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I miss my Dad.

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I miss my Dad.

He’s been dead since 1994. He died of a heart attack while living in his old room at his Mom’s house. He and my Mom were separated. They couldn’t see eye to eye.

There hadn’t been a lot of real communication all along anyway.

In a way I could say he was never really alive.

He was abused by his parents. He was never good enough for them. They treated him like a stupid child. He was sullen as a father, and greedy as a person. I was embarrassed to bring boyfriends home.

But I miss him.

Do I miss what could have been? Do I miss the Dad of my imagination? Would I feel an opposite amount of joy for my sadness if he were still alive today?

I can’t know.

I know that when I saw a picture of him today, laughing, joyful, I was struck with sadness. I am sad for what never was. I am sad for a life not lived fully. I am sad that I never saw him live up to his potential. I am sad that he was crushed by life, by other’s demands on him. I’m sad that he didn’t live at a time where mental health professionals had better tools in their kits.

He taught college English anywhere and any place he could. He did distance learning before anybody had a word for it. He would teach people the joys of writing and reading fine authors in the evening in high schools, in the afternoon in prisons, wherever a class could be formed. Teaching was his life.

It has been nearly twenty years since he has died. I think he would be very proud of the person I’ve become.

I know that he loved me more than he had words to tell me.

I know that he tried his best.

I don’t know if I’m crying more for me, or for him.

“The Natural Look”

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There is something very radical about hair and makeup.

If you go natural, people look at you funny.

I celebrate black women who don’t straighten their hair. I celebrate white women who let their hair go grey. I actually cheer them on. I want to counteract society telling them that they aren’t quite good enough unless they conform to the norm.

Why are we told that we aren’t beautiful unless we change ourselves? We are asked to lay ourselves down at the altar of Avon. We are asked to grind ourselves up in the crucible of Clairol.

What is the motto of L’Oreal? “Because we’re worth it”.

Something sounds very backwards about that, now that I think about it.

Like we don’t deserve respect for looking exactly the way that God made us.

You want that natural look? Go natural. Get some natural sunlight and drink some natural water and eat some natural food. You’ll look great.

When you have to buy your “natural look” in a bottle from Walgreen`s, then you know something is wrong.

Our society is telling women that they aren’t beautiful unless they alter themselves.

Shave your legs and armpits. This is reducing our appearance to that of a prepubescent girl. This is really creepy. We are telling women to stop looking like adult women.

High heels are the modern equivalent of foot binding. Uncomfortable shoes cause damage to women’s feet that can only be fixed surgically.

It takes a lot of energy to escape the gravity of this cultural training. It takes a high level of self-esteem to achieve escape velocity.

Look at all the women getting plastic surgery to “fix” something that isn’t broken.

Do you want to have a radiant smile? Take the money you were going to spend on that plastic surgery and give it to a charity.

Mother Theresa was far more beautiful than Paris Hilton will ever be.

Our society tells women constantly that they aren’t good enough. Too fat. Too thin. Hair too stringy. Hair too dark. Skin too pale – get a tan. Skin too dark – bleach it.

No matter what we look like, it isn’t good enough. We have to learn to see through this deception.

We are never “just right”, according to the media and the marketers. We need to remember that the media and the marketers make money on feeding us poison.

Our goal needs to not be beauty but health. I exercise and eat well not to be thinner but to be stronger.

I go to the Y out of a sense of rebellion. I eat vegetables as a political statement. I skip deserts and fried foods to show that I can.

I don’t want to be ruled by autopilot.

Each act is a stone I’m adding to my wall that I’m building to shore myself up against this wave of collective insanity that we call modern society.

My goal is to become fully awake, and to inspire others to do the same.

My goal is to let you know you are beautiful, and you are loved. That you matter. That you are important.

Southern fried pride

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More meat, less vegetables – that’s the Southern way. More obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, that is also the Southern way. It is as if we make it a cultural thing to be fat. It is as if we are proud of how out of shape we are.

We are proud of our fried food and our fatback and our meat-centric meals. We have made our stunningly unhealthy food an essential part of our culture. To drop the food is to deny our Southernness. It is time to redefine what it means to be Southern, because right now it means that we are killing ourselves.

There is a certain amount of shaming that occurs for those who take care of themselves. I’ve been told “you suck” for my efforts to get in shape – like this is a game of musical chairs and I got the last one. Just because I’ve decided to get healthy doesn’t mean that others can’t. There is room for us all.

