"But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ." – The Little Prince
I lay in bed with a hand on my chest, feeling the almost rhythmic beat of my heart (I’ve had a slight, non-harmful arrhythmia, since my early 20s). I listen to the soft pounding coming from inside of me, a change from the normal external tuning.
I feel like my heart is trying to speak to me, but it’s coming through in morse code, or perhaps an ancient language that I once understood, but now has long forgotten.
“What are you trying to tell me?”, I ask and plead at the same time.
My heart just keeps beating. Perhaps a little quicker and louder now, in response to my desperation.
While my mind believes it always has all the answers, a suspicious part of it believes my heart holds a secret. I suspect that once the secret is revealed, it will put an end to all my mind’s suffering and finally quell its endless thirst to know everything. Or at least, this is a lie my mind tells itself, because it really just wants love and safety, but that sounds too vulnerable, too childlike to admit.
The paradox is that I know my heart does hold the key, but my demand that it speak in a language I can understand and fix everything I believe is wrong is exactly what closed the pathway between my mind and heart. I suppose we could also call it fear, which I can feel in the gentle constriction of my neck.
I breathe, realizing I’m in a state of anxiety again. It always sneaks up on me, without my knowing. It’s a learned response to not trust. Not trust in myself, in light, in Love. My anxiety never feels safe. But I’m learning that perhaps, fear is the lie.
I remind myself to relax. That all is well. I am safe in my bed and hear my dog’s sleepy breathing close to me.
I put down my pen and turn off my lamp. I know my heart will speak when it is ready, when I am quiet enough to hear it.
***
The next day as I’m driving, I hear my heart simply say, “I’m right here.”
I’ve got at least 30+ years of them suppressed and repressed inside of me.
Not because of parents who didn’t care, just parents who weren’t there. Or maybe there, but didn’t know how to comfort an alien (re: very sensitive) child.
So now, it’s a fight. But I resist the urge to text an ex.
I simply breathe into the anxiety in my chest. “It’s just a feeling”, I tell myself.
Yet I can’t deny the glow of my phone and I give it one quick scroll.
Really, I’m hoping one of them, or anyone, messaged me first.
Really, I just want the attention.
I know it’s a drug, but my mind calls it love.
It’s a quick fix.
A yearning I’m trying to nix.
“They” say if I sit with this feeling, this anxiousness, this yearning- this fear- long enough, that eventually what I seek I shall find within me.
How much longer?
I am filled with faith and doubt. Hope laced with despair.
Self-love hasn’t been a thing since…
ever?
But I’ve been practicing. With a little parts work and some psycho ed, I’ve started to quiet the voices in my head.
I know “enoughness” is only a game the ego plays.
I understand the stages of development and early childhood programming, how unsupported emotions turn into stories that turn into nightmares. It’s all in the subconscious.
In theory, I understand it all.
But this yearning…
I continue to breathe. Being with myself, the good parent, the nurturing mom, as best I can. I allow my inner child to be as she needs. I don’t encourage her stories. I just offer her my presence instead.
And for tonight, that will have to be, enough.
I rest.
******
Most of us mistake attention for love, as attention to a child is being seen by a parent. And if a child is at least seen, they’re safe. Safe-ish. Which is why even negative attention is good, as it at least proves our existence. What most of us really wanted as a child is our parents or caregivers’ presence. Presence, in a way, is god-like. Presence, in pure form, is love. A child who cries and can turn to a parent in their vulnerable state and simply be held, regulated by the gentle rise and fall of their parent’s chest, feels safe, feels loved, and can process their emotion and move on without an emotion being trapped by a story the mind created to make sense of a situation. In psychotherapy, we usually call a child who received this regularly “securely attached.” The rest of us didn’t develop that way, not because we weren’t loved, but because our parents or caregivers were simply passing down what they learned, and most likely, were doing better than their parents did, or could do.
If you have this wound, there’s a good chance you continually find yourself in relationships with emotionally unavailable partners, or simply feel confused, hurt, and unseen when a relationship ends. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s an opportunity to go within and be your own healer. We, YOU, can heal all of this by “re-parenting” yourself with the unconditional love (some of your parts will refute this at first) you always deserved. One of the best steps I have found is simply to turn towards (as much as feels safe) an emotion as a witness (rather than attaching to it) and simply take deep breaths into the heart and belly. This isn’t a “one and done” thing. It’s a continual practice, allowing our inner child to trust us by repeatedly showing up for his/her/their needs and being the loving presence they have always deserved.
