Cotton is My Favorite Fabric

Cotton is my favorite fabric. I love the way it feels. I love the way it washes and stays in good shape. I love the way it looks. I love easy and comfortable and cotton is the fabric for me.

Some fabrics have other feels to them, including more lush and expensive feels, but nothing feels as good to me. I like some other fabrics, but they are more for big celebrations and parties. They cost more and care is more expensive as well. Cotton is for every day. Cotton is for my every day.

For many years I could buy 100% cotton tshirts and shirts. Only now it has gotten harder and harder to find them in the lower priced stores. They have gone back to cotton and polyester blends, of course cause they are cheaper, but the quality is cheaper as well. Polyester is plastic, it makes me sweaty and hot, uncomfortable and unnatural. Cotton does not.

About 4% of spandex is acceptable on really loose clothing, otherwise it causes me pain, think that is due to my fibromyalgia and back disability issues. Having comfort in my clothes is extremely important and I take it very seriously, as seriously as I take my other self care issues.

I really hate finding a shirt I really love at a used store only to read the label and discover it is plastic. I really hate that. I know that I can’t comfortably wear it, getting hot, sweaty, and clingy if I were to try. I’ve tried to buy and wear those in the past and it never ends well. I almost did it again recently, having to repeat over and over what has happened in the past.

I think if I could buy in the more expensive stores I would be able to still find 100% cotton much easier. I wish that I had the extra money to spend.

I recently bought some new t-shirts, with and without sleeves that were 58% cotton. It is sort of acceptable, but not really what I want and would prefer to buy.  I had to buy new items, because it is so hard to find something I like, that fits loosely, and that has a good amount of cotton in it. I look every time that I used clothing shop, but usually don’t find anything. So I have some acceptable new things to wear for spring and summer.

 

Pretty in Paris

Since I advised everyone to do something loving and lovely and good for themselves on Valentine’s Day, if they had no one to do that for them, and actually even if they do, we need some goodness given to ourselves on this traditional love day.

Being loving and kind to ourselves and our body is a good thing to do, any day of the year, but today especially because there is so much focus on romantic love and that this time of year makes it more challenging for those of us without a romantic partner.

Okay, so, I bought myself some lotion, hardly something new and something in line with what I have been doing for myself lately, for my least favorite part of my body. Yesterday evening I went out to the store and bought myself Pretty in Pink moisturizing body cream by bodycology. It wasn’t expensive and so it was well within my price range, and yet it was thick and creamy with shea, because I love shea butter lately. And I love this lotion.

The other part of my gift to myself was to make a commitment to buy a new lotion for myself at least every month, actually I would love to have several lotions sitting around just waiting to tempt me to use them. I like that idea. It seemed like a lovely gift to myself; and you know what, I deserve it.

So do you. Do something.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone.

If you don’t have someone in your life to honor and love you and do something lovely for you, listen to me, do it for yourself.

If you don’t know what about yourself is loveable and lovely, I suggest for you to think of your soul, which is pure and lovely and loveable. I hope that you will do something kind and sweet for your soul; today, this coming week, this month, and so on and so on. I will be.

Good and healing loving thoughts to yous.

A Present for My Least Favorite Body Part

For Christmas time I had decided to give a present to my least favorite and favorite body part. I wanted to update on how that is going.

For my least favorite body part I decided to buy some wonderful body lotion and use it on myself, especially for my least favorite body part, my bum.

There are two reasons that it is my least favorite body part.

It is in the area of my low back disability, so I have a lot of pain in this area of my body.

It is a part of my body that is very triggering to me and unfortunately a part of my body that others tend to, for some bizarre and inappropriate and boundary-less reason, bump into.

So the day after Christmas, I went to the store for body lotion. Unfortunately I forgot to get the lotion when I was on the second floor of the Target downtown store and discovered that right before I was going to check out and decided to go back upstairs to the back of the store to get the body lotion. I went upstairs and looked over the different kinds of lotion, taking some time in choosing the one that I liked the most.

I checked out and took my purchases home. I was very excited to go through my bags and pick out the lotion. I was shocked to find that the lotion was not in the bags. I was upset and angry at the thought that I might have dropped the lotion out of my bags. I looked over the receipt to find that the lotion had not been charged to me.

