lessons on self love

Kirstin is such a gift to our Athena community.  She led us in meditation, and encouraged us to take some "you" time.  When was the last time you actually forced yourself to sit in silence?  When did you take a minute for you, honestly?  Where you sat down. You cleared your mind.  You allowed thoughts to come up and then moved past them. Kirstin asked us these questions during reflection time, and then she shared a reading that I am still carrying in my heart.  I have found myself at stop lights, repeating lines, finding new peace with them each time.
I have never struggled too much with not loving myself, physically.  I am lucky.  Of course I have had times where I have wished for a flat stomach or a rounder bottom.  But I always have struggled more with trying to "tame" my personality.  Growing up in a small town, wasn't easy for an extrovert transplant. When I moved to Omaha, and found that my unique voice could be loved, not bottled.  I found that I could be loud and silly and embraced.  I realized my impact on the world.  That with every conversation, starts a spark; in your brain. In your heart. I carry interactions with strangers, with friends, with my husband close, I choose to grow from them.  I choose to be better because of them. Not just moments of love, happiness or passion.  But dark moments, for those I have found also define you. I won't be held back from my past.  I will acknowledge and accept my skeletons and I will move forward.  I will be better.  I will be braver. I will say "I'm sorry"  I will love my reflection in the mirror. in my heart.  I will know my voice deserves to be heard.

Here is the reading Kirstin shared with us before our 10 minutes meditation.  
Please read. Please enjoy.

You Shaped Hole

Sometimes the world feels inhospitable.
You feel all the ways that you and it don’t fit.
You see what’s missing, how it all could be different.

You feel as if you weren’t meant for the world, or the world wasn’t meant for you.

As if the world is “the way it is” and your discomfort with it a problem.

So you get timid. You get quiet about what you see.

But what if this? What if you are meant
to feel the world is inhospitable, unfriendly, off-track
in just the particular ways that you do?

The world has a you-shaped hole in it.
It is missing what you see.
It lacks what you know.

And so you were called into being.
To see the gap, to feel the pain of it, and to fill it.

Filling it is speaking what is missing.
Filling it is stepping into the center of the crowd, into a clearing, and saying, here, my friends, is the future.
Filling it is being what is missing, becoming it.

You don’t have to do it all, but you do have to speak it.
You have to tell your slice of the truth.
You do have to walk toward it with your choices, with your own being.

Then allies and energies will come to you like fireflies swirling around a light.

The roughness of the world, the off-track-ness, the folly that you see,
these are the most precious gifts you will receive in this lifetime.

They are not here to distance you from the world, but to guide you
into your contribution to it.

The world was made with a you-shaped hole in it.
In that way you are important.
In that way you are here to make the world.
In that way you are called.

- Tara Sophia Mohr