Photo: Natalie Collins
Sometimes, I write love letters to myself.
They're healing, they're powerful; they're necessary. I'll scribble them from time to time into my journal and fold down the page in dog-eared fashion so I can quickly go back to find a compassionate pep talk when I feel like I need one. I don't remember how I got started on this practice or what motivated me to stick with it through the initial awkwardness. (Because it was awkward; and how!)
Like first beginning a journaling practice, writing letters to yourself can seem positively painstaking - even when you have no intention of sharing this writing with an audience, you still feel ever so much like a fool. Maybe this is because self-compassion is still a radical idea for many of us. But the more you do it, the more powerful the practice becomes, and the more in touch you become with your own capacity for kindness, patience, and love.
For me, the process has helped me grow more compassionate toward myself as well as others, but it has also caused me to see messages to myself hidden within different perspectives - a happy accident that comes as a result. It's most true for poetry and music, and I was reminded of it again in this piece from Tyler Knott Gregson's Wildly into the Dark:
I have a few promises to offer you,
the believing is up to you, the
proof will emerge, but I cannot
say the when. Here is what I have,
my sincere offering, scar earned and
burned into me:
when you think you can't, you positively
can, when you think it's over,
it may be beginning. There is always more
to find, always something left in you
when you would swear on your soul
you've been emptied out. Finally,
and most exquisitely important,
I promise you it is worth it,
it is always worth it, every drop of
ache and sorrow, every perfect pinch
of joy, it is worth it. Promise me you
will keep waking up, keep finding it,
and finding the strength in you
to believe me.
"I promise you it is worth it." I've written those words to myself many times, a reminder that there is a strong, hopeful self within me who not only believes that I can achieve my dreams - but that I deserve to. And this helps.
