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Why did I decide to do this 30-day writing/podcasting challenge? I don’t completely and clearly remember…and it’s only day 5. What I do recall is that I was looking for another challenge to meet Andrew Huberman’s criteria for optimizing growth and not calcifying by thinking we have “arrived” at something that is permanent in a world of impermanence. The criteria: 1) the challenge has to be something that involves resistance and requires will power to do; 2) the challenge has to be daily; 3) the challenge has to be done (i.e., you have to just do it). 

I’m still doing daily ice baths, but they are not meeting the first of the criteria. I now want to do them and they’re not hard. I like them. I would miss them. And, maybe someday what will be hard and require willpower will be choosing to refrain from them. 

Writing daily like this is currently ticking all of the boxes for this exercise in continual growth.  And, I committed to doing it. So, here I am doing it. 

Flush. 

Now that my purpose and intentions are re-established, I’ll get on with it.

What is present today as I write is actually quite a wonder to me, and that is how much more compassionate and understanding I have become toward myself. Over the past 8 years, I have become much more loving toward myself, more patient, and more caring. I can say that I have become almost a complete stranger to self-hatred and self-loathing. 

It hasn’t always been that way. In fact, I think that much of my life was spent desperately trying to find some sense of peace with who I am by getting other people to be okay with me and happy with me. I never had the sense that I was enough and relied on performances and accolades and recognition and affirmation from the outside to try to fill that hole. 

In my younger years, if I made a mistake or if I felt like I hurt someone, even if it were unintentional I would beat myself up, lambast myself, say horrible things about myself, and so on. Because, “How could you have done such a thing?!!! You must be…..!!!” The effect was that I was often so lost in trying to put the pieces of my fragmented self together that I really struggled to show up in relationships in a strong enough way to actually move forward, hear the  person’s grievances (if there even were any), and stay present in a way that showed availability and emotional responsiveness. 

So many of my moves in relationships were based on how I hoped the other person would respond and I tried to figure out what I could do to get them to respond the way that I hoped they would. 

I doubt that it is strange or unique that it took the almost complete disintegration of my identity (as I had known it before the brain injury) to bring me to my current state of being. 

Sure, I still get caught at times. But, I know when I’m getting caught and when I’m caught and I’m working with the caught part to listen to it, nurture it, challenge it, teach it, and move it into right action as soon as I know what it is. 

What I almost never do anymore is attack myself. 

I make a mistake. Or, I hurt someone. I own it if I am aware of it. I respond as best as I am able. I make amends. I stay present and keep my heart open. I let the other person have their response as best as I can. I watch my own boundaries. I stay present with my voice and speak my truth.  I stay true to my heart and keep it open. I stay safe with myself.

Each morning as I awake, I hear “Good morning, my love.” I am hearing it and saying it as one voice. An unexpected gift in the days and nights of deep darkness in the early stages of the brain injury. A grace.

What this hasn’t meant is that I’ve become any less caring or responsive. In fact, I care more, with deeper regard, with wisdom, with insight, with love that doesn’t have strings attached - at least, not as many and fewer and fewer.

I can’t guarantee that anyone will feel any certain way or that they won’t misunderstand. I’m learning to let others work with their own curriculum, trusting that they have the right response to every situation.  

I don’t have to control the outcome nor can I.

But I can show up for myself and for those I love and am in relationship with. Imperfectly? For sure. But I am growing and growing and growing and growing. 

And I am enough.