A grain of a thought that something had to change started during Thanksgiving holiday, I wanted things to feel different.  However, you could argue that it is not a new thought for me because if you managed to find the last 20 years of journals and perhaps even in the bowels of this reinvigorated blog I have spent years thinking about changing myself.  How can I be good enough to finally be loved?  When would I make the *right* decisions?  The list was long on the things I needed to do and the reward was always supposed to be love and happiness.  Of course I could never *always* make the right decision and my mistakes would lead me to a path of hurt, loneliness and mostly self-hatred.  The difference was this was not a thought of how I could change but how I could change towards myself.   What if for a whole month I took effort in trying to be kind to myself?  What if for the month of December I stood up for me in my bleak disappointments and my rousing victories, I stayed true to me?

I pronounced my intention that I was going to go into 2015 after a month of being gentle and kind as

I would to a friend towards myself.  I even made a pack with a friend that we would keep each other on this path and find our way together.   The first week was full of shiny bright optimism in my ability to stay true and keep my focus and yet I cannot even remember when I completely forgot about this intention.   Somewhere between the first week and today my mind completely dropped my intention and I had almost no recollection of it and my friend and I never spoke of it again.  Why did it just disappear and vanish from our many conversations?  Why did my mind bury it deep in the recesses of my consciousness?

I could blame the insane two weeks at work or even the break up with my ex for the 5th time but those seem like the days that this practice could have been the most helpful to deal with.   There was something different happening though because even in those moments of real emotional distress and challenge I found myself not relying on my old patterns and finding new ways to care for myself.  I found myself today writing in my journal and suddenly surprised by the revel of my intention set a mere 29 days ago.  In reflecting on the month, I was surprised to find that in many ways my intention although silent and obfuscated from my day to day thoughts has come to fruition.  How had something I had lost been working its way through my thoughts and actions into a month that I reengaged with myself?  Was the mere thought of the need to change enough to put me on a path that would change the way I thought of myself?

I feel myself needing to clarity and caveat that I am not perfect and doing this all well, but there is not a competition here to be the most generous.   I have found myself this month treating myself like a good friend supporting my choices when they were authentic needs and be gentle with myself when I knew they were not.  There were weeks of crazy dreams and now I wonder if my subconscious grabbed this intention and took it under ground in hopes of it surviving.   I find myself where I wanted to be going into 2015 with a view of myself and my life that is full of joy, curiosity and generosity.

The Dream by Pablo Neruda

Walking on the sands

I decided to leave you.

I was treading a dark clay

that trembled

and I, sinking and coming out,

decided that you should come out

of me, that you were weighing me down

like a cutting stone,

and I worked out your loss

step by step:

to cut your roots,

to release you alone into the wild.

Ah in that minute,

my dear, a dream

with its terrible wings

was covering you.

You felt yourself swallowed by the clay,

and you called to me and I did not come,

you were going, motionless,

without defending yourself

until you were smothered in the quicksand.

Afterwards

my decision encountered your dream,

and from rupture

that was breaking our hearts

we came forth clean again, naked,

loving each other

without dream, without sand,

complete and radiant,

sealed by fire.