Fear is a memory stored in our cells. A memory from the past where we were left alone with big emotions and no one supportive caregiver to help us process the experience. Someone to give us safety and Love, or rather, find safety in Love.
Fear is what keeps us from our true selves.
It is NOT overcoming all the things that scare you. It IS facing the voices in your head and the emotions that once felt too big to feel.
Fear is what prevents you from your potential. Not your potential to achieve and be “great”… for that need for achievement to be seen as “enough” is exactly the voice we have to examine.
Fear is what blocks you from your fullest expression. From being all the Love that is within you, from loving every moment of life, every being on earth, and from truly loving yourself… not for “doing”, but now, exactly as you are
It is by releasing this fear (perhaps by examining each trigger and every way you protect yourself from feeling pain and feeling Love… there is more than one path, this was simply mine) that you can come to know who you truly are and what you came here to do.
It is in this place that we recognize that healing begins in the mind, by unlearning past stories, and recognizing that Love is all that exists. Fear is just a story that is repeatedly retold and projected upon.
We can heal together.
We are not meant to do everything on our own. We’re here with others so we can support one another. Only the ego tells us we have to do it alone, for that is what it learned to survive… when our child selves had needs of love and connection that went unmet.
Emotions are not meant to be felt in isolation, though you may begin with accessing the Love within you to alchemize the fear of the past.
At the core, there is only hurt (confusion) and sadness from feeling separate. All other emotions stem from those.* Fear is that we can never reconnect. To avoid the helplessness of confusion, we tell ourselves stories of “not enoughness”.
*This essay is mainly channeled, with a few edits. I’ve got to think about this one a bit more, but I think it’s right.
Shame is the fear, the belief, you are not enough, that you are bad, that you have done something wrong. You’re damaged goods. This is the fear of the ego, the energy that feeds it.
Shame is a lie, as are more of the stories we tell ourselves. To do something “worthy” is just an act of trying to feel connected to something greater than ourselves, but the type of worthiness based on doing belongs to a false god.
Again, you have always belonged, you have always been enough. Our fear is that we don’t, that we aren’t, and this is how fear drives us. It drives us to be better, to do better, and pushes the lie.
In order to break the lie, you have to stop doing and start remembering, breaking free from the darkness and recognizing the light.
You have to believe in Love and the truth of your own divinity so much that you stop acting in a way that tries to prove your worth because that only strengthens what is untrue.
Remember who you are in stillness. Remember who you are in loving everyone you come to meet. If they respond in anger, they have simply forgotten who they are and use anger to cover up the despair.
Love more. Love is the only healing salve.
We all need to stop and unravel ourselves from the identity of doers, which enforces the ego. We have to stop and be in the stillness, to be here now. To hear the voice of Love that comes with no conditions but pure acceptance.
We are Love. You are Love. Return to it by remembering. Then move how Love flows.
When we break it down, when we look at it, the darkness… It’s light too.
It’s hard. It feels scary. But when we take the time to look at the darkness (what I’ll define here as fear, forgetfulness, the things we prefer not to look at, the parts of ourselves we don’t like but may call out in others, and the emotions we try to suppress), we find that it’s just light reversed.
Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychotherapist said ““Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”
Parts work, shadow work, inner child work… These are all modalities to help us recognize and unravel ourselves from our own darkness. Truly, the darkness is the cage that holds our inner children, children that are screaming at us for attention and love, buried beneath the protections we’ve developed to try to suppress their pain.
Take this for an example:
The other day I was journaling from the part of my own “Internal Punisher”. I know some of you reading this have this part, too. The part of you that will verbally beat you down to a pulp and leave you on the floor for dead… if only you didn’t have a dog and a (very) tiny voice in your head saying “Get up. Go to bed.” At the core, that very shadowy part of me doesn’t want me to feel the unbearable pain of feeling confused, lost, scared, and unlovable which honestly, WAS unbearable for me to feel alone as a child. The difference is that I’m now a safe adult able to be with myself through challenging emotions, and I can sit with these very young emotions that my parents just couldn’t handle when I was small (because my parents were just kids with their own suppressed emotions too). And as I worked with this protecter-firefighter part (to use IFS terminology), the last thing it said to me was, “I’m not bad, I’m not a villain, I’m just trying to keep you safe (from aforementioned emotions).”
