19 Lessons I learned from 2019

These are lessons I learned along the year of 2019, which was a whirlwind of ups and downs and full of lessons.

1. Lean in and feel the feelings, its the only way to process and grow.
2. The darkness (both in the feeling and process) always leads to stronger and longer-lasting light.
3. When your mind tells you you've reached your limits, pause, listen, figure out if its fear of failure, and when it is; pause breathe and push forward.
4. Self-acceptance doesn't equal self-love, rather opens the door for that process to start.
5. Acceptance isn't complacency rather an important tool for change.
6. Family exists, their acceptance and love doesn't determine your worth.
7. Asking for help doesn't make people think less of you, rather it gives new options to connect.
8. Sharing your pain and fears in a healthy way doesn't hurt healthy people, rather it builds bonds.
9. When you build inner boundaries, the lack of them surrounding you doesn't impact you as much.
10. The voice in your head telling you not to try and that everyone is watching is lying.
11. Change and Growth are not linear, you will get to what feels like the same point, but with new tools and from a different view.
12. Changes are not always constant continuous lines, sometimes they are small dots, keep going dots make pictures too.
13. Cry. Let yourself be vulnerable and cry. Instead of leading yourself into an illusion of processing feelings by trying to block them out.
14. The lies society spins about psychiatric medications and hospitals are just that-lies. The help is worth breaking through those societal barriers
15. Respect the need for pauses both from mind or body, but let it just be a pause and not a full stop.
16. You are what you say you are, so stop saying you aren't anyone worth saving and sharing with the world what you are.
17. Keep trying to love yourself, in different ways at different times, never give up on yourself.
18. Asking for help to save your own life is hard but makes living so much easier.
19. It's really hard to save yourself, but not as hard as giving up on yourself.

On to 2020, I am adopting a new idea from someone I follow who gives each year a theme and a word so, wait for the next post to see what they are.

Musings from the Bench

Sitting me on the bench for the first basketball game of the season makes sense. I mean it's my first game in my return- if you can even call it a return, then maybe to basketball as a game but practically, its a start, for sure competing in a league. I'm not a good player, I have miles to go before, I believe I will really have any helpful impact on my team during a game. This means logically I know that it makes no sense to put me on the court if there are better players, that give our team a better chance to win. Internally I am still super competitive and "game-day" brings up the nerves and stress of competition. Which for me led to the two hours before we were meeting up for warm-up, I was dysfunctionally stressed and nervous. What came up in my mind was the feeling that I had no idea in my mind how to process these pre-game emotions and nerves. The only other competitive history I had was rowing competitions, and my mental preparation for these competitions consisted of intense (depending on who you asked too intense) internal focus, closing into myself. I spent time breaking down specific moments of the race and what my plan was for each time, and going over the repetitive movement in my mind, these tools helped calm my nerves, and as I liked to say "focused me into a coiled spring" ready to release all the power during the race. This structure to me felt non-transferable as basketball is a team sport and I'm on the court moving constantly in different ways, to me this felt like there was no repetition which I find hard. I reached out to a friend who competes in both these sports at the highest level and her response made a lot of sense "your skills, your shots and movements are more repetitive than it seems on the surface, you focus on your shot, and repetition of making the different shots, and your movements on court." Sitting on the bench after the warm-up I fell into the focus, of just the movements and shots of my teammates on the court, which made me super quiet and focused on the shots and plays on the court, almost taking me back to pre-race levels of focus, which for me personally felt good, I felt a comfort in that level of focus, which controlled my nerves. A teammate though reminded me about the difference, of sitting on the bench to pre-race. Yes, you are sitting on the bench, but you are still part of the team, which means cheering for your teammates and pumping up the energy. Yes learn from what is going on, but part of that is also being involved with everyone else. While my first thought was that she doesn't get what I'm doing, the reality was I could still focus pretty well on the specific skills on the court that I was trying to focus on as well as cheer super loud and make myself part of the team. In reality, while I still really wanted to get out on the court, I mean c'mon there is nothing like the wheels hitting the court and the ball bounce, that is one of my happy places, and yea I wanted a workout as well, but I learned plenty from sitting on the bench. Team isn't yea, I'll play with the team, but wanting to focus on your own skills and goals. Self-learning doesn't mean shutting out the team, and sometimes shouting loudly teaches more on the silent inside than you think. Here's to learning and growing on and off the bench.