This isn’t the only time I’ve gotten attitude for getting healthy. I wonder how many people decide to quit because of this social shaming. The weird part is when people say “Oh, you’re still skinny.” Of course I am. I’m still exercising and eating well. I want to say “Oh, you’re still fat.” But that isn’t nice.

It isn’t easy to get healthy. There are a lot of adjustments. There is a lot I’ve given up. I don’t have anywhere near the time I used to have to read. I don’t like exercising, but I like how I feel afterwards. I’m not a fan of having to think before everything I eat as to whether it is healthy or not, but I like how my clothes fit and how clear headed I am.

This isn’t a whim. This is a lifestyle change. I decided I wanted to live a long healthy life. I decided to be intentional about my health. I quit a lot of bad things and started doing a lot of good things. Plus, I don’t have any children, so nobody is going to be around to take care of me when I get older. So I have to do it myself.

In the South, we don’t have any idea what “normal” looks like. We see someone who weighs 200 pounds and we think he is just fat. No – that is obese. Then we see someone who is 300 pounds, but because she is larger than us, we think we are fine.

Nope. We are all out of shape.

We’ve come to think of “exercise” as a dirty word. We see it as a punishment. We see it like physical therapy – it is something you do for a little while, under doctor’s orders, and then you can quit.

How have we gotten so far off the path?

We act like eating whatever we want is our cultural right. We’ve clawed our way to the top of the food chain and we are going to prove it by taking ourselves to our graves.

We act like being lazy is a good thing. We act like we’ve proven we are number one by the fact that we can sit around all day. We don’t have to work all day long, finding or harvesting our food. We don’t have to walk three miles with a bucket on our heads to bring water back. We don’t have to walk four miles one way with no shoes to go to school.

Maybe it would be a good idea if we did these things.

Then maybe we wouldn’t take them for granted.

I’ve noticed that parents from foreign countries consistently get educational books for their children. They work really hard with them to get them to work hard on their education. Meanwhile, American parents let their kids get whatever they want. They get comic books and cartoons.

Consequently, the ESL kids consistently do better than the American kids. Children who were born into an English-speaking family consistently read and think at a lower level than children who are born into other families. It is because of the parents. The foreign parents don’t let the kids pick what they are going to read. These parents expect their kids to work hard and they don’t take “I don’t want to” for an answer.

I wonder how much of our Southern Fried Pride comes from habit? I knew a guy who was at least 500 pounds. His skin was grey, he was so unhealthy. He said that everybody in his family was as large as he was. I have a strong suspicion it has more to do with what is in their recipe books than what is in their genes.

Our pride is killing us.

Meatless? Are you mad?

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I was at a local burrito place today and ordered “seitan chorizo con papas” as my protein option. The preparer checked with me to make sure I knew it was vegetarian. I told him that was why I ordered it. He then shared with me that a lot of people freak out when they learn this. They reject it and go with the barbacoa.

I’ve noticed a lot of people are like this. They are terrified of being without meat. I’m like this. I’m trying to eat less meat but I haven’t taken the plunge yet and gone totally vegetarian.

It is as if there is a fear of being without meat, like we will faint or fade away from lack of nutrition.

Looking at the obesity rates of Americans, there is no worry about fading away to nothing anytime soon.

I had a coworker that I invited to an Indian buffet. He asked what was available and I started to describe what we were likely to find. He was quite interested in the chicken tikka masala but bored by the spinach and potato dishes. He was a little dismayed by the absence of any beef dish. When I told him that the best dishes were the vegetarian ones he visibly got defensive.

What? Not eat meat? Are you kidding?

I pointed out that there are people who go without meat for their entire lives and they do just fine. One meal without meat wouldn’t kill him. He was so skeptical that he decided not to go.

I remember a conversation with the manager at an Indian buffet many years ago. He said that people in India and in America are both dying because of food. Indians are dying from not enough food, while Americans are dying from too much food. We are eating ourselves into our graves. We suffer from preventable diseases for many years beforehand.

Our doctors, insurers, and pharmacists make a lot of money on treating these diseases with palliative treatments. I don’t have all the words yet to explain how angry and upset I am about Western medical thought, about how it treats symptoms rather than addressing the cause of illness.

