Three Truths and One Wish

1. Truth: Self-care doesn’t always look how you’d expect. I don’t know about you, kind and gentle reader, but sometimes I confuse self-care with either total indulgence or complete purity, weekly mani-peds and daily bubble baths or becoming a vegan who meditates two hours every day. I get caught up in either being a pampered princess or a minimalist nun, or some weird mix of the two extremes. In fact, self-care is just that: taking care of yourself, that simple. Some moments that means a whole, organic, meat-free or even entirely raw meal, but other times that means a long morning nap followed by pancakes for lunch, watching sitcoms and staying in your pjs all day.

2. Truth: Self-care requires self-awareness. You have to know and love yourself really well to understand what you need and when, what is a real need and what is an attempt to resist reality, avoid the hard stuff. What you hunger for, what you need and want, is a constantly shifting and evolving set of desires. There won’t be a list you make at one moment of your life that applies to every other moment. Developing a relationship, a friendship, a full on love affair with yourself, a deep down knowing, a wholehearted connection, is what will enable you to provide the very best self-care, and oddly enough is also the most direct path to being able to help others.

3. Truth: I am the one and only constant in my life. I will be separated from all others at some point through changing relationships, geography, and death, but I will never lose myself. Any abandonment or loss of self is simply a momentary confusion, a crisis of faith. That higher, true, core self is always there, that basic goodness that is wise, compassionate, and powerful. It will only die when I do. We will never be separated.

One wish: That we all have a deep, healthy, sane, wholehearted relationship with ourselves. That we have faith in our own capacity for wisdom, compassion, and strength. That our connection to ourselves and others gives us confidence and courage, knowing that we are never alone.

1. Truth: Whatever I am experiencing, someone else is living through something worse. I don’t know what this means beyond that, I just know that whatever I am feeling or struggling with, there is always another story where there’s even more suffering, more hurt, more terror, more pain. I haven’t yet decided if this comforts me, makes me feel worse, or expands my heart, fills it full of more compassion and love than it can stand. I think it’s that last one.

2. Truth: My truth is not everyone’s truth. True north for me might be an uncomfortable southwest for you. What I know for sure, can see clearly and understand completely is mine. My story, my path and what I’ve learned might be helpful to you, but just because it’s true for me, doesn’t mean it’s THE truth. It isn’t helpful to force my beliefs on someone else, to judge them for having a different perspective or making another choice.

3. Truth: My current experience is an exercise in uncertainty and fear, impermanence. I know that the antidote is confidence and love, staying present with whatever arises, keeping an open heart. I have struggled with this, with having confidence for many years, often abandoning the practice in exchange for what seemed like safety. I am realizing now (again) that there is no “safe,” no certainty. I am trying to sit with that, to stay with it.