Approving of Myself

So it's been a rough week. A flashback that led to a hard therapy session, that led to another flashback, that led to lots of memory pain and assorted issues that stem from the abuse. 

And now it's Monday morning, and emily is exhorting me to Dare to Love Yourself. I do love myself, don't I? I just have trouble approving of myself. Not judging myself. Not criticizing myself.

I know the abuse wasn't my fault. I know it as well as I can at this point. But there is that little voice in my head that says, each time something new comes up or something old comes around again, "You're just an attention whore. You just want to be the center of the universe and have everyone's undivided attention."

I stop and have that conversation with myself, again, about why would I make up stories? What's the point to it? What's the benefit to me of being in such pain that I spend a day curled up in bed trying to ward off the memory of pain inflicted on my body 45 years ago? Why can't I just let it go and move on? 

I asked my husband how I can be who I am today -- a college graduate with a Master's degree, the mother of 2 children, a wife, a cook, a homemaker, a friend, a writer(?), an encourager -- when all those awful things happened to me, and they keep floating around in my head hindering what I want to be doing? Doesn't my ability to function negate the likelihood that all those awful things really happened? And he put it in perspective for me, again. My assumption is anyone who is functional has never suffered. He reminds me that everyone has trouble and struggles. That we are all trudging along doing the best we can with whatever baggage we carry. And it helps all of us to help each other carry those loads.

So, do I love myself? Yes, but I need to work on it. I need to learn to love me as much as I love you. And while I'm at it, I need to cut everybody a little slack for bad days.

Peace.

linking up with a love dare

Chocolate Flan Cake with Caramelized Spiced Pears

Continuing with the menu from this post, we move on to dessert.


1 1/2 cup unbleached flour
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup cocoa
1/3 cup canola oil
1 Tbs. white vinegar
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup cold water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8-inch cake pan or a flan pan. In a medium bowl, mix together flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and cocoa. Add the oil, vinegar, and water. Blend well with a fork. Pour into prepared pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes (if using flan pan, check for doneness after 20 minutes). Cool 10 minutes in pan. Turn out cake to cool. Serves 8

Caramelized Spiced Pears

4 tablespoons unsalted butter (1/2 stick)
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
4 medium Bosc pears, cored and cut into large dice (about 4 cups)
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Melt butter in a medium frying pan over medium heat. When it foams, sprinkle sugar over top and cook until bubbling and dissolved, about 3 minutes.
Add pears and cook, stirring rarely, until mixture is caramelized and pears just begin to release their juices. Gently fold in cloves and serve.

Pour pears over cake slices and top with vanilla ice cream. Yummy!

Happy eating!

linking up with Made by You Monday

What Makes Me Happy -- Day 3

Crochet = happy hooky goodness

Fresh flowers = happiness

Cooking for friends = good times

Candles = warm, glowing happiness

Cozumel with my husband = ahhhhh!

linking up with 31 Day Blog Challenge

{this moment}

A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Favorite Quotes -- Day 2

Quotes. How long do you have? Well anyway, here are (ahem) a few --

The unconscious mind writes poetry if it's left alone. --Stephen King

Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that's real power. -- Clint Eastwood

That's the thing about books. They're alive on their own terms. Reading is like traveling with an argumentative, unpredictable good friend. It's an endless open exchange. -- Ali Smith

What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God -- Micah 6:8

See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of the Father in heaven -- Matt. 18:10

She had a picture of the way things should pleasantly be, and she edited reality heavily to make it so. -- Laurie Colwin

You can never get a cup of tea large enough, or a book long enough to suit me. -- C.S. Lewis

Contentment is not the fulfillment of what you want, but the realization of how much you already have.

Sometimes when you're down in the dark, you lose the will to come up. -- Sue Grafton

Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn. -- C. S. Lewis

There comes a moment in the life of every individual when reality must be faced. When this happens, it is as though some link between emotion and reason is stretched to the limit of endurance, and sometimes snaps. --Daphne du Maurier

From the time we wake up in the morning to the time to go to bed we look out on a world that is flat, open to interpretation, and sort of like a Rorschach blot. Mark Twain once quipped that "Life is one damn thing after another." Our days are like that. Something happens, then something else happens. A string of events until we fall back asleep. -- Richard Beck (Experimental Theology)

linking up with 31 Day Blog Challenge

31 Day Blog Challenge -- Day 1

Tiffany over at Fabulous Finds By Tiffany is doing a blog challenge, and ya'll know me I'm always up for an excuse to write. Really nothing gets me motivated like  a good prompt. I don't know that I'll make it all 31 days, but here's day 1 --

Self-Portrait and 5 Random Facts

That's me : )

1. I went to the same school kindergarten through college. That's right -- 17 years in a row!

2. Theater has been good to me. I developed 3 of my best friendships doing "Fiddler on the Roof" in high school. I met my husband while doing "The Music Man" in college (yes I was Marian, and yes I'm a librarian irl)

3. I am left handed.

4. I'm an inveterate reader of dictionaries and encyclopedias. Some people are addicted to Pinterest. For me it's Wikipedia.

5. I would have loved being a 1940's and '50's club singer. (Michael Buble -- be still my heart!)

linking up to 31 day blog challenge

Distinctively Ordinary

Ordinary is just a variation on that word I crave -- "normal". Yet when I looked up the definition for ordinary is said, "with no special or distinctive features; normal". And I realize that definition doesn't fit anyone.

Everyone I know has something special or distinctive about them. That's what makes them them. So maybe it's true, what my therapist has told me for years, there is no normal.

If I assume that everyone has special or distinctive features, then the logical conclusion is that I do to -- I'm just not sure what they are. My go to response would be that I am a survivor of abuse, but I don't really want to be defined by that. 

What is ordinary for me is different than what is ordinary for you. And it's the same old song and dance for me to try and compare myself to others' in an effort to see myself and my life as "normal".  So once again, I see the foolishness in comparing myself to others. I am who I am in what is ordinary for me, because of all that I have experienced, and everyone who has touched my life.

So I choose to be ordinary in my own special and distinctive way.

linking up with Five Minute Friday