Sara's Virtual Notebook

There’s been a great time of shifting just this side of the Full Buck Moon, as evidenced by my last post.. which launched a thousand remedies and inspired new satisfactions. No, I haven’t “figured it all out yet.” If I had, I’d retire from the world as we know it.

But I will say this: my commitment to my Year of Self-Love has been renewed, with new revelations.

First off, the Year of Self-Love sounds pretty self-sufficient, doesn’t it? It doesn’t imply that it involves anyone else. I fell for that delusion myself, until it dawned on me, that my greatest acts of Self-Love this year have involved asking others for help. My greatest delusion in self-sufficiency was that I didn’t recognize, independent though I might be, that it is okay to need assistance, okay to need people. I do need people!

I’ve hired new doctors, a naturopath and a therapist all in the past year, and I’ve gotten better at asking others for assistance. It still takes a bit of swallowing my pride in some instances, and in others, it takes realizing the other person is probably NOT going to be horrified by my request, and that, if they are, they can say no. I’m learning we need not feel guilty for the martyrdom of another — that’s on their heads. Can you tell my mother was Catholic?

And I renewed my commitment to The Joy Diet. I didn’t in fact do fifteen minutes of nothing every day, so much as I did it when it occurred to me. And it made an astonishing difference. I went from someone who seethed and filled my cynical bank account with all the unexpressed reasons the world was out to get me, to someone who recognized a moment of trespass when it occurred and took steps to set it aright, ASAP. No seething. No stories of how this indicates, on every level, that I am meant to be in total misery. Just a step back and then a gentle inquiry as to how something upsetting can be resolved. And it was, and that was it. Cowabunga.

As I continue The Joy Diet, and Rock Star Intuition with Fabeku and Bridget, I look towards more connection with nature this month, especially as I embark on the journey of becoming vegan in August. Hence there’s a lot of the word “organic” on my Dream Board, but it’s not just organic in the food sense.. one of the definitions of organic is: developing in a manner analogous to the natural growth and evolution characteristic of living organisms; arising as a natural outgrowth. This smacks somehow of authenticity, to me. So I go on with my Year of Self-Love, curious as to what the next stage in my own natural growth and evolution will bring.