I know I feel better when I eat a vegetation diet. I feel lighter and happier. I know I am doing something nice for my body.

Our bodies are temples. Our bodies are temporal houses for our immortal souls. So why do we fill them up with trash? Why do we pollute them with preservatives?

I haven’t made the full switch because I like the taste of meat. I like the texture. I don’t want to limit myself to only two or three options on the menu when I eat out. I don’t want to be a bother to friends when they are kind enough to invite me over to their homes for dinner.

I remember when I was in college and had gone entirely vegetarian because my boyfriend was. It was as if I needed a buddy or a partner, like in a hike in the wilderness or in AA. I needed someone to participate in this different diet with me. Plus, he cooked.

I was invited to a cousin’s wedding and the invitation said that if you had special dietary needs to call. I called and told her that I was vegetarian. She said that wasn’t a problem. A day later I got a call from my aunt, her mother, saying how dare I insist that they change everything around just for me. I was immediately uninvited to the wedding.

It was years later before I realized that side of the family was crazy in an abusive kind of way.

There is a knee-jerk reaction against being vegetarian. It is seen as counter cultural. It is seen as rebellious. It is seen as other, as weird.

But the norm is to eat all you want, spend all you want, and die soon and poor.

I don’t want to be normal. I want to live a happy, healthy life. But I also want the convenience of eating out. It is a sign of our culture that it is almost impossible to get vegetables if you eat from fast-food places. And when you do find vegetables they are either very salty, or cooked with pork, or they are just salad greens with little nutrition.

Perhaps it is time to Occupy the Kitchen.

There is nothing more countercultural than cooking your own food. There is nothing more rebellious than taking charge of your health.

Fear is a terrible motivator. Let’s try love instead.

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Not too long ago I realized that fear was a terrible motivator for change. If you used fear as a motivator to lose weight, your fear usually ended up making you seek the very things that you didn’t need. You’d be afraid of diabetes or cancer but instead of using healthy coping mechanisms like exercise or meditation, you’d go back to smoking cigarettes or eating “comfort food” which is sadly never healthy. And then you’d be stuck in that ugly cycle again.

Love is a better motivator. You love how you feel after you eat a well-balanced meal. You love how you feel after you have a good night’s sleep. You love how you feel after you’ve had a walk around the block. Or you love your granddaughter, and you want to live long enough to see her get married and graduate from college. Or you love the book you are working on, and you want to finish writing it.

If you are working towards something, rather than running away from something, you are more likely to have good results.

I think the same thing is true with following Jesus. So many people try to sell the idea of Jesus as the boogeyman. They use him as a guilt trip, and try to drag you along for the ride.

They will say that you are going to burn in hell if you don’t follow Jesus. Or they will say that you can’t go to their church if you don’t follow him the way that they follow him. Or they say that you will be condemned by God. They are motivated out of fear. They will do what their pastor says, they won’t question anything, and they will stay within the lines of whatever proscription their church has set up for them.

I don’t know about you, but that kind of motivation never worked well for me. I’m a questioner. I’m a person who likes to ask “why”. In fact, I need to know the reason why I have to do something in order to know how to do it. It isn’t that I’m being difficult. I’m not trying to get out of whatever task I’ve been assigned. I just need to understand the “why” so I can understand the “how” and the “what”. Fortunately I had teachers who translated this as “gifted” instead of “obstinate”.

I never wanted the Jesus these fear-lead people were selling. The mean, overlord, high-school principle Jesus. The micromanaging boss Jesus. But sadly, these were the loudest people. This version of Jesus wasn’t what fit with what I read in the Gospels either. I needed a Jesus who was about love and service. I needed a Jesus who taught me how to humble myself, but not in a way that was belittling. I mean humble in a way that lets the light of God shine through, but using me as the lens. This way, I’m still there, but I’m not in the way. I become a vehicle, rather than a driver.

Consider two dogs. One is a service dog. He’s been trained to help a blind person with their daily life. He resists his own inner nature to chase the squirrel when he is crossing the street with his companion. This keeps his companion safe and headed in the right direction.

Or, alternately, there is a stray dog that got yelled at all the time by her owners. She was never trained how to behave properly, and she just gets yelled at every time she does wrong. All she hears is yelling. So this dog ran away from home and now cowers in fear all the time, never knowing when she is going to get yelled at.