Donut Deliberations

Its December, and in Israel that means the month of donuts, yes they come out earlier but this is when you are bombarded with them in social media and pretty much everywhere else. I mean literally everywhere. For years I would tell myself I have to find the perfect donut to try because they are full of calories and not healthy and I can't just eat one it has the be "worth it". What does "worth it" mean? What checklist does this donut have to fill? For years I would read reviews and look at photos of donuts and pass the bakeries searching for the perfect donut, then go home and binge on something else unhealthy that I didn't want to eat but I didn't give in to eating the "nonperfect" donut. During my time at the eating disorder clinic, my dietician worked on this idea of finding the "perfect" food worth breaking this illusion of a diet, rather just restriction my mind convinced myself I was on. The idea of just eating one of what your body craved, and it didn't have to be "perfect", yes there are "healthier" (Ill explain the quotation marks another time) foods, but if by not eating one fresh donut, you went on to binge on four or five boxes of cookies that you didn't want that night, you're just hurting yourself both mentally and physically. We spoke about this in June of 2018, which sometimes feels like eons ago and sometimes feels like yesterday. I dont remember if I ate a donut last year, but today, when walking past the bakery, the donuts looked pretty good and I was craving a sweet treat, so instead of listening to my mind which said: "no dont buy one donut, you have to find the perfect one, just buy a box of cookies, there are so many more in the box." I shut my mind off for a second, bought an imperfect looking donut, without letting myself analyze if it's my "favorite flavor" and looks like the best donut on the tray. Getting back to my place I pushed past the thoughts of you can't eat it, its not your favorite flavor (mind you I haven't had donuts in so long, the idea of a perfect flavor, is based on what flavors I like in other things and totally being used by my eating disorder mind to stop me), I poured myself a nice cup of coffee and sat, shut off my racing thoughts and enjoyed the imperfect donut. Because it was perfect at this moment, and I wanted one so I had one. I will work out later, but not to "get rid" of the donut, rather because its a habit I'm trying to build. I ate a delicious imperfect donut and I enjoyed it. ED today I won.

Personal North Star

I don't like letting the idea of something help lead my life. Part of that is my personality and part of that is the fact that being disabled throughout my life people close to me and not have always tried to help. Sometimes the help was needed but many of the times it was "Help". I'll write about that another time, but basically, it created an almost constant feeling me that I was given help, and expected to receive help. This along with being raised with a complicated description of what god is and how you are supposed to relate to it, made me hate the idea that someone else was in control of my life and I had to communicate with "God" for him to give me a good life. I hated the fact that the answer to anything going bad or good that it was god, with no responsibility for any of the people involved(this is not everyone's relationship with god, this is the feeling I got from my education both formal and informal at home.)
This complicated relationship led me to a long while of pulling away from any version of god and religion, I wanted to be in charge of my own life, including the choices and outcomes. I didn't want any connection with something or idea of some kind of god that removed my individual thoughts, actions, goals, and ideas. This lead to pulling back from anything of any sort of religion and focusing on myself, regardless of my enjoyment of reading some religious texts, I cut it all out.

These thoughts came to the surface when I started listening to the book Super Attractor by Gabrielle Bernstein, a main focus in her book is connecting to a higher power, labeled in any way that works for you to connect. To be able to let go in some areas of life while gaining a lot more in many ways. When I first heard this I balked, I said it sounds like everything else I've heard a hundred times and I want nothing of this god that takes all the responsibility out of my own actions in my life. The more I listened and relistened I understood more of the point that it is creating a personal channel with a higher power in the world to create balance and growth inside you, to give you direction in which to use your skills and abilities in the best way to change the world. Creating the balance of what you want to achieve and what the universe has for you as well.  After I realized this wouldn't be the worst thing in my life, maybe it could create a different balance and a release of some of the non-helpful responsibilities.  I have piled on many different "types" of responsibilities in order to keep control of my life around me, most of them don't work because at the end of the day, they make me stressed and anxious without any ability to change most of it.