In thinking over what could have happened, I distinctly recalled putting the lotion onto the checkout counter. Then I remembered that someone had interrupted the cashier, asking for a pen. She must have put down the lotion and forgot about it, while I was still unloading my cart and not focusing on what the cashier was doing. That sort of bummed me out, cause it was lotion that I had picked out especially as a way of loving my body.

I sat and thought about how sometimes plans just fail. I decided I would try again on another day. I was sitting there thinking and my eyes noticed some lotion. It was a Christmas present from a relative. I thought, well it’s not my present, but it is still lotion and I can use it and buy more next time I am at the store.

The present was great lotion, all thick and creamy. I love it. When I got to the store again I bought the lotion that I had picked out, Toasted Sugar Body Cream. I love the smell! 🙂 Next time I think I will get vanilla bean lotion.

Give a Gift to Your Favorite Body Part

This wasn’t a suggestion from the book, but I thought that it was a good idea as well, especially since survivors of childhood abuse often don’t take good care of their bodies and have never learned good self-care. I thought that any extra encouragement to take better care of myself is a good idea.

For a long time, I’ve loved my hair. I have loved it’s color and it’s silkiness. So it was easy and quick to identify my favorite body part and pick a gift for it for this Christmas.

I decided to buy myself some very wonderful shampoo and conditioner and to use them. I often, unfortunately, omit conditioning my hair. I can really tell the difference, but I often don’t. Since I was almost out of conditioner, it is a good idea for me to buy it as a present, because in the past I would just keep forgetting to buy conditioner.

As a small present to myself yesterday evening I shampooed and conditioned my hair, leaving the conditioner in for a good while. It feels so wonderful and makes me happy. So I guess doing it is a gift both ways, to my hair and back to me in enjoyment.

What is your current favorite body part and what gift would you buy for yourself? Think about doing it.

Good and healing thoughts to all our favorite and least favorite body parts and everything in between.

Give A Gift to Your Least Favorite Body Part

I read this suggestion in a book on ideas for Christmas activities.

I didn’t have any trouble at all in picking out the part of my body that I liked the least. It is my bottom. It has been least favorite for some time.

It is a part of my body that is easily triggered if touched in some way by others. And bizarrely people, especially women, back up into me, my bottom, that is. I suppose that is because I tend to avoid being near men, so when it happens it is usually a woman. But I also think it is that so many women do not have proper body boundaries and are often trained that it is alright to invade the space of children and other women.

I cannot imagine brushing up against another woman’s bottom, with my body, my purse, my store cart or anything else. I cannot imagine not looking where I am going or not caring about that. I cannot imagine conducting myself like this in public, in stores.

I have to say that it happens more often now since I have moved into my own apartment, the last 18 months. It happens a few times a month. I hate that! And that is very upsetting and disgusting and triggering to me. Despite the fact that I am more diligent and do more body boundary work, it is still happening.

The fact that I have a low back disability only exacerbates this issue, as a collision into my body while I am standing absolutely still is absolutely none of my fault and hurts my body and often that pain lasts for some time, often more pain over days.

As well there is decades of being judged by others for my body and the negative beliefs I have come to accept about my body and my bottom. Well I do believe that my bottom is my business and my business alone, so I don’t accept those negative, body-hating beliefs any longer, but still I have to admit I’m not as loving and kind to that part of my body as I know it deserves. So I am going to try to work on that.

So I decided to give the gift of body lotion for my least favorite body part and to use it. I usually have lotion. I often use it. But just on a few body parts. I guess the ones that I feel the least amount of triggering and upset feelings about. I will be using it on my body and trying to think loving thoughts to my body parts when I do it. But especially I am going to buy some wonderful lotion that is creamy soft and smells wonderful.

What gift would you give to what part of your body? How hard would it be to actually use your gift?

Good and healing thoughts to all our least favorite body parts.

Healing Quotes 638-640

“Your body is the piece of the universe you’ve been given.”

~ Geneen Roth, Women Food And God

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“Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust.”

~ Lawrence Kraus

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“It is a strange and wonderful fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you.  It is an immense privilege, and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here.  Rilke said, ‘Being here is so much,’ and it is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us so that the mystical wonder of our lives goes totally unnoticed.  We are here.  We are wildly and dangerously free.”

~ John O’Donohue

Self Care in All Five Dimensions

Do self care in all five dimensions:

I came across this recently online. In fact, it was the only thing that I liked on the psychcentral After Trauma Blog. Mostly it is a place for therapists, not trauma survivors.

