Moving Toward Healing

Self-love is the road toward healing. These prompts are an invitation to step inside yourself. Rupi Kaur

The road toward healing for me began in 1978 and for many others as religious freedom was given back to the Native American people in the USA. My freedom began when I started a recovery program for family and friends of alcoholics.

Before 1978 I was struggling with everything in my life. When a people's beliefs and customs, their way of life is forbidden it becomes a tough struggle.

For self-love, it is important to get to know the real you. The real me is a 70-year-old Native American woman. Life expectancy at one time for Native American people in this country was age 44.

I was a teenager and President Johnson made a statement about the life expectancy for Native Americans being 44.

It is close to 70, my age now. So any day! Not. I'm not planning to go anywhere. I have a lot of writing yet to do. And I have some more healing I need to get done and some help healing others.

Rupi Kaur's Self-Love Writing Prompts - Some cruel recurring thoughts I keep having about myself are _____________. I probably have them because ______________. I hope to challenge them by _________.

This I have to think about more. What popped into my head was that I hadn't done enough in my life and my field of work. I have more to do and I probably don't have enough time. Then I regret not taking better care of myself.

I drank too much, smoked too much, and took too many legal and illegal drugs in my early life which contributed to many of the problems I deal with today.

I probably have those thoughts as I always believe there is more I can and should do. I'm unsure what, other than write and find ways to get others on board. I remember my mother saying, "I will get my rest in heaven!" and others saying, "There is no rest for the wicked!"

Some days I believe those statements!

Guilt finds me when I am sitting back and not helping others with their recovery or planning training. Right now I am scoring applications for the opioid response request for proposals. I don't want to but here I am. I keep saying it's only five that I have to score.

And then I do everything else but score the application.

I am scheduled to do outreach with professionals concerning addiction and recovery. I will start tomorrow is what I think most often.

My challenge is that I will do the very best I can until I can no longer and I will be satisfied with that. I will not give up and I pray that I will have the health and strength needed to accomplish what I have set out to do.

Rupi Kaur's Self-Love Writing Prompts - What's one thing about you that your ancestors would be proud of?

That I am living until I die! That I don't give up. I attend a weekly ceremony most weeks. I have the seven grandfathers of love, truth, humility, honesty, bravery, respect, and wisdom. I have culture stories that I share when I can. Is that one thing? Kind of.

My ancestors are proud of me for the healing I am doing as I believe our healing is for more than us, but for our ancestors and our future generations.

Rupi Kaur's Self-Love Writing Prompts - If a therapist could wave a magic wand and solve any one of your problems, what would you ask them to fix?

Health concerns in general and more specifically cancer thoughts anytime anything comes up. One cancer therapist told me two things that I have as a reminder on a poster in my office:

1) What you resist persists.

2) Eat an elephant one bite at a time

Then he told me to keep my cancer clothing put away and only wear it to cancer appointments. That does help. All three things do. And it did feel like a magic wand as the appointment lasted for only 30 minutes.

Then my latest thing is that since I am 70 and planning to live for a while yet, I do not want to get dementia and not remember my loved ones. I did some research and have cut back on processed foods, containing fructose and I cut out sugar.

I listened to 10 days of Medical Doctors, researchers, and those specializing in addiction which included people believing in diets from vegan to carnivore and everyone in between agreed that we all should cut out processed foods and sugar from our diet.

These things lead to type three diabetes or dementia, in more recent studies.