This doesn’t make me like or approve of a lot of what is happening in the U.S. But it does keep me from hating the people making some of the decisions, which saves me from feeling the emotion in my body. Actually, it creates some empathy. They’re a bunch of scared kids, unfortunately running the show, yes. But what I know about kids is that punishment doesn’t work. Telling them they’re wrong or bad can make them more defensive/protective (this is true for my shadows too). Understanding helps. Boundaries* help too (my Internal Punisher can still have a say but is not allowed to berate me.). This isn’t the answer, I know. But remember…
Darkness is really just light that’s turned on itself. Fear is Love that’s forgotten its truth. Pain exists only in the places we haven’t allowed the sun to shine. In the end, it’s really all just light.
*Dr. Becky Kennedy recently posted about this. Obviously, its a little different for adult kids, but not that different. “No.” , is still a complete sentence.
This season is about the return of the light after a period of darkness. As of Saturday, the days have once again begun to get lighter. Now, the darkness isn’t bad. It represents a shedding, a death, and temporary returning to the void, the unknown, a place of infinite potential. A time to rest. It’s a return to the sacred womb, from which we were all born and have the opportunity to return to so we can be reborn. It’s a necessary phase that can support us in returning to our true selves, to the unfiltered, pure Light that we are. It is from the darkness the light is birthed.
The story of light retuning after a period of darkness is told in various cultures, traditions, and religions. There’s ofcourse the birth of Jesus, a being who preached love and non-judgment while he walked the earth. In western society, it’s also told by the story of Santa, bringing toys, or joy, to (all) the children (not just the “good” children, for all children are good) after a period of recession. In Pagan tradition, the light is returned by the Deer Mother, flying through the night on the darkest day of year, carrying and returning the sun on her antlers.
The light, as I define it, is consciousness, or loving awareness. It’s our nature of innocence and divine love. For us here in this room, it’s a remembering.
If we pause and look around the room, we can be quite certain that many of hold different political and religious beliefs. We have different opinions on women’s rights, animal rights, and climate change. There are different beliefs on the best foods to eat and different definitions of success and what it means to live a meaningful life.
But tonight, none of that matters. Underneath the roof of this Midwest house in America, we have transcended our fear and forgetfulness, what I call type 2 darkness, by leaving our judgments and criticisms behind us, and returning to a unified state of Love.
The question is, will we once again forget? Will we forget the light of loving awareness and return to the realm shadows, illusions, differences, and separateness?
Perhaps more importantly, for what is within us will always be projected out, will we return to judging ourselves for all the mistakes we’ve made and criticizing ourselves for all the ways we believe we’re not enough and could be, or should have been, better?
I think it’s important to remind everyone here that “sin” or”mistake” simply means to “miss the mark.” Mistakes show us where we are out of alignment with our true selves. We only ever make mistakes or hurt others when we are in fear and are not feeling good. And (the human/ego brain is a funny thing) the we think that by punishing ourselves, we’ll do better, but we actually just make ourselves feel worse which makes it harder to act in alignment because our natural alignment is Love!
And I have never, ever, seen anyone, including myself, grow or heal through self-judgement or criticism. I have only ever seen people heal through self-acceptance and self-compassion, for that is when we invite the Light back into our lives. There’s paradox here too…it is only through our imprefections that we can know perfect love. And, if we truly believe that we were created in the image of our creator, or Love, that even in our imperfection, we are all absolutely perfect.
So the invitation here is, not just for the rest of the day, but to the best of your ability, everyday, to look at yourself as you would an innocent child. To look at others like you are meeting Jesus, as Benedictine rule states “Let all guests who arrive be received as Christ.” To look at others as you would a child that holds all the potential in the world if only the are nurtured through love, and treat them with such honor and respect. Because we all hold the potential to be the light.
(Written from the perspective of the Divine Mother archetype)
I love you. I appreciate you. I am grateful that you’re here. I love all of my sons, my sons turned turned husbands, turned fathers.
But I never wanted, never needed, you to fight for me. I love you too much to ask you to pick up a gun. I only wanted you to choose me. I only wanted you to vote for me.
