![\"She](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/melacey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/mel-pp\/shelives.jpg?resize=323%2C600\" "\\"She")
Every once in awhile I find myself backtracking to a perspective that did not help me. Self-doubt has never been a useful coping mechanism, but has been a typical response that has dropped me to my knees. I surrounded myself with thoughts of not being good enough. I would get upset that I was born to face a world that could see me with all my failings. My successes or triumphs were viewed by others as either as luck or as a result of something that I should be ashamed of, for I must have done something wrong to enable me to have any success. For example, by doing well in a school course, I must have neglected a necessary chore. I spent a lot of time digging down to my core, challenging my beliefs; I was determined to be as honest to myself, as I could be. Did I have self-serving motives? Were my actions to help myself causing undue harm to anyone? I came to realize, in my case, any self-deprecation that I had was mostly me directing uncaring and questionable thoughts about myself to myself, a negative self-talk. I would have to teach myself to be as kind to me as I would be to another person. My goal should be true, self care: “If you don’t put yourself first on your list of people to care for, then, you are not first on anyone’s list.” I didn’t teach myself this as an act of arrogance, or as an effort to be perceived better than anyone else, for I have been described that way by people who pretended they knew me without putting in the time and effort to truly find out who I was.<\/p>\n
I worked hard to be cruelly honest to myself and by doing so I became shocked with the realization that I was developing into a lovingly authentic person, proud of who they were.<\/p>\n
“She Lives” is a reminder of that work that I did particularly in those moments, days, or even weeks when I find myself among too-quick-to-judge questioners who feel that one of their jobs is to put me in my place. As a former people-pleaser (one who put everyone else higher up on their list of people to care for), I would slip into being harshly self-abusive and cruel to the one person who really was the person who should get “me”: Me. My relationship to myself is one of the most important relationships that I have; “She Lives” reminds me of that. “Be kinder; be loving; I know you are doing the very best you can. You deserve love and care as much as the next person.”<\/p>\n