here one day, but not just yet.
It’s been haunting and challenging. At some point it may be healing. But for right now, it’s been nothing but hard work.
This is the work we are here to do. The uncomfortable inner work. The work that has creativity at its core, but requires the emotional labour of showing up even when we don’t feel it. This work leads us to what we are here to bring bring to the world.
When we falter, the kindest and most compassionate response – the self care response – is to shake it off, let ourselves learn, and remember how to laugh. And then move forward.
We are human, after all. Which means we are fallible.
Thanks for hanging in!