The service dog has been humbled, but it is out of service and out of love. He resists his own inner nature that causes him to stray and act without thinking of the consequences. He serves another person, helping that person throughout the day. He is a guide in the truest sense. And it all started with proper training. The trainer taught the dog how to be the best dog it could be, with positive commands and encouraging desired behavior and ignoring unwanted behavior.

The other dog has been humbled, but not out of love. There is no direction or goal in that humbling. It is a scattered and destructive kind of humbling. That kind of humbling is a lessening. Sadly, that kind of humbling is what many churches want to do. They want to focus on sin rather than redemption.

If you yell at someone for doing something bad, then that is all they will be able to think about. It ends up becoming pathological. We all desire attention. But if we don’t get attention for what we do that is good, and we only get attention for what we do that is bad, even if it is negative attention, then that is what we will continue to do.

Jesus took away all the “don’ts” in the commandments. He gave us what to do. We are to love. We are to love God and our neighbors with all our heart and soul and strength and mind.

Now, personally, I’m the kind of person that needs a little more instruction than that, so I supplement my Christianity with Buddhism and Judaism, with a little bit of Hinduism and Sufism thrown in for flavor. Some Christians would cringe at that, but I hope to change their minds. We are told to love our neighbors. How can we show them love if we don’t understand anything about them? The more I learn about other faith traditions, the closer I get to God. It is all motivated out of love. God made all of us different because he needs us that way. God doesn’t want us to all be the same. That would be as boring as garden full of the same kind of flower or an orchestra with just one kind of instrument. I like daylilies and piccolos, but I also like roses and kettledrums. I think God does too.

I love the fact that I can take a yoga class (Hindu) in a YMCA (Christian), while listening to music that has Caribbean steel drums and Tibetan throat singing and Chinese hammered dulcimer. I love that I can go to a Chinese buffet and get Japanese and American food too. I love that we are waking up to the beauty of each other and celebrating our differences. I think this is part of what the Kingdom of Heaven is all about.

Krispy Kreme – The One True Doughnut

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Today is National Doughnut Day, and I’m here to preach to you the Gospel of Krispy Kreme. Sure, there are other doughnuts, but they just aren’t even in the same league. Krispy Kreme is a melt-in-your-mouth bit of yumminess that is unique among doughnuts. They are yeast doughnuts.

All other doughnuts are nice, but they are cake doughnuts. Cake doughnuts are dry. They crumble. They have to be eaten with milk or coffee. They make you feel full much too fast. Cake doughnuts are only acceptable the day they are made. They aren’t even really great that day, but they are passable.

Krispy Kreme doughnuts are soft and tasty for several days after purchase. But the best time to eat them is when they are hot. The stores have a huge neon sign letting you know that are making doughnuts right then. There is even an app for your iPhone that will let you know when they are making doughnuts at a location near you. How is that for customer service and satisfaction? Also, their website says that the ingredients are vegetarian and kosher – win!

The best part is that you can even watch the doughnuts being made. In other places they are only visible when they are ready to be sold. It is not only cool to watch them being made, but it proves that this company is trustworthy. No sneakiness here! No skulking around in the back, making doughnuts on the sly. At a Krispy Kreme store you can see the doughnuts ride in the proofer, rising up on perforated metal trays like a vertical Ferris Wheel. Then they come to their bath of hot oil, where they bob along like contented rubber duckies. Shortly they are turned to cook the other side with beautiful acrobatic flip. They then travel to a metal conveyor where they glide under a shower of white cream, coating them with a delectable thin layer of liquid sugar that cools to a crackly consistency. It is just magical to watch the entire process.

But the proof of the glory of Krispy Kreme is their motto. “Hot, Fresh, Now”. If that isn’t a mantra, I don’t know what one is. Even their shape is meditative. The original, plain doughnuts are round, like the infinity of time and space. They are empty in the middle, to remind you to empty your mind. They are like a beautiful visual Zen koan.

I accept that there are people who like other doughnuts. I’m sad for them that they don’t appreciate the glory that is Krispy Kreme. I’ll eat other doughnuts if I have no other choice, but I’ll be thinking about the tender, moist, sweet goodness of Krispy Kreme the whole time.

My friends, I tell you that Krispy Kreme is The One True Doughnut. All other doughnuts are OK, but as for me and my house, we will eat Krispy Kreme.

