i was awful to atlas one day this past winter.

we were driving home from the ski trails & he had to poop. i couldn’t stop the car in time, so he pooped in the car.

i shouted at him & called him a bad dog & pulled him out of the car none-too-gently.

it was not my shiniest moment.

oh, did i hang onto it.

guilting, shaming, judging, weighing.

this dog saved me and these are the final years of his life and he can’t help that his body is failing him and this is probably the last straw and i’ll never be able to make it up to him and now all he’ll remember are the awful moments and i am clearly the worst person in the entire world.

i want to be my own best friend.

in these moments – the moments in which i behave in a way that is so far from how i want to behave – i am not my friend at all.

not because i behave badly – we all behave badly at times – but because of the way i speak to myself & look at myself afterward.

i’ve been learning to love myself for a long time now.

ten years, i think.

every time i think i’ve got it, something like this happens and it throws me.

but maybe that’s what loving myself deeply means.

facing – again & again – my deeply flawed broken human self and finding a way to love + forgive her.