Connection : A Home Inside Myself

I am making a home inside myself. A shelter
of kindness where everything
is forgiven, everything allowed—a quiet patch
of sunlight to stretch out without hurry,
where all that has been banished
and buried is welcomed, spoken, listened to—released.

– Julia Fehrenbacher

My theme for September has been Connection. It seemed such a natural follow from last month’s theme of Gentle.

Here’s an extract from my post This, Here that I wrote on Substack last month:

Something came up earlier this month that made me realize I still need to heal. When I thought about it later, I realized an old wound was opened all over again. It my deep need to be liked and valued by others. My investment in people is disproportionate to what I receive. Then I tell myself, “It’s okay. Their need is greater than mine. I’ll take the high road.” Reflecting in my journal, I acknowledged that this was not the right approach. I was treating myself unfairly. To practice gentleness and self-compassion, I need to stop giving more than I get back (excluding charitable acts). I’m starting to invest a lot more in myself for now. It’s an investment worth making.

It seemed appropriate that I connected with a group of writers led by Julia Ferenbacher into reflecting on some of her poems. The quoted text is from her poem The Most Important Thing and as I reflected on it, here’s what I wrote.

A Home Inside Myself

I'm making a home inside myself - 
a place of comfort and joy. 

A space for gratitude and celebration. 
A home where authenticity and kindness rule. 

I will spend time nurturing myself. 
Opening myself to healing - 
allowing honesty  and grace 
to replace guilt and shame. 

A space to express my needs. 
To acknowledge my humanness.
To spend time nourishing and creating. 

Accepting my past, 
embracing my present
and being hopeful about the future. 

A home filled Grace - 
where I acknowledge far I have come 
and how I continue to be held. 

I'm making a home inside myself
To which I'm gently walking
Into my 'ownness'.

Somethings I’m Doing To Strengthen This Connection

• Keeping to myself a lot more. Barring José (and Lucky) I’m not interacting too much this month.
• Journaling regularly.
• Meditating – I found some great meditations/ reflections on Insight Timer – and I found the 7 Day Connection Challenge with Alex Elle particularly helpful. I will share some of my learnings from it in my next post.
• Spending time in doing healing exercises from Alex Elle’s How We Heal
• Catching up with my writing with exercises from Beth Kempton’s Soul Circle and Julia Ferenbacher’s Poetry & Ponderings
• I’ve not been blogging, reading posts or commenting – and I hope to catch up this week.
• Resting more.
• Reading for pleasure.

Thank you for reading this. I hope your September is going well. Until my next post (which might be sooner than you think!), take good care.