TMJ as a teacher.

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I have TMJ problems. My jaw doesn’t line up properly. Overuse, and the ligaments in my neck hurt. The more I talk, the more pain I’m in. It isn’t a large pain. It isn’t terrible. But it is just annoying enough to keep me mindful.

I’ve become very conscious of everything I say. It is as if I have a bank account and I’m being careful of what I spend. Each sentence needs to be worthwhile.

I remember when a teacher in junior high had an assignment that we had to come up with a list of just twenty words. These were (hypothetically) the only words we would be allowed to say for the rest of our lives. This is something like that.

If it hurts to talk a lot, then you have to pick your words carefully or suffer the consequences. What do you have to say? What can be dropped?

This is totally in line with the Buddhist idea of right speech. Every word you say needs to be true, kind, and helpful. Is it necessary? Is it useful? Or is it mindless chatter, meant to fill up the silence? Is it gossip?

There is a great saying that “It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.” (Maurice Switzer)

There is a Ghandi quote as well that I’ve also heard attributed to the Quakers. “Speak only if it improves upon the silence.”

We are afraid of silence. We fill our houses and our heads with noise. We have iPods and cell phones attached to our ears constantly. Every store has music playing. The TV blaring on, all the time. When was the last time you were silent for longer than 20 minutes, and not asleep?

This disorder has become my teacher.

The essence of “self-esteem” is “self”

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I remember talking with a friend many years ago and saying that the most important part about self esteem is the word “self”. If you have to rely on other people for your self esteem, then you aren’t doing it right.

I saw a Facebook meme that had a picture of a happy child with a tagline that said something about how important it is for parents to fill their child’s bucket of self esteem so high that it spilled over. This may sound strange to say in light of my recent post about verbal abuse, but I think there might be something wrong with that.

Sure, I think it is important to encourage your child and to support her. Sure, I think it is essential that a parent be a good model for the child. But I think a dose of reality is important too.

To cheer someone on as if they are doing A-level work when really it is D-level work is to set them up for failure. Encourage and show them how to succeed. Yes, cheer on every good thing they do – they can’t do it perfectly at the beginning. But don’t tell them they have reached the top of the mountain when they are still standing at the base. They will never keep growing to their full potential. They will think they are already there.

We’re just now seeing the results of this kind of thinking in the work force. There has been an entire generation of kids who have gotten trophies just for participating. They have gotten certificates just for showing up. So they get into “the real world” and they wonder why they aren’t getting the same amount of praise for the same lack of effort.

It also seems odd for someone to say that another person damaged their self-esteem. Eleanor Roosevelt tells us that “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” There are plenty of self-help books (that I’ve listed as “Survival Books”) that will tell you the same thing. You can’t change the other person. You can only change yourself. That is the essence of self-help. You have to help yourself. Someone else didn’t affect your self-esteem – you chose to let them bother you. This sounds in part like blaming the victim, but it isn’t. It is actually empowering. It is encouraging the person to stop being a victim – to stop letting things happen to them, and to be an active participant in life.

Sometimes this means leaving the situation. Sometimes the other person just isn’t healthy to be around, and they aren’t going to get nicer. Sometimes it just requires you sticking up for yourself and telling the other person how their actions make you feel. Then they have a choice to act differently or not. Then you have a choice to take it or not. But it is on you to make the choice to act.

Other people can encourage you and support you, but when it gets hard, you have to be able to take care of yourself. Ultimately, other people are not responsible for your mental well-being, you are.

Asking for help is a sign of strength. (on verbal abuse)

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If you saw a dog being beaten, you’d most likely stop the abuse right then or report it to the police. So why are we mute when we see a parent abusing her or his child verbally? Verbal abuse is more damaging than physical abuse. The wounds go deeper and last longer. The child doesn’t even know that she or he was abused, so there is no way to know that this isn’t “normal.”

There are two different forms of verbal abuse – what is said, and how it is said. What is said can be very obviously verbal abuse. Telling a child that she or he is stupid or worthless or no good is damaging in a very deep way. But a child can also be damaged by otherwise innocent words said in an abusive manner.

