YOU ARE ALLOWED TO BE GENTLE WITH YOURSELF
You are stronger than you think, but you don’t have to be the strong one all the time. You are allowed to be gentle with yourself as you move through this life. You are allowed to be gentle and seek out moments of peace and rest even when you don’t feel like you deserve it. Being strong is just one part of you, and there are so many other parts of you worth getting to know.
One way to get to know those other parts of yourself is to pay attention to who you are when you are not working. Who do you become when no one is asking anything of you?
It may take time to get to know this part of yourself but maybe it’s worth it. Maybe you don’t always have to feel strong or resilient to be worthy of love.
So yes, you may be stronger than you think, but you are also more worthy of tenderness and love than you may think, too. You also have a bigger imagination than you may think…an imagination that is fully equipped with the capacity of imagining new ways of being in the world.
At times you may feel that your main role in life is to keep up with the program and make sure everyone one else gets what they need. But it’s never too late to start thinking about your life in a different way. It’s never too late to wake up on this very day and say: “I am so much more than where I have been. And I am also more than my endurance and my strength. I am free to welcome gentleness and tenderness in my life…even on days like this.”
I hope you are able to recognize this way of welcoming both strength and gentleness in your life as a part of embracing who you are. I hope you can honor the ways you have learned to be strong and also how you have learned to be gentle, too.
Repeat these words to yourself or write them in your journal, in your own words:
Today I am making the conscious choice
to welcome both strength and tenderness into my life
I am recognizing that softness does not make me weak
This is a part of being a human being.
I am welcoming practices in my life
that encourage me to slow down and be in the moment.
I am welcoming moments of peace by simply welcoming
moments to breathe
and rest
in the grace
that finds me in that place
Word of the Day: Tenderness (n): gentleness and kindness (Oxford Languages)
Affirmation: Today I am making the conscious choice to welcome both strength and tenderness into my life.
Journal: What practices in your life encourage you to slow down and be in the moment?
More in this week's series called "Rooted And Grounded, Right Here", only with a subscription in the Storyteller App.
Sincerely,
Morgan Harper Nichols
@thestorytellerco
@morganharpernichols
