It has been a long time...

 It has been some time since I have written. I fear it has been over 4 years. These last 4 years have been filled with so many miracles and so many blessings along with challenges that have helped me to grow. 

I haven't blogged in a long time for several reasons but the main reason is that I need to be very cautious about what I share with the world or with others. I have learned that anything you say or do can be twisted and used against you. 

Small and Simple Things

I think she is caught

between

who she is

and

who she wants to be

I saw this quote today and it got me thinking, "I don't really want to be caught between who I am and who I want to be." I know who I want to be and I want to be someone great; not great as the world would see great. I have never really cared much about worldly things, probably because I have never really had a lot of worldly things in my life. What matters to me is honesty strength (endures hardships and trials well), kind, loving, emotionally stable, dependable, and fair. The question is, how do we become who we want to become?

What if...

There are so many questions I could ask myself about the past. What if I didn’t move to Texas and stayed in New York? What if I decided that taking a child on would be too difficult and I never became a mother. What if I became a nurse instead of a teacher? What if this… what if that...? Every decision we make has consequences, good and bad. There is little we can do to change the past so why do we spend so much time dwelling on it? Maybe it is human nature to think back instead of thinking ahead. The most beneficial thing we can do is learn from past mistakes, be grateful for the miracles that have come and to think of all things still possible. There are so many different directions our lives can still go and we have more control of what happens next than what has already happened. Life is a process; our situations are constantly changing, forcing us to make decisions. In this process of change we are developing our character, either we are refining who we are or we are slipping slowly away from becoming who we are destined to become. The wonderful thing about the plan of salvation is that we choose our destiny. Heavenly Father will not force us to make the right choices he can only nudge us here and there with his spirit, however in the end the ultimate decision of where our life will lead is up to us.

The Last Year

I haven't talked much about what is going on in my life. Things are hard at times however I have been so blessed. I moved over a year ago and have been working on a new campus. I was feeling it was time for me to grow as a professional and as a person. Though I loved the campus I was teaching on and I didn't dislike where I was living, I felt that I was guided to move to another area. I did not understand all the reason why at the time, however looking back I can see the wisdom of changing campuses and districts and moving to this area. I have not only progressed in my profession and I have also grown in my personal life.

This year I am taking a class at Rice University in STEM education for my campus. Though I still love everything about math, I have come to enjoy teaching science and I have seen a great improvement in my teaching of science because of the class I am taking at Rice. I have had a goal to write a grant for a few years and this year I am doing it. I have been working with my fifth grade team to write a grant for STEM education on our campus. It has been scary and exciting all at the same time. I have been learning many great things about stepping out of my comfort zone and becoming a better teaching professional and I have been learning a lot about writing. Writing is not my strength but I have amazing teaching partners that are so helpful and always find a professional way to put my ideas into words that make since and sound good.

My son is doing really good. Last year he had a hard year and I thought we were never going to make it through. I did a lot of praying and pondering and fasting last year to know what I could do to help him have a better year. I spoke to his teachers at least once a week and he made it through. It was a rough year. Coming up to this year I prayed to know what to do and I got this strong impression that I needed to make sure that I sit down with him for an hour every day to do his work with him and I have done that and it has made all the difference. I also told him if he is below a 70% he could have not screen time and that worked miracles.  He has kept his grades up and he has begun to enjoy school. So it has been such a better year. My son has also found some great friends in our ward that he can look up to and that are great examples to him and that I am very grateful for.

As for myself, I have come to find some wonderful friends that have been great examples to me and have helped me to be a better person. My life has calmed. The storms still come however I am able to handle them with more faith and with greater strength and ability. Which comes from stepping back and finding out who I am and what is most important in my life and by eliminating negative influences in my life. 

I haven't dated anyone in over a year and I haven't really put myself out there because I wanted to take the year to grow and figure things out. To be honest, dating is hard for me, I don't like it at all. Now that does not mean that I think men are horrible, I don't believe that at all, I know there are good single men, I just haven't found the right one for me. It is not because I do not want to be married or have a family, in fact that is one of my greatest desires. I am just don't like dating, it makes me uncomfortable, I feel like I am on an interview, which I am very bad at interviews. When it is time, the right person is going to come along and it is all going to work out.  I lost hope of that for awhile but I have that hope back.

I better go. I have not shared much in the last year, so I thought it would be nice to share a little of what I have been up to.

Character

I found this really cool quote about character when I was reading.

