A Journey to Self Love

“I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.”

― Rita Mae Brown

I finished building my own home at the end of October this year. It has been an amazing experience. This journey began in May of 2013 when  I held my breathe and applied to Habitat for Humanity to see if I qualified. I found out that I did, but I had a mistake on my credit that I had to clear up first. All the horror stories of fixing misinformed credit bureaus information were true. It took me until October of 2013 - six months - to make my credit accurate. During that time often I wanted to give up, but I had had a dream of owning my own house for over 15 years and I knew I couldn't give up on myself. So I stayed committed. I was accepted in my local program at the end of October almost exactly a year ago.

 Little did I know that it was going to get harder. Now I started my sweat equity hours, going to other people’s houses being built and learning how to build houses. All of my fears about making mistakes came up for me. Often I would ask the same questions over and over or do tasks with my heart pounding and perhaps my hands shaking. And I often did make mistakes but this amazing group of volunteers and staff who build all of the homes would teach and explain as many times as I needed until I found myself looking forward to going and learning new things. It was quite the shock to me that I was enjoying myself more than feeling awkward and  afraid. This is how I realized that the journey  to self-love I had begun years ago had taken another leap.

 I suppose for some self-love comes easy, but I think those people are few and far between I think the rest of us have to work toward it. I know I have. I thought I loved myself when I was younger. I floated through my childhood into college never really having to try very hard. Never realizing that I only did things half assed because indeed I was afraid, deeply afraid of failing. In order to really love ourselves we have to admit to ourselves that we have dreams and if we really allow ourselves to want/desire then we might fail. This can be too terrifying, it was for me for a long long time.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. - Anais Nin

Around 9 years ago I read a book called Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg Phd. This was the beginning of some serious change brewing in my life.  I was reading the book as a conflict resolution manual (but have since learned it is so much more) I was mostly focused on trying to communicate with my children better. The first thing I remember being in awe about was the idea that “negative” feelings are related to having unmet need rather than personal failings and all people have these unmet needs This was an aha moment for me in that I had needs. I realized I had been living my life trying to not have needs. I was trying to meet everyone’s need all around me only to deplete myself of all reserves and be unable to give anymore. Often leading to feelings of resentment inside of me that the people around me were not more attentive to my needs. Even though truly I was training them to not care about my needs by how I took care of myself. When I finally realized my needs matter and even though the info was coming from outside of myself I had something I could work with. But as life often goes I got busy with the life of being a single parent with two young girls and little support so focusing on myself was hard.


 Time passed things changed. I had twin sons and many other things changed in my life. One of those things was I started to learn how to ask for my needs to be met. Slowly. I was able to attend a Nonviolent Communication workshop in my area. This was a truly EYE OPENING experience. I was in a room with 50-60 other people with all of us learning to think in a new way. Learning to view relationships and communication in a much different way than our society trains us.

 I continued on this journey immersing myself by attending workshops and reading as much free info as I could. I also found recordings of teleclasses I could listen to over and over and great videos on YouTube that I could learn from. I read Marshall’s book again as well as other books like Connecting Across Differences. Many things continued to change in my life. My relationships changed because I changed. I was stronger. I had something I could turn to that required no one else to help me when something was wrong. I could turn to my materials and find the need that was unmet. And even when there is no answer right now just knowing what my need is can relieve so much of the pain of it being unmet.

 I am learning to stop thinking that the problem was others around me or a failed part of my being and I started to connect with my feelings and my needs. This is an amazing feeling to move the focus from out there to inside myself. Self-Love has been and continues to be an amazing journey of self discovery in part by learning to embrace and love deeply my shadow side and equally embrace and learn to claim out loud my positive qualities. It means for me learning to ask out loud for things that will help me meet my needs rather than suffer in silence or make demands for others to meet my needs.

 I am learning to participate in the world in a more compassionate way for me and all of humanity. I am getting to know myself in deeper and deeper ways. I am becoming more and more consciously here in the moment. I am able to say no without feeling guilty more and more often. I may have further to go on this path of self-love but I have already traveled far and learned much.


  Oceana the SisterMoon is currently building her own energy efficient home, preparing to start her dream of living a sustainable, raising chickens, and growing food with her 4 children. She seeks to help women unearth their power through sisterhood and healing through [self-connection , interdependence, power in vulnerability, and authenticity. You can also find her on Facebook.

Adventures in Committing Myself to Nonviolence

“But feelings can't be ignored, no matter how unjust or ungrateful they seem.” 

― Anne Frank

Robert Plutchik's "Wheel of Emotions"

I am working through  Miki Kashtan's Core Commitments from her website The Fearless Heart. 

Today I am meditating on #2 

 Openness to the Full Emotional Range: even when my feelings are uncomfortable for me, I want to stay present with myself and keep my heart open to the fullness of my emotional experience. If I find myself contracting away from my experience, numb or shut down, I want to seek support to release defendedness and open to what is.

This one is a big one for me as it seems to be for so many. For women allowing themselves to be angry is often unacceptable and therefore hard for many. I have met women who are practically unable to express anger except in the most extreme circumstances or who cry when they are mad because this is more acceptable form of expression. For men feeling sad or scared is unacceptable in our society.  These social constructs make is very hard for us  be open to our "full emotional range." One of my goals in blogging about this is to offer support to those out there and in turn I am hoping that a larger community that wants to create such a world that men, women and people may join at least an online community in support of creating more communities that are in local spaces also.

Being open to the full emotional range does not mean that is okay to take actions when we are angry particularly when they would hurt another person or vice versa.  It seems to me that many people struggle to feel their emotions without acting on them. We want change if we are angry we want the person we see as the cause to know or sometimes even to suffer or if we are afraid we want to leave the situation. Our bodies were designed for action as in fight or flight. Or to prepare for death as in freeze. 

But we do not have full access to all of our creativity when we are in a state of fight flight or freeze and so often we end up making decisions that do not help us and sometimes make the situation worse because we are not truly in life or death situations which is where or fight/flight/freeze reaction evolved from.

Learning to sit with an uncomfortable emotion has been a process for me. But one that I enjoy now. In the beginning is was new and very scary and uncomfortable. Now I find  the practice easier.  Though going through each emotion has it's own struggles. 

Anger for me is often a protective shielding for something that is too scary or too sad. Through this practice I am learning to soften myself and allow myself to be vulnerable.  I am still working on finding my peace with sometimes being an angry woman, learning to recognize that this view of myself is influenced by the society I live in that separates us in a binary way allowing some to feel some emotions and others to feel other emotions. 

Miki Kashtan has published some of her thoughts about this topic at Metta Center complete with suggested activities.  I hope you enjoy. Please leave feedback thank you. 

Oceana SisterMoon is currently living her dream of a sustainable life, raising chickens, and growing food with her 4 children. She seeks to help women unearth their power through sisterhood and healing through self-connection , interdependence, power in vulnerability, and authenticity. 

Finding Vulnerability

"I want to find, accept, and then stretch my limits so I can take bolder and bolder actions in the face of fear." -Miki Kashtan

I've been studying Nonviolent Communication for almost 3 years now

I first read the book of the same name by Marshall Rosenberg about 6 years ago. I thought it was enough like other types of communication styles that I had already studied that I could use it easily without having to study too much. 

Then I found myself in conflict with a dear friend. She was very frustrated with me and wanted me to understand something very important in the moment. I was afraid and didn't think I could listen well. I tried to be vulnerable but failed. We tried going to an NVC workshop together but I was too hurt and I think she was too.   It ended badly.   And while I am still in contact with her our friendship has suffered, our friends we had in common have enacted a distance.  Sadly, this was at a time in my life when I lost my life partner and needed their support very badly. I was left alone in my grief for not only my life partner but also my friends and support group.
  

This is when I decided that I would intensively study Nonviolent Communication for a year. I was lucky that I am near a city that held workshops regularly and began my journey. I reread the book and watched every video on youtube I could find. And attended 3 workshops in the next year.  I started to see change in my life. I continued to take workshops and found a book study group for my second year, and have continued finding information on blogs and in books and at workshops

I have lived in fear for most of my life. Fear of people, fear of life.  I wanted to be loved and cared about I wanted understanding but being terrified to the extreme really made it hard to interact with people.  I also felt angry and let's face it women are not allowed to be angry in our culture. Women are allowed to cry and be afraid, women are allowed to be depressed, women are to be helpless and victims but we are not supposed to get angry. Yet I was tired of moving between depressed and angry. Yet I am often to afraid to show people my feelings of vulnerability.  I am often shaking in terror and close to tears working to stay vulnerable when trying to tell people my authentic truth rather than pick up my defensiveness. However, I am learning to have courage. I am learning that for me courage is not the courage to fight or go to battle but to stand unprotected in my mistakes and imperfections.  To stand unprotected in my pain and hurt and needs for support and compassion.  To stand naked before people.  I have had some successes recently and I  have found by bringing in my vulnerability, others meet me with more vulnerability. I have yet to do this in a high stakes situation but I feel I am closer to being able to do this.  I hope the next time that some one is really angry at me I am able to think faster and know what to say. Whether it is right to offer up my own feels of fear and insecurity or to offer empathy.

I think this is one step we will take when we are ready to live in a world of peace. I think we often think that living in a world of peace means to live free of conflict. But maybe it really means to live in a world were we can all learn to be vulnerable with ourselves and with each other.  So everyday I make the effort to lay down my defenses and stand naked with all insecurities,  fears, and open wounds in front of myself and sometimes I am even brave enough to do it in front of others.  I hope to continue on this journey of gentle learning and laying down my weapons of words to find what is underneath.

Oceana SisterMoon is currently living her dream of a sustainable life, raising chickens, and growing food with her 4 children. She seeks to help women unearth their power through sisterhood and healing through self-connection , interdependence, power in vulnerability, and authenticity. instagram pinterest