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I think some of my favourite posts here on the blog this year were the steps I made in my own self-acceptance & self-love path….what I loved about each of these were that they happened when I most needed them to (and least expected them to) but all of them felt like really big progress on my own path of self-acceptance and seeing myself with kindness.
This was also the year that my teaching about self-portraiture really shifted from being artistically focused to being all about using self-portraiture as a powerful and transformative tool for seeing ourselves with compassion. Be Your own Beloved was born. Doing the class myself 4 times this year (and participating in them as much as possible) feels like a big part of these realizations. These activities can be might transformative and doing them again and again this year I realized how many deeper layers of learning about self-love unfolded.
The clearest way I can share with you how things have changed in my relationship to my own inner critic is that things just feel quieter, gentler, simpler. After having your inner critic shouting at you for most of your life, you can’t help but notice when bits of quiet arise.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what happens when we find ‘self-love’ and make progress on our path. Like with most goals, I feel like we might expect bells & whistles and self-love that feels ecstatic. But quite honestly, I’m discovering that as I’m healing some of my own pain, it just feels really quiet and gentle. No bells & whistles…just a feeling of respite and release from my own inner critic.
These moments were ones I won’t forget because they were just simple yet powerful moments on ever evolving path of self-love in this lifetime.
I wanted to share a few of the posts with you from this past year that have been awakenings on my self-love path & I hope they might resonate with you on your path too!
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Little Bike and a Lesson in Confidence
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Shrinking Body Shame (and how Running Tights helped me realize that)
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Our Changing Body Stories (and my Long Legs)
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Worthy: My Word of the Year for 2014
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Did you have some self-love or body acceptance realizations this year? I’d love to hear about it so don’t hesitate to leave a link to your blog post or share your experience with me!