The first thought I had when I came to this conclusion was "You have heard this 100x times, in many different forms of religious/ Chassidic words, written, spoken, discussed. Why does it take listening to a non-Jewish book to somehow connect and hit me in a place that created a desire to create a personal name and connection to something larger than me." It took a conversation with someone close to me to come to the conclusion of "whatever way of connection and an ability to process an idea is great, just because you have heard it in many different ways, you connected with this one, so run with it." Among Gabrielle's many different words she threw out for connection with a higher power was "North Star".This term spoke to me on a few levels, firstly I love nature and love the idea of finding the north star in the forest or by the ocean. Secondly, part of my very detailed and personal tattoo (I'll go into detail in another post on the meaning of the tattoo) is the form of a compass and the four directions. I love the idea of being able to look at my arm and be reminded amongst other things to connect and listen to the information coming through the personal connection to the universe and find the calm and direction from my channel with the universe. I am still in charge of my actions and goals, yet I am able to focus and listen to the inner connection between me and my north star.

Balancing Listening and Self Hate

I hate listening to my body. Living with cerebral palsy and chronic pain, you cant always listen to your body if you want to get things done, or just like have a daily routine. The problem is when  I get under the weather, I like to just power through until I get super sick and then I'm out for way too long . I got under the weather this past weekend when I stayed out too late listening to a friend, on top of just dysfunctional body issues. So for once, I listened to my body and slept more and actually took days off from working out. This created the feeling of failure, as I have been on this consist workout routine, with the point being to do the same workout for 100 days. Now my mind took this and decided that it had to be every day for 100 days, which was good for some points, it meant when I was on vacation in London I still made sure to do the same workout every day all weekend. The second side of this coin though was not wanting to give myself the time I need to heal when I'm just a little under the weather rather than waiting till I'm completely out cold. The problem is that the feelings of guilt, self-hate, a lack of consistency and inability to follow through on a routine, these thoughts rise up and overwhelm my mind entirely. This stronghold on my brain makes it harder as then it continues making excuses convincing me my body isn't well enough to work out for a variety of reasons, breaking through these reasons are harder than just getting up and working out. This can very easily derail the entire process of already working out the same workout for 26 days. Picking myself back up and controlling my mind while balancing my body is hard, but the feeling after the workout makes it worth it. Not the physical spasms and sweat, rather the feeling of owning my mind for that short time.

This Last Year in review

So I am super staunch in always convincing myself that the New Year is in December when we come upon the Jewish New Year and basically just running away from looking back over what was the past of any time. So now I'm combining my year in university with the Jewish New Year and looking back at all the things I've learned and experienced into a list cuz I like lists.

1. Finding and living my authentic self is the hardest journey with the most rewarding views, along the ever-changing path of life.
2. Finding your north star changes through the storms but is always there.
3. Identity evolves. The question is are you listening and willing to evolve or are you going to try and lock up the evolution.
4. Fine is my "cop-out" word for saying something is wrong. When that is the mantra running through my head I'm heading down the wrong path.
5. Feeling and processing pain is the only way to find an equilibrium of honesty in yourself.
6. The fear of emotional pain is worse than the emotional pain, as the fear never ends and the pain does.
7. Failure is rather healing, as hitting rock bottom removes the fear of hitting rock bottom.
8. The balancing act is impossible if you give yourself no place to drop a ball you're juggling, after learning that all the balls cycle through you can focus on the ones you are holding at that time.
9. Society's perception of health is engrained deeper than you think, and your own family pressures don't help. The stigma of Mental hospitals and wards depicted in society's movies and such, makes it harder to believe and trust that they are a place of healing, when in fact they are just another ward, like the neurological ward.
10. Psychiatric medication isn't the devil, rather it gives you chemicals you are lacking in your brain that help you live your best self.
11. The shame pushed on you by others and society stems from fear, breaking that cycle within yourself does not mean the rest of the world has moved on with you.
12. Secrets rot, no matter how well you think you have packaged them away in the recesses of your brain are still there and only once you process and heal can you move forward.
13. A healthy amount of pressure creates diamonds of success after the pressure cleans off failures and misconceptions.
14. Tempering myself to the extent of losing my inner compass kills me, and doesn't help me fit in with those around me.
15. Learning to put blinders on the idea of comparison to other people's perceived success, or even their own success leaves you way more energy to focus on your own path. 
16. The more you learn to give yourself patience, gives you more patience to build relationships with others.
17. When driven by fear you end of in scarier places.
18. The people looking for perfection are the ones not moving forward.
19. The people who don't understand your honesty are usually afraid of not living their own.
20. You can have many different facets at any time and they are all valid.

