I read a blog by Pam Grout recently that made me smile. Pam is a writer and I highly recommend her book E-Squared if you haven’t read it. I also absolutely love her blog.
So back to the smile, I read her blog post the Two Magic Words A Review and the biggest smile came across my face and kind of a sense of relief waved through my body.
It’s okay.
It’s okay if you’re finding it hard to get out of bed right now. It’s okay if you haven’t taken a shower today. It’s okay if you’re mad at the world today. It’s okay if you don’t feel like talking to anyone. It’s okay if you’re finding it hard to home school your kids. It’s okay if you are scared.
Practicing OUTRAGEOUS self care and self love right now is what is necessary. Before reading her blog post, I found that I was constantly saying, “it’s okay” to myself. It was like a mantra, over and over, every time I judged myself for sleeping in, or procrastinating or having anxiety about my lack of income or when I will be able to go back to work, those two simple little words were so soothing to me. It’s okay. Her post was a reassurance that I was practicing self care on a very simple level.
Recently, I was walking my dog Murphy and had a reassuring thought. Murphy is a rescue that had a great deal of leash reactivity when he first came to live with us. The obvious things like runners, baby carriages, skateboards were triggers for him, as well as little things such as a leaf blowing by or a paper bag rustling. I learned to try to catch sight of things like that before he did and kind of warn him, for example if I see someone running towards us, I say in a happy voice, here comes a runner, he looks up at me and I say it’s okay and he receives a treat for not barking like a lunatic. Now when we walk if he sees something that he would have previously reacted to, he’ll look up at me and I say it’s okay and we continue our walk peacefully. The other day he looked up at me and I said it’s okay and I realized yes, it IS okay and it’s GOING to be okay. Thanks for the reminder Murphy!
So practice being gentle with yourself, it’s okay.
