Displaying items by tag: self love

Do you remember when you were in school there was always that quiet kid in class who barely spoke but always seemed to excel on tests and projects? They normally kept to themselves and had few friends, yet aced quizzes and tests. Maybe they were called weird or shy. They were the ones that the popular kids didn’t associate with. I remember those kids in school, mostly because that shy kid who barely spoke was me. Maybe you can relate.

The first time I noticed it was in second grade. I was laying in my childhood bed, staring at the shapes that looked like faces on the wooden wall next to me, sobbing. I missed my best friend and couldn’t wait to see her again at school on Monday.

It was Saturday morning and she had just left minutes ago from a Friday night sleepover at my house. The night before we ate pizza and watched Disney movies in the basement, then we played with my collection of My Little Ponies, which I had meticulously spaced out in rows and columns by color on the basement floor. If we slept at all, it was in sleeping bags in front of the fireplace. Mostly we stayed up, giggling and laughing, me not wanting the night to end because of the emotions that would come for me when she left. 

As a child, I couldn’t begin to understand why I felt immense sadness after my friend left on Saturday. I just knew that I missed her and missed what I thought was the best night of my life. 

I started this website to focus on loss and the complicated relationship it has with grief, depression, and loneliness. The rollercoaster of emotions that naturally comes along with losing a loved one or something in your life that you cared deeply about sends you to parts of yourself that you would rather forget existed. The grief inevitably brings out feelings that once lay dormant and then hijacks every part of your body, brain, and heart.

I have also written about how I have learned to use new-found tools and support from others to overcome the challenges and paralyzing effects grief creates. From podcasts I have listened to, to books I have read, to supportive friends, family, colleagues and healing retreats, I spent the better part of two years trying to figure out how to heal.

When I was five years old, my mother enrolled me in a local majorette’s group for kids my age. I whined to her that I didn’t like it and wanted to quit, but she “forced” me to go so I could learn how to twirl and toss and spin a long metal bar with two knobs on either end like her. She was the “best in the school,” said my grandparents. But I was not like my mother. I was uncoordinated, dropped the baton, and had a hard time paying attention. During the parade my group marched in, I carried the banner with our group name on it because I wasn’t good enough to walk and twirl with the others. I quit after the parade.

There is a story in the Buddhist tradition about a clay statue of the Buddha in a monastery in Thailand. Over the years, it was protected in the monastery from outside invaders. One day while it was being relocated, one of the monks spotted a crack in the clay. When the monk looked closer, he noticed that underneath the clay there was solid gold. The clay statue had been made of gold the whole time!