I forgive you.
May you be released of your pain and any guilt or shame you may carry. I know you did not want to kill your brother, your sister, your father, or me, your mother. Anger and self-hate clouded your vision, and I know you could not see. Release your burden. I hold you in no blame. You are my son (my child) and for you, I only have love.
Your anger, it is sacred- but it must be processed. The pain beneath it, witnessed. Only then you can align yourself with love and take divinely- led action.
An ask for you…
Please forgive your earthly mother. I know she hurt you and denied you of her, a mother’s love. She was doing her best to survive in a world built by men, a world that said you must be turn and must not feel. Perceiving she had lost her power, she tried to reclaim what was remained by playing your father’s game. She gave you the little love she could when she was lost herself, deprived of the same love in which you craved.
Please forgive your father. He had to be distant in the absence of himself, for when we forget the feminine, we all suffer. Or, if he too, was angry, please forgive him… he too was acting out in his own grief, the loss of what he most desired: a mother’s love.
My child, you have been taught you were unworthy, the result of fear trying to erase me. But I am always here. I am always ready to hold you in my arms, ready to bring you back home to what has always been yours. Give me your sins, your fear, your wrong-doings, and your pain. I will take them from you and transmute them. I will return you to what is yours, but was never truly lost, only pushed away and forgotten. A mother’s love. Fierce and unconditional.
I love you, always.
Your Divine Mother
*****
We are living in a world where the Divine Feminine has been erased out of history books, including spiritual texts, texts that saw women in positions of power and leadership. Mary, mother of Jesus, is recognized in the bible for little more than her “purity” and birthing Jesus, excluding the fact that she herself was most likely a high priestess. Sexual creatures or not (minus the “not”), it is women that will always birth the light. Then we have Mary Magdalene, most likely Jesus’s most “beloved” disciple, possibly partner/wife, and high priestess, but whose role was greatly reduced in the hand-picked passages of the bible (in 1969, the Catholic Church admitted that it had “been mistaken” for calling Mary Magdalene a sex worker- although this version was still portrayed in the 90s while when I attended Catholic school.) Still, we must consider why the church repeatedly found it so important diminish, or make bad, the act of sex. These are just two of the well known examples in the “land of many.” But the point is… when we rob the world of the Divine Feminine, there will be no peace, we will not be whole. In Her removal of our story, many of us have not experienced divine, unconditional love, resulting in a split from ourSelves, Spirit and ego*. This separation is the source excruciating pain. In attempt to diminish this pain, the ego paradoxically turned on itself, further cementing its identity. And so, our first step into bringing Her back is realizing, no matter what (non) gender you are, She is within all of us, and we can all embody the Divine Mother archetype anytime we so choose… we just have to be willing to choose it.
(It would also be worth writing about the Divine Father, which I will defer here for length. What I can say is that the Divine Father being revealed will be a natural cause of the Divine Mother being remembered and accepted. These two divinities co-exist in union, and when one is hidden, the other is also turned into a shadow, hence why the shadow or “toxic” side of the masculine is now at the forefront of our world at large.)
*****
If you are a military veteran (whom I recognize as various genders), I 100% understand why you would feel defensive around this post. Without elongating my story, I imagine I would be too, being in your position. However, it is always worthy to question why we feel defensive when there is no real threat posed…I’m a 5’4″ psychotherapist who does not, and will not, own a gun. My mission is to preach (real) Love, which, along with the voices of others, will hopefully one day result in war no longer being a consideration as a way to handle conflict. My goal is to remind you that your are infinitely, profoundly, Loved.
It’s powerful to remember, to accept, that my soul came here for this exact moment in history.
Yes, but only partially, to be a light in the dark. Mainly, to help everyone else remember, we ARE the fucking light. We are love and light enshrouded in stardust.* We’re not here to banish the dark, but to say “I am stronger than you, and I will rise above.” And then we thank the dark, because without it, we wouldn’t know who we truly are.
If you’re reading this, I know your soul came to be here for this moment, too. Thank you. It feels so good that we are unified together, by what we are made of. Not the false, ridiculous , fear-based love that some church’s tried to drug us up on…but real love. True feminine love that has no place for hate, cruelty, misogyny… not even to those who deal out the devil’s (fear’s) cards. Feminine love embraces all, holding the potential to transmute any fear back into light.
