Self-Compassion Saturday | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

I have been practicing with Jamie Ridler for awhile now — Full Moon Dreamboards and Wishcasting Wednesdays, as well as meditation through the Open Heart Project. Her prompts, encouragement and support, the opportunity for contemplation and creation that she shares always helps me to go deeper, to expand my knowing, to soften and be kinder to myself, to go gently with a sense of delight and ease. When her mom got sick, she asked me to write a guest post for her blog that helped me to clarify my understanding of my own specific practices. Jamie has a magic blend of kindness and creativity that is medicine to me.

I was lucky enough to meet Jamie in person. She told me I had mermaid hair, gave the best hugs. What I remember most distinctly is that the feeling of being in her physical presence was like being next to a live wire, a powerful and warm crackle of energy and magnetism ripples off her, makes you want to lean in, wake up, pay attention, catch fire.

Jamie Ridler is “a creative living coach and the founder of Jamie Ridler Studios. From coaching to workshops, from podcasting to blogging, Jamie’s work helps women find the confidence and courage to discover and express their creative selves so they can be the star they are.” I am so happy to share her perspective on self-compassion with you today.

1. What does self-compassion mean, what is it? How would you describe or define it?

The most intimate relationship we will have in our entire lifetime is with ourselves. No one hears our hearts the way we do. No one knows our hurts the way we do. We are the sages of our soft spots and our edges. Self-compassion is showing up to that relationship with honesty and with love.

In the movie Frida, Frida Kahlo reveals the scars on her body to Diego Rivera. Without hesitation he kisses them with passion. In that moment something in her, and in us, softens. We yearn for that moment. We want to be seen, accepted and loved, scars and all. Doing that for ourselves is self-compassion.

2. How did you learn self-compassion? Did you have a teacher, a guide, a path, a resource, a book, a moment of clarity or specific experience?

I think I learned self-compassion from the outside in. When I was growing up, whenever I was frustrated or angry with someone, my mom encouraged me to put myself in their shoes, to try and understand that everyone is doing the best they can. Somewhere along the line I understood that that meant me too.

Life can be hard. There is so much beauty, love and wonder but there is also loss and pain and heartbreak. As I have lived through my own pain, from losing a brother to cancer at a young age, to moving shortly thereafter and feeling desperately alone, to the recent passing of my mother, I’ve decided that life is hard enough without my help. I will do my best not to throw the salt of self-cruelty into the already painful wounds. As best I can, I’ll choose love.

3. How do you practice self-compassion, what does that experience look like for you?

I cultivate self-intimacy.

I spend time with me. I write morning pages and go for walks by myself. I take myself out for coffee and on photo safaris. I sit in meditation and see my poor mind working so hard to try to “figure it out”. I try to know myself and to be good company to myself. I try my best to be a person I feel good about and then I try to forgive myself when I don’t quite manage it. In all cases, I do my best to speak to myself with honesty, kindness and love.

4. What do you still need to learn, to know, to understand? What is missing from your practice of self-compassion, what do you still struggle with?

I can get wildly impatient, judgmental and despairing when I feel like I’m not blooming fast enough, damn it! There is so much that I want to do, see, create, experience that I can be relentless in my self-demands – and I get mad when I can’t keep up! I can burn my energy out, fuelling myself with adrenalin and caffeine and fast, nutritionless food thinking that, at least for a time, it will help me get farther faster. Nope.

I see this struggle as my journey to grow my self-compassion so that I can hold with love both my desires and my limitations. I’m still working on it.

I am so grateful to Jamie, for taking part in this series and for so many other kindnesses. I absolutely adore her. To find out more about Jamie, to connect with her:

Visit her website
Listen to her Podcast, Creative Living with Jamie
Follow Jamie Ridler Studios on Facebook
Follow her on Twitter

Next on Self-Compassion Saturday: Jennifer Matesa.