"One of the greatest indicators of righteous character is the capacity to recognize and appropriately respond to other people who are experiencing the very challenge or adversity that is most immediately and forcefully pressing upon us. Character is revealed, for example, in the power to discern the suffering of other people when we ourselves are suffering; in the ability to detect the hunger of others when we are hungry; and in the power to reach out and extend compassion for the spiritual agony of others when we are in the midst of our own spiritual distress. Thus Character is demonstrated by looking, turning, and reaching outward when the instinctive response of the "natural man" (Mosiah 3:19) is to turn inward and to be selfish and self-absorbed" (David A. Bednar, Power to Become, 11)

I would like to have a righteous character, I am just not very good at looking outside myself. I have a lot to work on.

His Image

Have you received his image in your countenance?

I love the scripture in Alma that states "...Have you received his image in your countenances? Have you experienced a change of heart...I would ask, can you feel so now? (Alma 5:14; 26)  I have pondered on these scriptures many times in my life and asked myself these same questions. Depending on the time and place I am in my life I answer them differently. They are questions that help me evaluate where I am in my life. Sometimes I am doing well and other time I need to fix some things. As I ponder this in my own life I have asked myself, what does it mean to have "his image in your countenance"?  The answer to that may be different for each person however to me it means to emulate Christ. In order to emulate Christ you must know him. I found the greatest way to know Christ is through reading the scriptures, pondering his teaching and example and building a relationship with him through prayer. When we receive his image in our countenances our hearts change and we want to be more like Christ and we begin to follow his teachings and example.

Spiritual Reassurance

How can we receive ongoing strength and spiritual reassurance when life is hard?

My life has never been that easy. I have always had to fight for what I have wanted out of life. It is hard when the natural man seems to be fighting against you. Sometimes it seems so much easier to give in to temptation and to be honest there have been times in my life that I have given in, which in reality did not make things easier but only more difficult. I have received strength through Heavenly Fathers grace and atonement. Knowing of the atonement has helped me to see beyond the boundaries and limitations of this mortal life. It has given me hope and peace. "When words cannot provide the solace we need to seek, when it is simply futile to attempt to explain that which is unexplainable, when logic and reason cannot yield adequate understanding of the injustices and inequities of life, when mortal experience and analysis are insufficient, and when it seems that perhaps we are so totally alone, then come the peace that only the Prince of Peace can give-truly, a peace that passeth all understanding." (David A. Bednar, Power to Become, 48-49) Peace can come in any circumstance, no matter how hard or difficult something may be.

Hardships

We are blessed in extra ordinary ways to learn essential lessons through affliction and hardships. (David A. Bednar)

Life is hard, it doesn't matter if you are rich or poor, single, divorced or married, whether you have children or not, we all face affliction and hardships. These afflictions and hardships help us to learn life long lessons. They are meant to humble and strengthen us so we can become the person that Heavenly Father knows us to be. "No pain that we suffer, no trail that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children on God...and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire" (Spencer W. Kimball, Faith Precedes the Miracle, 98).

Outcomes

Is your faith dependent of the outcomes you want?

In many cases I feel this has been true for me. There have been many times in my life that my faith and hope have wavered because things did not turn out the way I expected or in the time I wanted. I've learned timing is everything. Sometimes things don't work out the way we expected, it just means Heavenly Father has a different plan and his plan is always better than our plan.

Moving forward

It has been a long time since I have written. So much has happened, however I am not going to go into all the details of my life from the last few years. I needed some personal time to grow and become a better person. I have learned and grown in my profession, my personal life, my spiritual life and as a mother. There have been some hard times however there have been some really good times.

Fear

I have been thinking a lot about fear the last few days. I was reading last Sunday about honoring self. I always love reading because I learn a lot and it is a de-stresser for me along with writing. I was reading about how there are times that we are motivated by fear. A quote from the book I was reading is “Fear sabotages mind, clarity, and efficacy. Fear undermines the sense of personal worth…above all fears; they become the masters; it is to them, not to reality, that the individual has to adjust.” There are times I am an obsessive thinker, I always attributed this obsessive thinking to being a problem solver but it is not that at all, it is fear, I always worry or obsessively think about the things that I am the most afraid of. 