This isn’t a battle to be fought with guns and armor made of fear, but with love and swords made of grace. And it’s fucking fierce.
And it feels good…like shattered glass, no doors, and wind that blows freely through. Only blue sky and sunshine to roam, birds flying by our side. It feels Free. .
*If you’re confused by the stardust theory, I highly recommend Michael A. Singer’s book, Living Untethered.
… the problem is, most of us don’t know who we really are. We don’t know how to authentic or how to trust our intuition.
And this is to no fault of our own. From ages 0 to 7, we’re in a brain state similar to hypnosis, and we’re just soaking in our environment. The message we take in, or the meaning we make about events we don’t understand, aren’t consciously accepted. They become our subconscious. So even as we get older and we reject the fear-based religious teachings passed down to us, or say that our parents divorce didn’t affect us, or refuse to pay homage to a materialistic society … well, that’s great, but the problem is, those things weren’t necessarily the problem (I mean they were, but not in the obvious way). The bigger challenge is the subliminal messages and subconscious wiring, the shame-based beliefs we took on about not being enough, feeling unworthy of love, and being certain something is wrong with us.
The good news is that we can, with some committed effort and adamant love (therapy isn’t required, but it sure helps to have someone on your team that can see you with unconditional positive regard), unravel ourselves from those beliefs, seeing them as stories and not reality. Triggers will often lead us to the wound, giving us the opportunity to re-parent ourselves through fears and big emotions. And in the unraveling, in remembering who we were before love was first invalidated, we return home to ourselves. Finally free of the stories running our behavior, we can once again be our authentic selves.
Count each needle on the pines. Every blade of grass. Each petal of every wildflower.
This is your inheritance. This is your abundance.
Soak in each ray of sun. Lean into each cool breeze. Inhale the scent of the mountain air. Wrap yourself in the gifts of Mother Earth.
As the clouds come and the sun seems to disappear, count each raindrop that nourishes the ground. And when day turns to night and all turns dark, count each star in the sky.
This is your inheritance. This is your abundance.
When summer goes and autumn settles in, count each gold leaf, then again as it falls and returns to dust. For soon autumn will change to winter, and you can count again, watching as each snowflake make its way down from the heavens above.
This is your inheritance. This is your abundance.
Even as the land seems barren, and the air turns bitter, let the fire draw you in. Count each laugh you share Every smile you give. Each hug you receive. Feel your dog’s fur and count every single strand of blessed hair.
This is your inheritance. This is your abundance. And still, this is just a fraction of how loved you are.
Your first mission on earth is to remember, to remember who you really are, overcoming and rising above early childhood conditioning. The second mission is to live life from that place of knowing who you are, the space of expansive love. The third mission is natural, spreading that joy, in whatever way you may choose (there may be no life change at all, just being yourself more) to others humans and beings that inhabit this earth.
It takes consistent, committed effort to move through the dark and reach the light. You can’t just want to heal. You have to choose to heal.
*heal: to make whole , or rather, to return to (remember) wholeness after a period of unconsciousness (forgetfulness).
Many therapies assist in this practice. EMDR works in an almost similar way to psychedelics (So I’ve heard. It’s not a path I have chosen for myself but am somewhat familiar with the research and have heard recounts from several friends.) that does not bypass wounds and fears, but moves through them in a safe and contained way that allows the brain to reprocess memories in healthier fashions. Similarly, IFS helps us understand our (wounded, fearful) parts so they loosen the grip and the higher self can step through and reclaim loving power, as well as your direction in life. Still, the basic principle remains the same…we have to be willing to actively let go of our old stories, programmed beliefs, and negative thoughts*. It’s not going to happen (for most of us) just by praying to get rid of them (believe me, I tried). We have to exert the (free) will to choose it, to choose love over fear, in order to create a new paradigm for ourselves.
*If you feel there is a resistance or block or feeling stuck on your healing journey, I recommend looking at that block, or part wanting you to stay stuck, itself.
When I worked at an addiction treatment center, I remember a staff member there teaching a class. I can’t remember if it was about addiction, fitness (he was a strong, athletic guy), or something else, but I clearly remember him asking, “Do you want to know a new language? Or, do you want to LEARN a new language?” Personally, I’d love to know French. I took several classes on the language in both high school and college. But I never really wanted to learn it, and so I can only recall a few words.
