Since I've been on the NDIS, my life has been immeasurably different. I don't even know how I survived all those years before without it. It's just mostly about my support workers. And if you think they are not all that good, then you haven't discarded the bad ones enough. It gave me a space to breathe again. It motivated me to do all the little things everyday that I never could accomplish before on my own.
I'm grateful everyday for support, and I always say why that particular day, and in 18 months I haven't repeated myself when it comes to exactly what I'm grateful for. Lately it's been about feeling safe and at ease. Sometimes it's about feeling understood. Sometimes it's about a shared common experience, or cultural identity. Somedays it's being an outsider, and being allowed to entertain notions of philosophy and metaphysics that are fringe at best. Sometimes, it's just the body double to go outside the house, and sometimes it's the sounding wall for a new poem.
It's catered to me, and I have curated my experience based on my values of empathy, intellectual honesty, creativity, spirituality and cooperation. I'm lucky to have them, and sometimes they let slip that they feel lucky to get the opportunity to support me too. What a refreshing happenstance it must be to enjoy your paid profession, and feel valued and loved (in a purely plutonic and communal way). I definitely feel the love that they bring to their workplace. But the majority of the love experienced, is the one that I have grown for myself.
There are some mornings, I would walk to the wetlands, and there would be no-one else around before first light, and I would be talking to myself, and I'd exclaim out loud that the only reason I believed the things I did, was because I f'ing hated myself. And then I'd cry. You have to have lots of things before you have self love. You have to have self-respect, and any respect comes with honest insight and true reflection, so these sorts of conversations you hold with yourself are paramount to get to know yourself. You have to lack any doubt to love yourself, and being confident isn't something you just switch on. It's built over time, reinforced, resurfaced, filtered, vented, decorated and clad with inner beauty. You have to be free from fear and anger, and that requires adopting a strategy to relinquish painful trauma. I don't particularly like the language used in most of the examples out there, and I have coined the method of drinking it.
I look at the menu, to see which feelings I don't like. I sniff out the suffering sensation in my body and give it a fancy name. Then I just drink it. I swim in it if it's more than a bucketful. Then I ruminate it, bring it up, and contemplate from where it's fundamental cause stemmed, letting my internal filtration organs deal with the toxic nature of the spiritual poison, and lastly I urinate that drink out like the wasteful energy it is, relaxing and breathing the new cleansed wholesome warmth and groundedness that comes from healthy lifestyle habits.
When you love yourself, you admire, are inspired by, care for, enjoy the company of, miss time spent with, congratulate, motivate, cooperate and communicate yourself.
When you love yourself, you aren't embarrassed to show love to someone you feel safe with. You have surety that it won't be rejected, or shamed, and they usually just say "thanks". That's one thing my sister has taught me, when you are stuck for ideas in a conversation, find the thank you. She has also surrounded herself with good people, with their good suggestions, and good energy, and really good boundaries.
So if you've read this far, thanks. You're a lovely person. You have my gratitude and your choice of blessing.
🤗
deshift
