“…I
see my parts as past life parts, inner child parts, ancestral
parts etc…” Dana
Da Ponte
Philotes is an ancient Greek Goddess, a minor goddess, that symbolizes affection and friendship. She is the one who demanded that the Greek stop blood sacrifices.
We all need good friendships to be healthy and balanced. We need to be careful of the kind of friends we choose. It is a good thing to analyze your friendships and see what in them attracts you to them. Usually, it is something within yourself that you see there (negative or positive).
We all need cheerleaders. We all need encouragement. We all need someone to stand by and with us. We all that person(s) to wish us the best and bring that out in ourselves. Friendships add a calmness and contentment to our lives. A friend should be excited about each other’s lives. They should give you a sense of hope. And first of all, in friendships, is that we are friend to ourselves.
I am a cheerleader of my own life, as best I can be. I have a problem with knowing the different between ego and pride and I am afraid to look prideful so I tend to dilute my things in life I do well. I am trying to make as much about what I do well as I would a friend, of course.
Life is all about lessons. Our personal life is all about believing in ourselves. Being a friend to ourselves means that we listen to our body, mind, heart and soul.
Look, we mess up all the time and, somehow, we got the idea we were not enough and not perfect enough and we forget that in all things there is a lesson. Some of those lessons are danged hard. Some of those lessons are the rainbow after the storm. I am a better learner from hard stuff, I think. (My father, as I have said before, said: “You never learn from your own mistakes!”) He was wrong. I learn best from them. I have learned to use those danged lessons and get better at using them as I age. I forgive myself, the same as I would forgive a friend.
I try to do self-talk that is encouraging. Lord knows, there is enough to not feel encouraged about life, betimes. There are enough bullies in the world. We absolutely have to stop bullying ourself. I do things I CAN do well as a form of encouragement. I look back at the beginning stages of my art and can see how far I have come and how far I have to go yet. I have to give up focusing on my flaws. I deserve more. I have to remember to be kinder to myself.
One huge flaw I have is that I compare what is in me with others who I sense do things better than me and then I tell myself I ought to give up trying. Every one of us is on a different path, as unique as we all are. It is a way of being cruel to myself, truly. I speak of trying to be just and then I am not just to myself. God is not finished with yet. Man, that needs to be tattooed on my arm, where I can always see it, for sure. Nothing good comes from caring ourselves to others. My path is my own path and I just need to keep my eyes on the horizon from time to time.
Another area we need to make sure we work on is giving ourselves permission to hope. It seems a given that things can go wrong and not work out the way we hoped. We have to work on ourselves to keep hope alive. Find the block, find the detour and try things another, maybe better, way. It is wayyyy to easy to give up on hopes and dreams because we think it might be easier. Once we start thinking that way, we can give up a great deal. I have had need to build up my sense of hope in any way I can. Writing this blog does that for me. Doing my art helps me sort through tough things. My tough things are not anyone else’s tough times, necessarily. There are storms and I have faced many. I need to remember that I am still standing.
Our lives should be about excitement and by danged I find ways to be excited about life. Sometimes fear can impede our joy and contentment. We all need to celebrate our little successes. We have to believe we deserve better, sometimes. We have to believe there is a lot of life left in us yet. We have to dream. We deserve things. We matter.
Our intuition has often been smothered. We judge ourselves. We do not value ourselves. And, if these things are so, and often they are, then we are robbing ourselves of valuable pearls in life. Pearls are made from hard things in the lives of their hosts. If our host to our mind, heart and soul, is not connected, in balance, then we can flop around and die thinking we can not swallow another tough time. We need to be interested in ourselves, our capabilities, our dreams and hopes and wishes. We deserve it. We can make happen what we wish to happen for ourselves, sometimes in different forms than we thought, wished, hoped for, but can happen in some way. Sometimes what we want does not fit into our life. Sometimes we need a reality check. Sometimes we have to accept that it is what it is. And, then, go about finding another way, another thing, to help us listen better to our intuition that wishes the best for us.
We need to give ourselves the love, appreciation and comfo0rt we would give a friend. Be that.
©Carol Desjarlais 1.27.23
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