Each of us must honestly ask ourselves this question when embarking on a healing journey. Do we just want to be healed? Or do we want to do the work to heal? We may certainly look like we want to heal when we read all the books, listen to all the podcast, maybe occasionally chat with a therapist or take a workshop (I’m raising my hand here). But sometimes, these are easy and often subconscious ways to bypass actually doing the work. We keep searching for the key to what we’re missing instead of unlocking the potential within ourselves.
Yet let me be clear… choosing to move through and let go beliefs and thoughts we’ve held onto for 10, 20, 30, 40, and even 50+ years is not easy. Personally, I have (somewhat subconsciously) been almost determined to hold on to the belief that I’m not enough, or I’ve just wanted it to be taken away from me without my conscious effort. In the past, I’ve started the process of resisting negative voices in myself and gave up when they got louder, letting the thoughts of failure and imperfections consume me. It wasn’t until an occurrence where my ego led and I overrode a core value, missing an opportunity to experience what I care about most in life*, where I decided “I don’t want to live like this anymore” and I found the strength to not turn back (although there were plenty of falters and half step backs, the determination was just greater).
*This was my proverbial “rock bottom”. It doesn’t just have to be getting a divorce or waking up after a near overdose.
As we move through the dark (here, defined as our pain, wounds, and programmed beliefs), what is necessary to realize, so we can be loving observers as we move through, is that the beliefs and negative stories we hold on to about ourselves are not real. They we given to us each time love was invalidated as a child. If you believe you are a failure, it’s not true, regardless of how many times your mind can conjure examples of how you believe you failed. If you believe you are not enough, it’s not true, no matter how your mind compares yourself to others. Your ego only compares based on a performance value that was given to you and your mind accepted at the time as a way to better fit in to society. Failure is a conjecture of the mind, although it is more likely you’ll miss reaching a goal (or being satisfied by it) if it is not heart aligned or was driven by fear (feelings of unworthiness).
The objective here is not to ignore the thoughts, but to see them clearly: as thoughts. To observe them with the curiosity as a small child observes a leaf on the ground, then continue to keep moving. As emotions come up, the process is similar, we feel them through awareness; not attaching to the emotion, but breathing into it, which allows for it to be witnessed and released. I found parts work extremely helpful in this process, as my mind needed more understanding. In the example above, I could witness the part of my ego that just wanted me to feel better about myself, and the way I could do that was to control how far I could go and push myself. Even though it here it led me to a poor choice, I could see how the part was doing the best it could with what it had learned. I could then insert the compassion of my higher self and reassure the fear (of the part) that I could now love myself unconditionally, empowering myself with the ability to re-take the steering wheel of my life.
The main tool here comes from mindfulness, or being able to witness your experiences and thoughts in the awareness and expanse of love. Love is the answer, my friends. As Rumi said, “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” Commit to see your wounds (triggers will lead you there), which are essentially any reasons you have for withholding love from yourself. Your ability to insert love into those dark caves is where true healing can occur. From there, you have the opportunity to start believing what you choose to believe (rather than what you were taught to believe).
As you move through the dark, always remember to keep a steady focus on the light. We’re human. Distractions are not only easy, but ingrained in our society and imbedded in our minds. There is not bigger distraction than our fear-based thoughts. Again, see them, be aware of them, get curious about their roles, but don’t allow them to be the center of your attention.
As a gentle reminder, healing, along with commitment, requires patiences. Many protector parts can get defensive when challenged and some suppressed emotions need time (patience is love) before they feel comfortable enough to arise, trusting that YOU’ve got them…you’ve got your inner child, you’ve got you. It’s okay to take a step back. Sometimes nights can be harder than during the day to come back to a place of clarity. Just know, “this too shall pass”.
Ultimately, remember this. YOU ARE A RAY OF LOVE, a ray of consciousness, a ray of light. That is who you truly are. You are not Mike, Alice, Joe, Patricia…so far, you have most likely been playing the role that those characters have been scripted to have by childhood traumas, religious teachings, and other fear-based education. When you realize this, when you come to know this through your fierce dedication to loving yourself, you have the opportunity to insert your conscious (loving) awareness into the human you embody and create a new story for yourself.
A Dog and Her Girl 