Check Out Survivor Love Letter Tumbler: It's Incredibly Passionate, Consoling, and Inspiring!

On Twitter, I came across a cool website I want to share with you.  It's filled with beautiful love letters to survivors from survivors.  There's probably a better way to do this, but I'm not sure how, so here's the link to the website.   You have to check out the beautiful letters on Survivor Love Letter Tumbler's website.  They're incredibly passionate, consoling, and inspiring!

Keep Resurrecting Your Spirit!

In my blog titled, “Resurrecting Your Spirit,” I encouraged you to focus more on your self-care, and I’d like to do that again today.  Like I said before I don’t understand why we routinely neglect our spiritual health because it’s the key to our wellness.  Our spirit is our true self.  Also known as our unconscious, it’s essential to our recovery. 

Psychologists and therapists guide us through our unconscious as we work on healing our lives.  However, I believe they only scratch the surface since they don’t delve into our spirit.  They’re not spiritual advisors, so they can only take us so far.  That’s why we need to be proactive.

If you’ve started working more on your self-care, please step back and take a look at the goals you've accomplished and those you have not.  I encourage you to set new goals and mark your calendar 30 days from now and each time you set new goals to re-evaluate how you're doing.  

Pat yourself on the back about the goals you've accomplished.  For the times you fell short, don't beat yourself up about it, just figure out how you can do better.  Keep doing it and doing more of it.  Keep resurrecting your spirit!

How to Practice Self-care and Still Be There for Others

Years ago, one of my counselors at the YWCA told me that survivors of childhood sexual assault usually have difficulties setting boundaries.  She said we’re like a house with all of the windows wide open or all of the windows closed and locked down.   There’s no in between because we were groomed (or I like to say brainwashed) as a child.  The child predators carefully talked to us as they went a little bit farther physically each time.  This made us feel as if it was consensual and therefore our fault. 

Now we know by definition of the law that a child cannot consent to sex, so children are not to blame and don’t have anything to be ashamed about because they were manipulated.  All of the blame and shame belongs to the criminal who assaulted them. 

I still have problems setting boundaries because I tend to put other people’s needs ahead of mine.  Reminding myself to think about what I want first, helps me not lose track of my wishes.  Then, I work on figuring out how I can help the other person while still practicing self-care.  It’s not easy when you don't have a lot of extra time like most of us don't these days, but it works for me most of the time.