Things It Would Help to Remember

(on days like today, when everything seems to be a big broken mess).

1. patience is truly a virtue--probably the most important of them all
2. laying in the grass (even the wet grass) looking up at the sky and listening to the birds is the number one gift i can give to my mental health
3. i'm really really loved
4. slowing down, cancelling appointments, and calling in sick won't kill me--or my mojo
5. regular showers and 8 hours of sleep a night are #2 in the mental health gift department
6. and fresh fruit and water, #3
7. words are far less healing than touch and presence
8. i don't have to hold everything together for everyone, all the time
9. i can ask to be held
10. i can be angry and give myself space
11. it's important to turn off my computer and phone if I'm serious about taking a nap
12. everything will fall apart, with or without my efforts to save things
13. when things fall apart (that's the name of an incredible pema chodron book, btw), there is grief, and when there is grief, there is room for unparalleled healing
14. surrender is everywhere and everything eventually surrenders; like it, or not
15. you don't have to like it
16. you can resist whatever you want to resist for as long as you want to resist it
17. but resistance isn't control--nothing is. and there's nothing we can do about that
18. love is the weirdest, most incomprehensible and mysterious thing on earth
19. and the boxes we put it within insult the holiness of the thing itself
20. i really don't know what i'm talking about most of the time
21. and i really shouldn't try to
22. and i should still write/say/ponder/hold onto whatever makes me feel sane
23. as should you
24. and if your sanity and my sanity don't cordially overlap, that's okay--i still respect you
25. because we're all just trying to make sense of this life, this world, this unbelievable chance
26. that's all too big to measure
27. gratitude is underrated
28. individualism is overrated
29. togetherness is the hardest, deepest calling us humans have before us
30. i go for the gold.
31. apparently, life carries on, without our doing anything.
32. and heartache, dispair, loneliness and suffering are an unfortunately common human experience.

may you let yourself rattle off whatever sweet sanities you need to remember, knowing that we're all a little more than forgetful, and doing our best to re-member the broken pieces.
love,rach