Positive thinking

This morning I curled up on the couch with Kaylee, our new mini-dauchsund, and watched the Oprah I had taped yesterday. I often do this so I can zip through the commercials, I just don’t have the patience to sit through them. In bygone days I would jump up at the commercial break to rotate the laundry, finish off the dishes or just pick up all the small things that had accumulated throughout the day creating little messes here and there; a tea cup, a screwdriver, a pile of folded laundry – how lazy I have become!

The show was a follow up to The Secret. For those of you living in a closet this past year, this was a book extolling the virtues of positive thinking, the law of attraction, and how we create our lives through our thoughts and feelings. In this show we were shown three more women who have also made a positive impact on others by sharing these same lessons; Louise Hay, Martha Beck and Cheryl Richardson. It was a wonderfully positive affirmation of how we can heal ourselves, but again with the reminder that looking forward can only do so much if you are still hanging on to baggage that is dragging you down. And it’s all about the forgiveness, the sticking point in my life. It’s where I berate myself for not having done a better job as Joey’s mother, for not protecting him, for not having set him a better example, for spanking him as a child (what the hell was I thinking?) and for divorcing his father. I have learned that I can’t play the ‘what if’ game, but I can’t seem to forgive myself for the rest, and even thinking and typing this right now is just drawing more negative energy into my life. I hate knowing that, and I do realize how ridiculous it is for me to harbor grudges against myself. But I realized watching the show how much I had given up even trying lately. I had been doing gratuity exercises upon waking each day, and taking the time to meditate or at least practice breathing exercises while repeating positive affirmations. In looking back the decline started right after Thanksgiving. I was focusing my energy on eating right, and had begun writing which is great, but I had made my world so small and I was focused so tightly on those things getting me through the holidays I sort of forgot and began to back slide into negative thoughts. So now that I feel I have the eating sort of figured out, and I am writing daily by habit, it’s time to start focusing on the positive. I have written (ok, whined and moaned) about how hard everything is, but have I written about how blessed I am? Family who love me through thick and thin, a snug warm house and food on the table, health insurance, a new puppy, and a network of friends I have met online through my W8Book Page in our common quest for weight loss.

The women on Oprah all spoke about release in one way or another, and this is what I am going to focus on so it expands, releasing myself from the guilt I feel. Maybe if I think about it this way I can ease my way into forgiving myself. Because this is what I shy away from, some part of me yelling “Traitor!” when I start thinking about moving forward, finding joy in life, and using positive thinking to change everything for the better. So, using the Psychocybernetics I studied in high school I will start imagining and visualizing forgiving myself, I will find ways to see the release happening in physical form to create a path for the emotional release; birds come to mind, taking flight and physically disconnecting from a branch, dogs tugging rope, one of them running away the victor, a kite breaking free from it’s string as the wind tugs it ever higher into the sky. I can at least do that much.

In thinking about it I realize I have been laying the groundwork for recovery. First it was people, connecting with them online, even meeting a couple of wonderful women in person, their understanding and support gems in my pocket. Really taking the time to research and trying to figure out what to eat, knowing that a healthy body was crucial for a healthy mind, I think I am on the right track there now thanks to a beautiful young woman in my life. And now recently welcoming music back into my life (as I write this Stevie Nicks is singing Sara and I even join her once in a while. “When you build your house, then call, me home.”) I feel like that is what I am doing now, building a house, a life, where I can feel at home, and I needed this reminder to think positive.