Robin, a very dear friend of mine, sent me this a long time ago. It had hit home with her, and when she shared it with me, it hit home big time! I have lost touch with Robin. She left the area to start her adventure into the world of a music career - not knowing where she was going, no definite destination in mind, a beautiful free bird taking flight. I miss her. She touched my life in many ways - mostly with her openness and honesty - and the gift of making me look at myself differently. She left me this, and now I share it with you as she did me.
Robin Easton, if you are reading this, please e-mail me! I would love to know how you are doing, and I wish you nothing but the best my friend! ~smile~
Why are we so hard on ourselves and so much easier on others? Did somebody say something once that stuck in our brains and won't go away? Did we mispronouce something in French, did we trip in front of some guy, did we make some huge mistake that we've never gotten over?
What haunts our fine bodies and our fine hearts and makes our heads spin with an image of ourselves we can't accept? We tell our friends not to be so hard on themselves and we tell our loved ones not to be so hard on themselves and we tell ourselves we're just not being hard enough.
We are such funny women sometimes. We blame ourselves when blame does not apply (terrible word, that blame). We feel guilty about what we should have done better (terrible word, that should). We are harder on ourselves, harder than we would be on anybody else, anybody. Complete strangers! Big dogs! People we don't even like!
And the things we expect are so darn weird, things our mothers once said we should be able to do or our fathers wanted us to achieve or our great Aunt Charlotte wanted us to try and they didn't know that their words would stick like glue to our hearts with a list of expectations wrapped around it. Look: all these requests and all these demands and all these great expectations get old, real old, and only you know when to yell uncle.
Because for one moment of your life you feel like feeling . . perfect. You feel like dashing into those hills or those open roads or right into the air itself and that's just what you might do so HA! You feel like that rusty old image you carry is slipping away, right over the edge of a mirror and out of view. You feel like moving and if you trip - you trip, and if you fall - you will get up. And the air feels like it will carry you and push you and it's like nothing you feared it would be. And, of course, everything you expected it would.
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