a peek at my journal on the first day of the year
{i feel moved to share part of today’s journal entry with you. the questions are courtesy of martha beck and the joy diet, which i am currently re-reading. may it offer a spoonful of permission and a sprinkling of compassion on this, the first day of the new year. }
what am i feeling?
nothing. it feels like the kind of nothing that is blocking something.
i feel sleepy. again, not the sleepy of (i need rest), but the sleepy that is keeping me away from the truth.
i feel anger. it is behind my shoulders, behind me, a tightening.
now i want to know why i’m angry. it is not the gentle loving curious why, but the why that says what i’m thinking/feeling/doing is wrong and i must find the why in order to change it.
ahhhhh. now there are tears. my shoulders ease. i finally feel permission to feel.
i feel …
i don’t know the word. confusion? longing?
yes, longing. i sense a deep longing for something that i am not ready to articulate to myself just yet.
for now, that is enough.
what hurts?
my throat. it feels raw and inflamed.
it speaks of too much apple cider vinegar and not enough honey, of taking in someone else’s wisdom and thinking it must become mine because they are clearly wiser than me (by virtue of not being me), of forgetting about pleasure and joy and honoring myself in favor of pain and suffering and the opposite of loving kindness.
it speaks of stuffing things down and being small and thinking that my ways (and subsequently me) are not the right ways because they are not what someone else might have done.
it speaks of shame, of feeling embarrassed about how much i love my puppy, even though my love for him is one of the real-est and truest things about me.
ahhhhh. again there are tears. there is a cool release spreading throughout my throat.
for now, that is enough.
Sounds like you are missing Portland.
Hi, Elizabeth! New Year greetings, my friend! So lovely to catch up with your here post holidays and travels. Like you, I honor a new year with journaling, and have been writing between jet lag fog and much else. Also like you, I’m experiencing a strange lull I can’t quite define yet… I’ve come to understand a scratchy throat as being a need to get in touch with true inner communication and release. we must trust our own inner honey. :o) It’s good to cry at new year’s I think… a nice release to make space for what can arise, what can come, what can be possible. Here’s to 2014 and new discoveries. ((HUGS))
Happy happy new year! I hope you had a wonderful visit!
I will definitely remember your thoughts about a scratchy throat. I have been lax on journaling over the holidays, which is when my inner communication & release tends to slow. I might have to use my throat as a reminder.
Here’s to 2014!
p.s. If you want to write about your strange lull, do feel free to email. Maybe together we can find clarity.
this post reminded me of a song i learned when i was 16 that always made me cry.
‘will there ever be a home for me?’
it had less or maybe more…i don’t know…
to do with my inner home than the one around me. i felt cut loose. never to find shore.
i still often feel like that.
odd.
i’ll be 69 years old this year in june.
you’d think i’d have finally paddled my way onto shore.
i’m like jerry. much as you’re enjoying being with your family. i think your heart will forever be in oregon. and there will be hard times. ♥
Me too…69 that is.
Hmmmm to Jerry & Tammy. I am reflecting, and no, I am not missing Oregon. The trouble with sharing processing is that sometimes I can’t explain things in a way that might make things make perfect sense to a reader, so I just share them as-is, and trust that they will be received as needed.
(But the short version is that there are certain times when it is harder to be myself or I am not in touch with my inner wisdom or I have things that need to be released and then eventually I am quiet enough to know this and things shift again. If that makes sense.)
But Tammy, you reminded me of something I wanted to write about. I was writing a love letter to Oregon while I drove to Michigan and I realized that the reason I loved Oregon so was because I felt at home there, but the reason I felt so at home there was because I found myself there, and so I was finally finally at home – in me – and I was carrying my real home with me to Michigan. I do still feel adrift sometimes, maybe I always will, but mostly I do feel at home.
oh e.
that makes me feel better.
that you feel at home there. xo
this second time around, i realized where this photo came from..it is pretty cool!
Isn’t it! It was Mardi Gras beads twirling on my arm in the light.
Elizabeth, it took me a long, long time to embrace how incredibly huge my love for my dogs is. My dogs, Mac & Alex, were the only ones who really knew me because I was never my truest self with anyone else. I guess they taught me how to be me and how being different from other “normal” people was perfectly okay. Plus, they loved me better than any human being ever has…which probably says as much about my sweet puppies as it does about my trust issues – ha!
Yes, yes, yes. This. Now I want to go hug Atlas again. And you. I wish we could sit down over a glass of cocoa and tell stories about our dogs. (Also, if you want a lovely book to read, that expresses just this, try Geneen Roth’s The Craggy Hole in My Heart and the Cat Who Filled It.)