Thank You Blogger Friends!!

Just wanted to check in real quick with my friends here.  I'm in the middle of a crazy huge project I procrastinated far too long and now it's biting me hard in the rear, with a wicked deadline, and very little time for much else except for when I'm making an exception to break away now and then, simply to remain sane.  Project must be finished around mid-March, so until then, I'll be a little absent.  But I'm doing okay!!!  I want my blog friends to know I love them and especially that I appreciate their time and comments and just taking the time to read.  And I'm sorry I haven't been following or keeping up as much as I'd like!  Keep blogging, I'm thinking of you, and I catch a post here and there when I can!  All of you are heroes in my eyes.  Many of you have inspired and taught me new things about myself and the Lord time and time again!  I'm grateful for you!!!

Blogging my recovery has been validating for me, to expose my experiences and find out I'm still accepted, I'm still me, and my value didn't go away even though I exposed some deep long kept secrets.  I'm learning to find self-validation in feeling and experiencing and expressing myself here.  Being able to self-validate is something my therapists have been telling me repeatedly ever since I began therapy that I need to work to develop.  It came up again in most recent session.  I've made excellent progress in my outside relations, by keeping boundaries, (though often times against my will) but I'm still feeling hurt and crazy inside, and having to painfully resist old behaviors again and again.  So now, he said, I need to remember the importance of another focus I have maybe forgotten about for a time.  My relationship with myself.  To become self-validating.  To love myself.  To be kind to myself.  To treat myself, and show myself my feelings matter to me and that that alone can be good enough.  To fill my own holes so my need for others (to control others words and behavior to make my life feel at peace) will end.  I know a relationship with the Savior is key to this, and the whole time he spoke I kept thinking about the 12 steps.  And how much Step 4 will help (I'm still just beginning Step 4 but haven't had the time to devote  to it that I'd like).  My therapist taught me that there is one place I can be dependent upon, and need to be dependent upon in order to be healthy.  And that is the Savior.

So while I'm learning to express myself here, and asking the Lord to help with that effort, and learning self-validation here in my blog, sometimes writing things and letting the simple act of writing be good enough......  I have been largely blessed with a lovely bonus anyway:  you.  Thanks for the friendship.  Thanks for the support.  Thanks for the comments.  Thanks for reading.  Thanks for relating to me, and letting me know I'm not the only one.  Thanks for being my cheerleaders!  Thanks for encouraging and accepting me.  Thanks for writing your own journeys and sharing your truths and real lives and your fears and your faith and your triumphs and your testimonies in Jesus Christ in your own blogs.  Please don't stop.

Valentines Week!  Let's make it good.  Let's celebrate "love."  We have great reasons to love, and great reasons to receive love.

Love you!!!