Well, I’m trying to wrap my mind around this. It sounds vaguely familiar. I keep thinking I’ve read of this somewhere before, but if I had, I think, I would have posted about it already. So I posted below what the above article says, not a lot of ideas for the five dimensions, but I will be thinking about them and making up a list and will be posting about them in the near future.

Physical

Everything related to your physical body. Suggestioned areas of focus, sleep, nutrition, physical activity.

Mental

Intellectual and creative stimulation. Reading, writing, drawing, crafting, designing, building, puzzling.

Spiritual

Awareness of and relationship with something bigger than ourselves, not just religion. Meditation, community service, reaching out.

Emotional

Awareness and regulation of emotions. Suggested areas are journaling, music, talk about in therapy.

Social

Interaction with others.

40 Ways to Practice Self-Kindess

40 Ways to Practice Self-Kindness

I recently read this article. Some of the items I have been working on for some time. Some of the items I have been working on for a shorter period of time. Some of the items I don’t like at all and rejected them as suggestions.

Usually when I read lists of suggestions for doing things better in my life, I like the suggestions and often like the idea of doing several of them. But usually I do nothing. I guess I get kind of overwhelmed and the article or suggestions from books or others often get lost in the effort of managing my daily life and healing work.

So I decided this time to try something different; to pick out five items from the list and to try to work on them for several years.

Here are the five things that I have been working on:

Don’t forget to play.

(Always a difficult thing for me to integrate into my life. But I have been working hard at playing. One thing I did do this past week was to buy the dvd It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and have watched it several times. I love that show and try to watch it each year, and now I can watch it whenever I want instead of trying to catch it’s once a year airing. I’ll be writing about this suggestion more in the next few weeks and months.)

Listen to your body.

(Especially I have been using this suggestion the last few weeks for when I am tired and need to lie down, and need to rest or sleep. Look, I really don’t want to do this, but when I need to lie down and need to rest or need to take a nap or go to bed in the middle of the day or can’t sleep at all, I really need to be good and kind to myself and not try to tough it out like I have done a lot in my life. I need to be gentler with myself. I need to listen to my body.)

Be who you really are.

(Article suggests not being concerned about what others think of you, which had always been a huge issue for me. I had been working on this for a while. I decided it might be good to approach that issue from the other side, really being who I am more of the time. I had been doing this through the blog world and practicing being more engaged in the world.

Unfortunately I get shy in public often and this hugely gets in the way of being comfortable with myself. I think my shyness has been coming out more often because I really haven’t been around a lot in public over the last nine months and now being around others is making me shy. This is a lot worse because many of the times when I am interacting with others is in a group where I don’t know others, making my shyness and social anxiety worse.

Still, with these restrictions I am still working on this issue, and I am hoping that as time goes on I will get to know more people and be getting more support, which will help for my shyness to go down to a more manageable level. I have joined a support group and gone to a Reiki share, and gone out to eat several times with several friends, which I will be writing about more on the blog. )

Express yourself.

(This item is about expressing yourself creatively. I had been kind of stuck, in a couple of important ways and am trying to overcome those.

Last week I made a goal of writing a poem and I wrote a poem. 🙂 I’m not saying that it was the best I have ever written, but it was important to do it. I also read a lot of poems, that seems to get me going creatively with words. I hadn’t written a poem since February 2013 when I started getting ready to move and then had so many bad things happen with my new roommate and the apartment. I realized that I was stuck, by the bad times, then living in a shelter for a month, then my new place, and not being online here for months due to money concerns, well it really kept me stuck and thinking about it was not getting me anywhere.

I finally got some more beading supplies so that I can make earrings, bracelets, and necklaces again. It has been about five years since I really did any real beading work.

I finally got some poster board and bought some old magazines so that I can make some collages, that too has been a long time since I created one.

I’ve also been working on bringing more of my creativity into my daily life and seeing it in more of the things that I do. One of those things is to see and acknowledge my blog as being creative and as a big part of my creative expression to the world.)

Clothes. 

The suggestion is to wear the clothes that you feel the most ‘you’ in. I had been thinking about this for a while, wanting to wear clothes that are not only very comfortable, which is always what I need to do for my health issues, is to be comfortable and for my clothes to be loose, and start adding more creative touches that are whimsical, silly, and fun. I had been buying some bead bracelets and assorted pins at the used store and I wear them on my backpack. I am always looking at clothes when I go to the used stores and sometimes at the regular stores, and rarely finding something great to go with my ideas of comfort, fun, and casual attire.