Sometimes it isn’t what is said, but how it is said that is the problem. If you speak otherwise loving words but do them in an aggressive manner, you aren’t saying anything loving. Tone is essential. Nothing good is conveyed when you speak to a person in a short, clipped, frustrated manner, or loudly or sharply. The child’s entire way of viewing the world is affected by how she or he is raised. If you raise a child to feel worthless, then it is very hard for that child to grow into a healthy adult. The child has no strong foundation because it has been constantly undermined.

When your child comes up to you to ask for help, do you say “What do you want?” with a tone that really means “How can I help you?”, or do you say it in a way that says “Why are you bothering me, again!?” You are the main teacher for your children. If you teach them through your actions that they don’t matter to you, then you have destroyed their spirit. You have taught them that they are an inconvenience, that they are worthless.

I remember when I first got married and my husband would tell me a story of some problem that he’d had to deal with at work. He would be very angry and would be speaking in a very forceful way while telling me the story. Fortunately I was aware of how this kind of talk affected me, so I told him that I was not the reason for his anger, and that he needed to adjust his tone. His anger at the situation was bleeding onto me, and making me feel like I was part of the problem, that he was angry with me, personally.

But a child can’t do this. A child doesn’t have this sense of perspective. For a parent to speak in a sharp manner all the time to their child is abusive. It is cruel and thoughtless. It is not the child’s fault that they were born and that your days of partying are over. It is not the child’s fault that you were raised in a similar manner.

It is a huge responsibility to be a parent, and sadly there are no classes for it. Somehow our society thinks that just because you have had a child you automatically know how to be a parent. This is simply not true. But we just don’t have a mechanism in place to teach people how to be good parents. We seem to leave it to chance and hope everything works out.

I see parents being abusive to their children all the time where I work, and some are worse than others. You can see that the light is gone from the children’s eyes. Every time certain families come in we brace ourselves for another round of screaming and tears. What can be done? I’ve asked a friend who is a therapist and one who is a schoolteacher. Both say you can’t do anything. That you can’t get involved.

Both say that perhaps somebody else will catch it and do something. But what if that somebody else is thinking the same thing – that somebody else will do something?

So what do we do, wait until the child is totally broken and ends up killing someone? And then we’ll all say, “That was sure some strange family. I thought something was wrong with them. I wonder why nobody did anything.”

I’m writing this because I hope that it speaks to a parent who may recognize herself or himself in this. I hope that this parent realizes that it is normal to feel frustrated and overwhelmed, but not OK to push that on to a child. I hope that this parent admits that she or he needs help and asks for it from someone they trust – a therapist, a minister, a friend.

Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness. NOT asking is a sign of weakness. Trying to do it all on your own hasn’t worked.

World peace at a coffee shop.

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I have started a funny habit. I’ve started asking for world peace. I’ve done this at doctor’s offices, the bank, and restaurants.

When I get asked at the end of the transaction if there is anything else they can do, I ask for world peace. Yes, I get looked at funny. (I’m used to that) But I follow it with the “Ask and ye shall receive” idea. Perhaps that person has the secret for it, and all it required to make it happen was for me to ask.

This seems funny, but it is transformative. It means I have to really connect with the person. We look each other in the eye, and they have to break out of their routine and their script.

There was a great answer at a local vegetarian restaurant. The server said that it was created moment by moment by these interactions, with each person connecting with each other. Exactly.

Gandhi tells us that we must be the change
we want to see in the world.
World peace begins within you.
Think globally, act locally.
It begins with self-love.
Physician, heal thyself.

“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” JF Kennedy. I propose you change the word “country” to “world”.

What if it is hard to love yourself? Try this – know, deep down, that you are loved by God. Forget what some hateful church tried to teach you when you were a child. Forget the guilt-trip that your parents tried to use on you, where they made God into the bogeyman. God isn’t any of that.

God made you because you are needed and wanted. You are essential. That is why you are here.

If according to the “Rules for being human” other people are merely mirrors of you, and you can only love or hate in another that which you love or hate within yourself, then the first step is to learn to love yourself. You cannot hate others if you truly are at peace within.

You can learn how to get to that place by studying your reaction to other people. Whatever you can’t stand in another person, meditate on. Look for that trait within yourself. Dig deep. Root it out. Find its source.

Don’t turn away – go right into that darkness. It isn’t as scary as it looks. The closer you look, the more you look, the more you will be able to unravel that tight ball of pain and anxiety you are carrying around. Sure it is hard at the beginning. It gets easier. The more you unravel, the more you are at peace.