Here is to a new year filled with growth, happiness, and reaching new goals

The Fear of Always Being Broken

My first thought for the title of this post was "the fear of never getting back to being healthy". The major problem with this title that I found for me was that I have this illusion of healthy that I want to get back to. For me its the year 2015 I was living in Florida training for the Paralympics in rowing, that includes training twice a day most days and then even managing two semesters in community college. Now my mind like many minds likes to gloss over the weekends I spent curled up in my closet in this silent stunned dysfunction, freaking out from thunder sending my mind on loops about dying from some PTS after an incident in the summer war (that's a story for another time). While I was having fewer struggles with my binge eating disorders (partially because I wasn't fully aware of the depth of the issue) there were totally Friday binges and then Saturday and Sunday fasts. The problem that is created with cracking holes in my facade of the perfect year, is the feeling that comes from that, the feeling of having never actually been ok. This realization of never actually being ok before leads my mind down the rabbit hole of anxiety, always being broken, never being whole within myself. This leads to intense fear about a personal inability to be whole within me. It does release the idea of getting back to myself, which in some ways creates the opportunity to be better every single day, yet creates a larger fear of the unknown, and feeling like I have no idea what tools I need to get to this place of being not broken. In a way, this creates the necessity of being ok with being in a broken state while still working to no longer being in this state, which is rather hard to achieve. I'm not sure the fear will ever disappear, and I'm not sure it would be healthy for it to completely disappear,hopefully, I will at least learn better tools in which to function in the fear.

Self Made Thought Blocks

My mind creates its own thought blocks. It puts up blocks against passions, dreams, an ability to feel and process what is going on. I only realized this when I was on three hours of sleep and was able to just speak my mind to my psychologist and dietician without my anxious mind stopping me from saying what I actually felt and thought. This feeling scared me as I realized how much my mind is able to hide from me during my day to day when I am trying to function on more than three hours of sleep. I'm glad I figured out that I am hiding from myself, although it sucks to know I can do that to myself, hiding dreams, issues, and thoughts. Writing this I feel crazy saying that I don't know all the thoughts running through my head, but knowing how messy and confusing my mind is, makes it a bit less upsetting. Understanding my creation of blocks can give me the opportunity to try to figure out what the blocks are being put up in front of, and how to start moving them individually. Just thinking about it as I am writing now in the middle of the night, one of the main blocks that has been coming up for me lately is blocking any idea of dreaming about I want to do in my life, instead of dreaming big which I used to do. I have somehow blocked my dreams and ability to think about new ones. Part of that is my large fear of failure, leading from an unhealthy obsession with perfection (that I'll leave for another blog post). Thought blocks come partially from my anxiety, that isn't a good reason to leave them be. Time to sit inside my mind and make some order.

Falling feelings like a Failing

I hate falling. Not mentally falling, but physically crashing to the ground. I hate when my legs collapse without letting my brain know beforehand so I can prepare and not try to stand up and walk at that exact moment. Yes, I have the privilege of being able to stand up and walk short distances and I know that it is a privilege that not everyone has. That being said my disability and functional sometimes legs don't usually give me a warning when they like to take a break while on duty. The issue becomes that my first thought and feeling when I fall is a failure which leads to an extreme feeling of anger at myself. The anger is automatic, I feel it before I allow myself to feel the physical pain of hurting myself during the fall. I hate the feeling that is underlying the anger, the lack of control that rears its ugly head every time my body does something without me telling it to, or giving me a signal before. It is one of my biggest struggles with my disability, the lack of stability in my body,but more importantly the lack of me having any preemptive knowledge of how my body is going to react to trying to get out of chair, standing up or bending down to pick things up, or grasping a glass to drink,amongst many of the daily tasks. The lack of control in the specific moment of the fall is large but it isn't necessarily the worst thing to happen.  The problem is the shame and anger combine into an almost lethal amount of self-hate, and the desire to be in control of the pain dished out to my body. This usually leads to a confrontation between me and the person asking if I need help,as I am not angry at them,rather my body,but in that moment I do not have the emotional capacity to explain that to the person trying to help me. Figuring this out is helpful for me but I have yet to be able to take this understanding and turn it into practice when I fall.