 

Reblogged: Reasons to Stop Making Comparisons

Reblogged: Reasons to Stop Making Comparsions

from the Internal Acceptance Movement website

by Daniell Koepke

“1. External things aren’t an accurate measure of self-worth. 

Because we can most easily compare the things that we can objectively measure, we live in a world that is great at measuring and comparing externals. Somewhere along the way, we decided that we could determine who is living a more valuable life by comparing our clothes, cars, body size, weight income, beauty and occupation. The reality however is that external things do not define your self worth. The person you are inside—your character, your attitude, your goals and dreams, your morals and values, the way in which you treat others—these are truly self-defining. The external things don’t have the power to discount who you are as a person.

2. You always compare your worst with their best.

Comparing your life with others is always a losing proposition because there will always be people who “appear” to be better off than you and seemingly live the perfect life. We always compare the worst of what we know about ourselves to the best assumptions that we make about others. The truth is that other people’s lives are never as perfect as your mind make them out to be. Everyone struggles. Everyone feels insecure. No one’s live is easy. People tend to put their best face on in public. Know that what you see is not usually the whole picture.

3. There is no end to the comparison game.

There are an infinite number of categories upon which you can compare yourself, and an almost infinite number of people to compare yourself to. Once you start down that road, you will never, ever find an end.

4. Life isn’t a competition.

How you measure up against others holds absolutely no importance in your life. Other people’s strengths, talents, and successes don’t discount your own. They don’t define who you are as a person. Your goal in life isn’t to be better than everyone else. The goal is to be the best you that you can possibly be.

5. Comparison puts your focus on the wrong person.

You can control one life – yours. When you consistently compare yourself to others, you’re wasting precious energy and time by focusing on other peoples’ lives rather than your own.

6. Comparison robs you of joy.

Comparing yourself to others will always cause you to regret what you aren’t, rather than allow you to enjoy and celebrate who you are. It will always steal the joy and happiness that is within your reach. It keeps you from recognizing and appreciating all the wonderful things that make you, you. And ultimately, comparing prevents you from fully living your life. It causes you to envy and fixate on other people’s lives rather than experiencing and engaging in your own.

Making comparisons doesn’t make us feel any better. It makes us feel inadequate and worthless, and in many ways, it keeps us stuck. While the temptation to compare may never be completely eliminated, there are definitely some practical steps that you can take to challenge the comparison thoughts. 

7. Recognize the inherent problems in comparing yourself to others.

You are a unique human being with an individual set of strengths, struggles, talents, insight, and characteristics. You can’t make comparisons, because as a unique person, you have a unique life. You can’t possibly expect your life to look like anyone else’s because there is no one else exactly like you.

8. Celebrate who you are.

Instead of focusing on all the things that other people have, start focusing on all the things make you special. You have so many wonderful things that make you who you are. These things that make you different are the things that make you beautiful. Don’t forget them.

9. Challenge the voice telling you that you aren’t good enough.

Your tendency to make comparisons isn’t a result of inadequacy. It stems from your insecurity and the belief that you aren’t good enough. When you can challenge these thoughts and counter them with truths. When you accept yourself for the person you are, and recognize all that you have to offer, the need to make comparisons will fade, because you’ll realize that other people’s lives and successes don’t have to take away from or discount all the things that make you wonderful.

10. Remember that nobody is perfect.

We live in a society that strives for perfection. The reality however, is that perfection is unrealistic and unobtainable. Everyone has flaws and imperfections. Everyone has made mistakes and messed up. No one’s life is perfect. You are no exception to that. Know that happiness doesn’t come from having the perfect life. It comes from looking past the imperfections and struggles and holding onto the good things. The sooner you stop striving for perfection, the sooner you can start enjoying your life.

11. Try something different.

Chances are that you’ve been comparing yourself to others for a long time. You know how awful it feels, and you know that it hasn’t really gotten you anywhere. So why not try something new? You have absolutely nothing to lose. So instead of shaming yourself for being different, try celebrating what makes you unique. Instead of beating yourself up for making a mistake, try accepting and loving yourself for who you are without conditions. Instead of striving for perfection, try to be the best you that you can be. Instead of making comparisons, try to remind yourself of all the things that make you special.”