A few months back I went on line and looked up obsessive thinkers and I learned that it goes hand in hand with anxiety and like I said it comes through fear. I learned when you are thinking about something and you can’t get your mind off of it you need to “name the beast” or what you are worried about or obsessing over? When obsessively thinking, ask yourself: First, What is my fear and Second, What is my doubt? You need to describe these in words. So I tried it. When I was worried and anxious about something I just asked myself what is my fear? What is my doubt? An amazing thing happened I faced those fears and/or those doubts and I didn't think, obsess or worry about them anymore.  What a freeing feeling, not to have to be obsessively thinking and worrying all the time. Now am I perfect in it? No. I still have a long way to go. Sometimes I don’t even realize that I am obsessively thinking and I forget that I need to ask myself what my fear is and/or what my doubt is. It is when I tired and exhausted of thinking and worrying that I realize that I am obsessively thinking, then decide I should do something about it and I go back to those questions. Of course I have to be very honest with myself about why I am obsessively thinking about something and sometimes I don’t like the answers to the questions but if I am honest with myself it works and I able to calm my thoughts and the best thing about it I don’t worry or obsessive over it anymore. I guess in a way it is a mental exercise. If you are an obsessive thinker like me you should try it sometime, you do have to be very honest and real with yourself, but it works and is very refreshing. 

Now that I got side tracked back to talking about being motivated by fear oh and by the way being motivated by fear is not a good thing if you didn't already catch that. “Anytime we admit a difficult truth, any time we face that which we have been afraid to face, anytime we acknowledge, to ourselves or to others, facts the existence of which we have been evading, any time we are willing to tolerate temporary fear or anxiety on the path to better contact with reality [or another way to say it is we are real with ourselves] our self-esteem [may I say self worth] increases.” (Nathanial Braden. Honoring The Self ) We need to be true and real with ourselves about our thoughts (what we are thinking), feeling (emotions, what are we truly feeling?) and our behaviors (what we are doing? Why are we doing it?). We have to accept reality, we cannot pretend it does not exist or they will always be our fear.  By accepting reality and being real with ourselves we can increase our self esteem and feelings of self worth AND we are not living in fear anymore. It is not easy to be honest and real with ourselves and I am still at the beginning and I fall short all the time but it feels great when I am able to over come fear and in a way it is very refreshing and freeing which I think I mentioned before.

 Wouldn't it be great if we were all emotionally healthy and emotionally stable? I laugh because I don’t know very many people with a perfect life and that are perfectly stable emotionally. We all go through things in this life that cause us pain and heartache. We also all have fears that we have to face and none of the fears are the same.  . 

Thoughts for today

Recently I have been learning many things. It always seems that with learning comes trials and pain. I have been through many things in my life and I have lived with many different families and been a part of many people’s lives. I have always come away from each person and family wiser and stronger because of the things that I have learned from them.

I remember a talk from many years ago; it was from a stake president who I admired. It was his first talk as a stake president, he said that he was not perfect and that if we looked for his faults we would not have to look very far and then he went on to talk about how we need to stop looking for people’s faults and start looking for the good in others. How often I fail to do that? I have become very judgmental and frustrated with people when it is me who should be looking within my own self and fixing my own imperfections. Sometimes I feel I have a right because of this or that, but in reality I have no right. Every trial, temptation and blessing that I have ever received in my life has been for my own profit and learning and I forget that often. I just feel lately (meaning the last few years) I have been short with people, very opinionated and I have not been as kind as I should be. I have not been remembering that my life is the way it is because of the help and example of other people and of course with the guidance and love of my Heavenly Father.  

Thoughts

I have a few minutes this evening so I thought I would write. I just feel really good about my life right now. I am very confident that things are going the way that they should. I have been through some rough patches the last few months, however going through them has helped me to look closely at myself and try to fix things so that I can live a better life. I have spent a lot of time on my knees in prayer on what I can do to heal and become a better person.  

This weekend I stayed home and got my house in order. I did some reading and spent some quality one-on-one time with my son.  Which was really nice :-)

I watched General Conference last week and it was really nice. I always learn so much from the talks, there always seems to be something that I need to hear. However I think I received more direction from the women’s conference, the week before, about what I needed to do to help my son and to improve life for myself. The words that were spoken really didn't have anything to do with what I learned. I guess just being there and being in the spirit I learned the things that I needed to improve in my life and I am going to do those things. I got the feeling to step away from the single scene for a while and focus on being the best parent I can. I just focus so much time on planning things and being in the middle of everything going on that I neglect the more important things. I am also going to focus on doing my calling and serving the people in my area the way only I can.  We all have a special way of doing what the Lord wants us to do that is why he chose us right?

Life is good

I haven't written in a long time. There are several reasons however the main reason is that every time I get stated writing something comes up and I never get finished with what I am writing. Life is really good, no life is fantastic. I love my classes this year my students are wonderful. We have been working so hard which has been paying off and feels good because we have been successful in learning. I have been taking a class up at U of H and that has been great. I have been learning a ton of thing about how science works which makes me a better Science teacher.

Being a single mom is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. I think if I knew how hard it would be I might have thought twice before becoming a mom, especially a mom to an already grown child, however I would do it again if given the choice. I don't think my heart could allow a child to go without a home when I am well equipped to provide one. Though it is the hardest thing I have ever done, and may be the hardest thing I ever do, the blessings that come are above and beyond what I could have ever imagined. My son has been doing much better, we went to the doctor this week and are trying him on some medication that will hopefully balance him out. It was getting to the point that it was taking him and I three hours to do his homework  and I felt by the end we were both exhausted. He was getting in trouble at school for silly things. I also felt that there were times he was out of control. I have always been hesitant about putting kids on medication and I guess that is why I have waited so long to do even consider it. It has been three day and it has made a world of difference. I can hardly believe how different things are and it has only been three day. I guess with time we will see how it really works and if it will really help him. I better go make breakfast and get to school. I will write more later I have a many great things to share, I have just been busy and haven't had a change.

Living Consciously

Last time I wrote I had said that I discovered that I felt responsible/took ownership for other people’s emotions.  I have been working very hard on not taking ownership of others emotions and it has opened up a whole new world for me. It does not come natural yet, I still have to step back and think “am I feeling bad because of their feeling or is this really how I feel “and most of the time I discover that I feel bad because of how someone else is feeling. Then I tell myself that “I can’t change nor control how they are feeling I can only control how I am feeling” and then the worry that I am doing something wrong goes away. One day I hope I don’t have to think about it and it will come natural, but for now I will continue to work on it and improve. I do feel a great difference; I am happier and more peaceful.  I have felt a freedom that I have never felt before; the freedom to have fun and enjoy myself even if the other person is not. I have also discovered that I have begun to live my own life.

I am still reading the book “Boundaries.” I know it is taking me a long time to read and it is not because it is a hard read but rather I am reading two other books at the same time, so I am taking my time. I will be done soon. I was reading about how to teach our children boundaries, very interesting. I have actually been using some of the things I have learned with my son and they seem to be working. I am starting to see that my own healing is helping my son heal. It has been kind of a miracle.

So I am reading this other book, one of the other two books I am reading, it was not suggested to me. I just read a quote from the author about being true to yourself so I picked up one, actually two, of his books and the one I am reading now is called “How to Raise Your Self-Esteem.” And it is by Nathaniel Branden. Oh my goodness it is an amazing book. It really makes you think, I just got done reading a chapter on living consciously. WOW!!!!!  I will just share a little of what it says:

 “To have good self-esteem you have to live consciously… The appropriate use of our consciousness is no automatic: rather it is an act of choice…To live consciously means to seek to be aware of everything that bears on your actions, purposes, values, and goals, and to behave in accordance with that which we see and know…Living consciously means taking responsibility for the awareness appropriate to the action in which we are engages…self-esteem, then, is a function, not of what we are born with, but how we use our consciousness-the choices we make concerning awareness, the honesty of our relationship with reality, and the level of our personal integrity…Living consciously is living responsibly towards reality.”  

It is kind of an amazing thought, that when we are living consciously and that by accepting our reality even if our reality is not the greatest we raise our self-esteem and self-worth. There is so much more that the book explains and some of those things are very deep. I thought when I bought the book it was a 1, 2, 3 self-help book on how to have higher self-esteem but rather it explains what self-esteem is. I didn't really get the book to raise my own self-esteem I just like a quote I read from the author, but I am learning some amazing things about self-worth and self-respect. 

Here we are again.

I have been doing better. I am not as sick as I have been. I am still taking a breathing treatment once a day and my cough is still quite bad, but I do not have pneumonia any longer and I don’t feel as though my head is going to explode. I have been taking it easy the last few weeks, which has been very nice.

Life has been hard! I have been learning so much about myself and trying to figure things out and hopefully all that will lead to change and healing. Sometimes I just want to cry and let it all out but crying is not easy for me though I have done much of it lately. Making the changes that I need have been much harder for me then I ever imagined. I am supposed to be starting a twelve-step program (Al Anon) and I still have not gotten around to going to any meetings. I keep thinking “how is this going to help me? I don’t deal with alcoholics.” It seems weird to me and very uncomfortable that I need to go but I need to do whatever I can to get the help I need to change. The church has a twelve-step program however the meeting is every Thursday and they meet about an hour from where I live and it really is too far for me on a week day. Maybe I can go during the summer but for now I will try Al Anon here. I am kind of scared to go because then it means that this is real and what if I can’t change it or don’t want to.

I finished reading “Codependent No More” and it was a great book. Any person would gain a lot from reading it even if they were not codependent. Now I am on to a second book “Boundaries” by Cloud and Townsend. When I first started reading I didn’t really think that it applied to me now that I am further into the book I see how it does apply to me. I have very good boundaries in my classroom however I do not in my relationships, and that means friendships as well. How can that be? How can I have great and wonderful boundaries in the classroom so much so that I am complimented on it regularly however when it comes to a relationship I have very confusing and fuzzy boundaries? It is so frustrating!!!!!! 

So the book "Boundries" it talked about two different types of people who have boundary issues compliant people and avoidant people and I seem to have a mix of both. However if I had to choose between the two I would say that I am more of an avoidant person then a compliant person. I do comply but not near as much as avoid.

Those people who are compliant (me) “melt” into the demands of other people. There spiritual and emotional “radar” is broken; they have no ability to guard their hearts. (pg 52-53) I am very compliant in relationships I just say yes when I should say no and my boundaries are very fuzzy and indistinct. Those people who are avoidant are unable to ask for help, to recognize one’s own needs, to let others in. Avoidant people withdraw when they are in need; they do not ask for the support of others. For Avoidant people, opening up to people is almost impossible. (pg 54-55) Me, me and me!!!! 

One other thing that I have been thinking a lot about is emotion. My whole life I have always felt responsible for other people’s emotions and many times other people’s emotions effect my emotions. I feel or felt that because they were sad, angry, upset (notice these are all negative emotions) it was somehow because of me. People’s emotions affect me so much because I take responsibility for the emotions they are feeling. Let me tell you what I have discovered and it has been GREAT!!! Everyone is responsible for their own emotions and I don’t have to be responsible for another person’s emotions. What a thought? You mean to tell me that you are responsible for your emotions and I am responsible for my emotions? YES!!! It seems so simple and logical however I have never seen it that way before. What does this new knowledge do for me? It gives me a whole new outlook on life and now I can free myself from other people’s emotions and start feeling my own emotions. I wonder what that is going to feel like because I have spent most of my life wrapped up in, or feeling responsible for other people’s emotions that I don’t know what it is like to feel my own. I think this is going to be a great experience and it is going to be kind of fun to explore and be responsible for my own emotions. I will have to report back, I have a feeling it is going to feel very freeing.. 

Change-The Beginning of Something New

Let me tell you a story about me, I was having a rough day a month or so ago, and I was having a pity party and I was telling a friend how I was feeling and I was very negative, mind you I was feeling vulnerable and had not gotten much sleep and I was feeling like a horrible mom, my son had a rough day and I was just struggling. My friend told me that I needed to research codependency. I had never heard of codependency before and if I had I never thought it had anything to do with me. When I found out what codependency was I became very angry with my friend. If my friend was there I would have probably spoke my mind and it would not have been pretty, I would have told my friend all their issues and how dare they tell me what is wrong with me when they themselves are not perfect, because who is perfect, right?

 I have always tried to take the best things out of the worst situations and after cooling down, which took a few days, I did more research and I read some great articles and just finished a great book “Codependent no more” and yes I am codependent. In fact, I don’t know anyone more codependent than myself. So many things about my life and decisions I have made make since now. I feel a freedom, now that I know I can do something about it. It is going to take some time to heal and work through this. However, I want to be healed now so that I can move on and be better than I have been. Healing and changing something you have been your whole life doesn’t change overnight. It takes time and sometimes it takes a lot of time. I have a feeling this is going to take me a LONG time and I am really scared. What if I can’t make the changes that I need to make? What if it is too hard? The thing that helps me is that being codependent is only one part of who I am; I have many other parts of my life that are healthy. This is the beginning of something different and better. Am I still mad at my friend? No, I am grateful. 

I have always taken care of people; it started when I was young in my own home. It started by taking care of my brothers and sisters then progressed to other people until it has been the only thing that I know. I sacrifice myself for others to make them happy even though it does not make me happy or it goes against all I know to be true (the martyr) and then get angry because I don’t get the same in return. It is a vicious cycle that I hope to break. Who would have known that doing something good would turn into something unhealthy and controlling for self and others?

I am going to talk about my family for just a second, some people don’t know I have brothers and sisters and if they do they think they are phantoms in my life because I don’t talk about my parents nor my brothers and sisters very often. I am not close to them and if I said I was it would be a lie. We don’t say much when I do speak with them (except one of my sisters) I feel like I am always saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing with my life. What makes it even harder to be close to them is every place I have lived I have found other people to be my family and support. Now that I am here in Texas I have my aunt and uncle and cousins, who I have come to love as my family. They have taken me in and took care of me when I needed a place and I have become very close to them and they have filled the void in my life. The problem is I think the healing process in my life needs to begin with my family, and that is not going to be easy. I remember the exact moment when I made the decision to close my heart to my family and it hurt like hell. There is no other way to put it. I was tired of hurting and after a while the hurt went away and I filled my life with other people to take their places. I guess I am scared to open those wombs again and I am afraid of hurting like that again. When your family can’t love you it is hard to believe that others can.

Been sick

It has been about a month since I have written and a few months since I have written anything about myself. I have been REALLY sick. When I think I am better, I am back at the doctor because I am sick again. I have the greatest friends though and I work with amazing people. When I was sick the first time my co-workers stepped in and helped take care of my son and brought food and took care of my classes because I was too sick to go. Then my friends came over and made me dinner and hung out with me. Then I stayed up most of the night talking, and not getting the rest I probably should have been getting however I think I needed to talk more. Those same friends seen a need and a week ago they came by and fulfilled that need and I can’t tell them how grateful I am for them. I hope to be half the friend for them that they are for me. 

If you know me well you know I hate doctors so I wait forever before I go and if I would have taken care of things sooner I could have avoided all this, however I have been greatly humbled and I have learned some valuable lessons. First, next time my allergies are taking over and I am not feeling well I will be going to the doctor, not waiting a month and then finding out that it has gotten so bad that I have to be deathly ill for three weeks. I am so tired of being sick. I don’t know how those with chronic illnesses do it. The good thing about being so sick, if I look on the bright side, I have had a lot of time to think and sort through some things. I always seem to have something to work on, don’t we all. I hope to share with you some of the the things I have been thinking about and working through but of course the more private things I will keep for myself and close friends.

Honoring Self

I have been doing a lot of reading the last few weeks. I came across this great quote that I loved.


Of all the judgments that we pass, none is as important as the one we pass on ourselves, for that judgement touches the very center of our existence.

...No significant aspect of our thinking, motivation, feelings, or behavior is unaffected by our self-evaluation...
   
The first act of honoring the self is the assertion of consciousness: the choice to think, to be aware, to send the searchlight of consciousness outward toward the world and inward toward our being. To default on this effort is to default on the self at the most basic level.
   
To honor the self is to be willing to think independently, to live by our own mind, and to have the courage of our own perceptions and judgment.
    
To honor the self is to be willing to know not only what we think but also what we feel, what we want, need, desire, suffer over, are frightened or angered by--and to accept our right to experience such feelings. The opposite of this attitude is denial, disowning, repression--self-repudiation.
    
To honor the self is to preserve an attitude of self-acceptance--which means to accept what we are, without self-oppression or self-castigation, without any pretense about the truth of our own being, pretense aimed at deceiving either ourselves or anyone else.
   
To honor the self is to live authentically, to speak and act from our innermost convictions and feelings.
    
To honor the self is to refuse to accept unearned guilt, and to do our best to correct such guilt as we may have earned.
    
To honor the self is to be committed to our right to exist which proceeds from the knowledge that our life does not belong to others and that we are not here on earth to live up to someone else's expectations. To many people, this is a terrifying responsibility.
    
To honor the self is to be in love with our own life, in love with our possibilities for growth and for experiencing joy, in love with the process of discovery and exploring our distinctively human potentialities.
    
Thus we can begin to see that to honor the self is to practice selfishness in the highest, noblest, and least understood sense of that word. And this, I shall agree, requires enormous independence, courage, and integrity.

~Nathaniel Branden