Fresh Showers of Tears

Tears. I have fought myself for years about tears and shedding them. I always felt like they showed too much emotion and weakness to myself and others. The lack of letting myself cry, even when I started to tear up, I would brush them away and force my emotions back inside my body. The evolution of letting the tears fall came super slowly, from realizing that pushing the tears back inside made the wave of emotions I didn't understand stronger. Letting the tears fall is still hard doesn't matter if I'm in a safe space with someone or on my own I still feel the shame of letting my pain and 'weakness' show. Sometimes it's even worse on my own, as the voices in my head telling me I don't have a good reason to cry and trying to remove me from feeling the pain and being in the moment. The thing is I've felt better after every time I've cried, regardless if my reality has changed or not the tears were a shower of calm. Personally, I find the best is crying in the shower with music on, it somehow has the strongest release of emotion. Tears are hard, I think I learned growing up in a lot of physical pain that no one could take away that tears scared others around me, so I stopped crying and put up a brave face. The problem was I didn't learn a good way to deal with the pain so it turned into a myriad of ways of self-harm. Self-harm doesn't always look the same, my self-harm journey has many twists and turns and I will write about it someday, but for now cry when you are in pain, and when someone around you cries,sit and allow them a safe space to let the self shower of tears fall.

Hating the Fall after the Rise

The Fall is always the same. The problem is the Rise looks different, today it was studying for five hours straight on an empty stomach. A few days ago it was sleeping during the day after not sleeping at night. Sometimes its spending time with family, sometimes it's being alone for a weekend thinking I'm doing self-care. The fall used to be the worst thing that could happen to me as I never believed I'd get to another Rise, which sent me into a deeper depressive cycle then what the down needed to be. Now I understand the cycle a bit, it doesn't necessarily make it easy to go through, but when I get to a certain place, I understand where I am and am more easily able to just be in that space in the cycle of the rise and fall. The fall is sometimes where my most creative moments happen, but it's also where some of my most self-loathing thoughts emerge from. The balancing game is to figure out how long can you allow yourself to fall down the never-ending black-hole, while still managing to see the sparkling diamonds of the high. The rise wouldn't come without the fall.  It is learning to love each place, the dark and wet creative place, and the warmth of the sparkling high and the time it takes to reach both places, and the cycle, knowing you will be back in both places again.

Self Inflicted Punishment

Self-inflicted punishment doesn't always look like punishment to the outsider. When I go to the gym on an empty stomach to create that punishing feeling to my body that I crave unhealthily, you the outsider just think I'm doing a good thing for my body by going to the gym. Most of the times going to the gym isn't used as a punishment, but every good thing can be used at different times as twisted mental punishment on my body. One of the many problems with self-inflicted punishment is that because it is your own mind creating the punishments they dont always flag as punishments which makes it hard to stop the punishment. It takes a lot of self-understanding to sit and evaluate the thought processes that your conscious mind is somewhat hidden from, by your unconscious. That process can only happen once you have flagged the thought and then have the mental capacity to breakdown and process the thought and accompanying emotions. Its a hard process as the unhealthy voice that is creating the thoughts tries to keep them unconscious to keep you doing the actions it wants you to do. Fighting the sick voice takes on many different angles as different realities trigger different emotions and self-inflicted punishments. Sometimes acknowledging the self-infliction of pain is the best you can do at that time with that issue when that is the case for me I have learned to try and do a different action of self-care that is not connected to the issue that I am fighting myself on. Self-inflicted punishment is basically a constant in my life that looks different almost every moment of the day, and I hope the more I am aware the more I can replace the unhealthy punishments with new tools of self-love that I learn.

Locking up Life's Palettes

 I lock up my creativity, as the power of self-expression scares me. The first step is always, the excuse of not having time. There are all always things to be done, which makes running away from yourself easier. It's a weird feeling, being afraid to sit alone with myself and just pen and paper. Sometimes it feels like your hand connects to a deep part of your mind writing out your inner conflicts, and feelings you haven't allowed yourself to feel. The first response to this phenomenon is to lock away my soul and emotions. Allowing the lies of being ok to filter through and overtake any questioning change.  The problem with continuously locking away my life source is that you forget that the life source exists while wondering why you're dying inside.
Emotions are the color to the black and white sketch of life.  Many times colors clash when they meet, and at the moment it looks like a mess. But as time passes and the colors blend into a unique painting that only you created, only exist because you felt the colors rather than falling into the cycle of grey. Canvases get switched at each major event in life, paints of emotions you know continue with you. There, of course, is the option to learn and create new colors. They will then always be in your toolbox for future canvases of new realities. The blend of colors is controlled by your control of balance. The colors of emotions hit the page in jarring jabs and only time and healing create blends of beauty. Fighting the color just muddles your mind into a grey fog, which only is released by immense color.

