Sending Love...

I painted this piece while I was {not so patiently} waiting for Maya to be born. It was on my heart that loving her meant being kind and patient with her and gracefully waiting until she was ready to be born. Today, I'm sending it out to myself and all of you as a reminder to love ourselves: to be patient and kind with ourselves. Often, we're so needlessly hard on ourselves. But life is tough and complicated and exhausting at times. And it needs to be okay to tell ourselves that we're doing great.

How do we get to these places in our minds where we feel it's necessesary to get things right all the time, not mess up, look great while we're doing it, and never complain about how hard it was? Why do we wait for someone else to tell us that it's okay if things aren't always perfect. That it's no big deal if we're not wearing mascara to pre-school drop off and that they wouldn't change their whole outfit just for a little spit-up either. Do we really need someone else to say that they would've freaked out about that totally crazy thing that happened too. Can't we just tell ourselves that we're fine, that whatever we're doing is enough, that we trust our own judgement, and that it's completely understandable to need a little help from time to time? Well, today, I need to say this to myself. I need to love myself. This is the message that I need to hear {and say out loud} today and I'm just guessing that there are others out there who need to hear it as well.

We are off tomorrow for a little day trip to my niece and nephew's birthday party. It'll be nice to get out of the house a bit and spend some time with family...very chicken soup for the soul-y! I think I'm really craving that right now.

I hope you all have a great weekend!