Habitually prioritizing the care of others over your own isn’t sustainable. If we don’t work on treating ourselves the way we treat the people we care about, we’ll inevitably get bogged down by resentment, burnout, and bitterness.

I'm not a snob about contemplative practice. I see zero shame in scrolling through Instagram during moments like these. I'm not trying to maintain monastic levels of composure throughout the day.

I just decided to explore what would happen if I fell back on what has proved paradoxically comforting in the past when waiting for potentially terrible news.

“I want to be drenched in cold water,
to be fully saturated,
to explode into a nap,
to share a piece of truth so true
that it shakes the schemas we've schemed —
most of all the divisions.”

Jane Klinger

It wasn’t until I stumbled clumsily toward a daily mindfulness practice in my mid-thirties that I discovered that there were ways I could get better at feeling my feelings.

Before intentionally working on my attentional skills, I had no idea how often I escalated my unpleasant feelings and zipped past the pleasant and subtler ones.

The kind of self-awareness that mindfulness exercise develops has helped me become more objective about my subjective experiences.

"You don't have to analyze it. You just have to feel it." 

Dan Harris

“There's nothing wrong with thinking. So much that is beautiful comes out of thinking and out of our emotions. But if our thinking is not balanced with awareness, we can end up deluded, perpetually lost in thought, and out of our minds just when we need them the most.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn