From Monday - Impromptu Reflection on Self-Love

Hey Everyone!

I'm at the Fred Meyer in Oregon and it feels like we've moved back a season. Up in AK, it was freezing at night and barely making the high 50's in the daytime. Here, it's 80 degrees, sunny and gorgeous. So nice to be wearing a t-shirt!

I will get to my blog post for today in a little while: first, I'm going to share something I wrote while at the farm last night - I was unable to get online, but was still thinking about self-love and wanted to write something.

Yesterday's 'Reflection on Self-Love' from Tina was on forgiving others. Check it out here.

And here's what I wrote without that prompt: (definitely some major self-forgiveness and acceptance of others going on).

Although I haven't been able to get online today, not even to check in with today's theme, I just wanted to write a little bit about self-love, to keep the 30 days thing going in my own life.

We arrived at the farm mid-morning, after flying pretty much through the night on the -red-eye flight. We're pretty exhausted now, sleep deprived indeed! Phil's elder brother picked us up at 5.30am and we had a lovely visit with him and his family and other animals before heading down to the farm.

Self-love - taking a nap this morning so that we were just about coherent for the day. It's Phil's mom's birthday today, and there were lots of visitors and relatives. That was great, because it helped us to be present, to sit and visit, rather than succumbing to the urge to get straight to work because we're on the farm and there's tons to do!

We picked three buckets of filberts this afternoon, as well as corn and tomatoes, and a few apples. Photos to come, I promise. Self-love is pacing ourselves and not breaking our backs picking up filberts for too long at once. Self-love was trying a tiny sliver of Phil's mom's birthday cake (which was made gluten-free in deference to other family members as well, but was very full of sugar and other ingredients that are hard on me) and sending my tummy lots of love to cope with it, appreciating the feeling of not being 'left out,' allowing myself to contemplate whether that felt better than the 'being left out.'  Since I'd only had tomatoes and a couple filberts for lunch, there was lots of leeway room. But having good, substantial snacks later in the afternoon was another important part of self-love.

I am so grateful to be part of this focusing on self-love - even though I'm not sharing my thoughts with the world today, it feels good even just for me - and, by extension, for the people around me, that I've had it in mind today. I think it's helped me to be a better person, and a more pleasant person to be around.

With love and gratitude!