Not living for today.....Living for the next five years

           During my stay in the psychiatric ward getting out of my suicidal sand bar, the mantra that was instilled was just live today. Find a way to get through the day, coloring, listening to music, watching random videos; just make it through a day without succumbing to my unhealthy thoughts. That mantra is important and powerful when you don't want to see the next sunrise. The mantra became routine and for two months in a closed ward that's good. There were sparks of life for the next month or next semester that started showing up once I was mostly balanced on my medication. They were the next benchmarks achieved and they were the right step for the time.
         But there is an issue with just planning for the next month and the next semester,you get bogged down in the small details that at the end of the day have no long term impact on your plan. The plan that you need to have to keep you going on that daily path of functionality. There is only so much power in getting through today for tommorow,once you belive in the tommorow again. Now I need to sit down and reevealutate my dreams and build a loose plan to get to my dreams. Not to over plan-that is a problem I create when I plan out the smallest details and leave no room for life to flow beyond what I think can happen. I need to plan so I feel like I have goals and dreams I'm trying to achieve without creating too much of a pressurized reality that I collapse. It is far from easy but I think it will help me find deeper inner happiness that will be long-lasting. I will continue living for today,while also living for the next five,ten and fifteen years.

Loathing Of Self

    Unacceptance of self leads to self-loathing. I know from personal experience, lots of it, especially with my body. My body's limitations and the reality of ability constantly change. The bigger problem is that my mind takes longer to accept the lack of ability-if it accepts my reality at all.
     The spiral of self-loathing always starts with self-anger and ends up in the dead end of self-loathing. The walls are lined with tools of self-hate each calling out words that already reverberate through my mind, blocking any thoughts of self-acceptance to come through. The refusal to accept myself in my given situation leads me down a path of self-elimination, in punishment for lack of consistent ability.
     The failure to communicate my lack of ability makes it even worse, as I wake up with expectations of functionality, not even super high ones, just the ability to move somewhat functionally and not in constant pain. Those are all illusions my body seems to enjoy letting my brain tell me every morning. This breeds a delightful amount of self-doubt which digs its way onto the route of self-loathing, creating a maze that has no end, lined with tools for self-harm. Self-harm is a twisted tool which wears a mask of self-care lined on the illusion of a road to self-love.

Deserter of Defects

Dear Defect Deserter,
That uncomfortable feeling you're running from?  The one you feel when looking at the minister, who in your mind is being exposed by the veil, unearthing imperfections, rather than keeping the illusion of perfection you have instilled upon the man of faith. The openness in which the minister shares what you assume to be his imperfections scares and shakes your sense of stability in your lair of lies. 
Your lair of lies has been carefully crafted, leaving you space to judge and deem others full of imperfections, without ever casting a glance at your own defects. The veil couldn't possibly be a proper mirror, reflecting your own shortcomings. The black dye must be seeping from its wearer, your ability to see the black must mean you can help the wearer. It couldn't possibly be that your ability to see the black veil means that you are wearing one of your own, that everyone else can see, yet you refuse to acknowledge. 
Deserting your path of growth and denying imperfections will lead you on a lonely icy path of solitude. When reality finally cracks the thin ice, no one will be around to save you from yourself.

Dreams and Disenchantment

The same mind-my mind in the span of 15 minutes,sparks a new idea plays out the perfect options as if the world was aligned and then disproves it all. Turning the spark ignited fury of flames into smoking travesty of embers.
Self deprecating demons leave half dead dreams on every doorstep to a new dream,reminding me of self failures, everlasting in my mind. Each half dead dream telling me I should try again while the demons just say "look at the mess you leave in your wake". Self worth has been banished from afar it tries to stoke the coals of dreams. Shiny dreams spark wars with the self destructive demons, if they even survive the battle scars to great to keep fighting.
The fight is hard to win when most of the time you don't believe your existence is worth fighting for.

10 lessons I learned while coloring

10 lessons I learned while coloring 

1. Boundaries are focusing, relaxing, and help create beauty.

2. Repetition of patterns opens the door to creativity in my mind.

3. A lack of perfection creates beauty 

4. Clashing colors and realities work well together.

5. Move slowly, creativity evolves, don't rush it.

6. Not all pieces of the pattern can be found and put together at once.

7. Different mediums (crayons/pencils) while they look similar in the final product; process different emotions in use.

8. Space doesn't always need to be filled.

9. Choosing colors, while it can be overwhelming, is a great habit builder,and a transferable life skill.

10. Balancing the ability to have many thoughts, good and bad, while still managing to relax into the colors and lines.