P.S. If you didn’t see the first post in this series, you might want to read Self-Compassion Saturday: The Beginning. Or make your way through all the posts tagged Self-Compassion Saturday.

As promised (threatened?), this week’s post is unique, it’s a video of me and my dear friend Julia Fehrenbacher talking about self-compassion. When I invited her to be a part of this series, she was teaching the first session of her ecourse, Getting Naked, (an online SoulClass, “Shed the excess. Come back to YOU.”), and we decided the conversation would be something she could share with the class as well. Those of us in her course were the first audience, but I also wanted to share it here, for three very specific reasons.

It is an important, genuine conversation.
As a video, for some you it will be the first time you’ve seen me “live,” moving and talking. *gulp*
There is still time to register for the next session of Getting Naked and I wanted you to see the kind of loving presence that Julia offers as a teacher. This video is just a tiny sample of how she shows up for her students, for life.

Some back story: I don’t remember exactly how I first found Julia’s blog (sorry, I know this happens a lot — I blame the particular magic of the internet), but do know that one of the first things we did together was 41 6-word days, which was hosted on Judy Clement Wall’s old website, A Human Thing. I immediately adored Julia’s honesty and her kindness, her willingness to be vulnerable, and over time have only grown to love her more. I was lucky enough to meet her, (read more about Julia and the first time we met in my open love letter to her), and she’s even more wonderful in person.

Making this video was a lesson in self-compassion for both of us. First, the conversation was actually almost an hour long, but there was a technical glitch about 20 minutes in so that the rest of the video had no sound. This was initially so upsetting for Julia, who tried so hard to fix it, to figure it out. I told her after I first saw it, “I’m not worried about this AT ALL. We got so much good stuff there, and maybe it’s even better that it’s shorter? The place to stop at isn’t as tidy as you might like it to be, but it’s still good,” and in the end, Julia saw it as “an opportunity for SURRENDER/self-compassion.”

This video, this conversation for me was a particular sort of medicine. As I told Julia, “something magic happened for me watching it — I really saw myself, not in that self-critical, shamed way I usually look, but really saw that I’m pretty okay. I was thinking as I watched it about how my students and people I work with usually really like me, and I could see why. That was an extra bonus gift I wasn’t expecting.” When I watch it now, I can smile at the way I was so obsessed with peonies at the time that I had to have them in the shot, don’t have the best spot for making a video figured out yet and really wanted something beautiful in the frame with me, how they took up half the screen like a silent third party in our conversation.

Before sharing the video that first time, Julia and I attempted to summarize what came after the sound cut out. Julia said, “the part where we cut off is right where you are saying that it’s people’s quirks that make them that much more lovable,” and I remembered,

What follows that is more discussion about how an aspect of self-compassion means discovering your own weird, being exactly who you are and knowing that is the foundation of your strength and what you have to offer, and rather than rejecting what isn’t perfect or what is flawed or wrong or broken or not good enough, you practice acceptance and gratitude for who you are and everything that is.

Then we talked more specifically about how each of us practice self-compassion: getting into nature, creating art, writing (one aspect of this being morning pages, in which you do a “brain dump” just writing whatever comes up, what ever shows up, whatever is really there, without judgement or editing), yoga, meditation, etc. We also talked about how it is so important to just show up, not try to control things, allow what wants to happen, to make the offering and then move on to make the next offering, to trust the process and be present.

I don’t know about you, kind and gentle reader, but I think this video, this conversation was the most perfect kind of brilliant mess. I am so grateful to Julia for creating it, for inviting me to do it and letting me share it, for having this conversation with me. It was a really big deal for me to make a video and share it with you all, and I’m so glad it was Julia who helped me do so. To find out more about Julia, to connect with her:

Next on Self-Compassion Saturday: Jamie Ridler.

P.S. If you didn’t see the first post in this series, you might want to read Self-Compassion Saturday: The Beginning. Or make your way through all the posts tagged Self-Compassion Saturday.