My year of healing: part one: personal healing

In January last year I came across the concept of setting intentions rather than goals, with encouragement to choose an intention word for the year. My choice was "working towards healing" (as I felt that "healing" on its own would put too much pressure on me). I also broke this into two parts: personal healing, and healing the planet.

As I now reflect back on 2019, I can see the progress that I have made in both areas, and the wonderful resources I have been led to along the way. These are the resources I would like to share now.

Mindfulness Courses

Having discovered the Left Brain Buddha Website and Blog the previous year, I was delighted when its author, Sarah Rudell Beach offered a free course "Love your 2019" in January, which encouraged looking at our values, practising gratitude, self care, grounding, forgiveness and intentions, as well as meditation exercises and the basics of Mindfulness. I followed this with another of her free courses: "Mindfulness 101" before deciding to delve deeper and pay for her "Brilliant Mindful You" package. 

All of these have been of great benefit to my journey through personal healing from childhood issues, and I have valued the abundant resources generously offered on her Blog and Website, which can be found at: https://leftbrainbuddha.com

Meditation Resource

Left Brain Buddha led me to a great source of hundreds of free Meditation Exercises, and I have formed a new habit of starting each morning with ones I have bookmarked. Over time I have found that I have become calmer, less anxious and more laid back. This source is Insight Timer, which can be accessed here: https://insighttimer.com

Gratitude App

Gratitude Happiness Journal is a free app for i phones and includes the ability to write a daily gratitude entry (and to illustrate this with a photo), daily affirmations, and other functions (which I have not really used). I was making this a daily evening habit, but now have so many entries that I add them less frequently. However I now have an instant resource on my phone, which I can access when I need to be reminded of the positives in my life. The App can be found at:

https://apps.apple.com/nz/app/gratitude-happiness-journal/id1372575227

I also happened upon a lovely Gratitude Journal by Melanie Spears, as I glanced in a shop window in Dubbo, when we were returning home from one of our visits to grandchildren, and managed to order this year's version from Booktopia. Each day allows for multiple entries of things we are grateful for and has pages for the setting of intentions for the month, and all the pages are beautifully illustrated. I have kept to a daily practice of recording the things I am grateful for, and have found this to be very helpful too. The original home of the diary is here: https://givingthanks.com.au

Abuse from a Narcissist

Insight Timer led me to some Meditations by Katharine A Chestnut and, in particular, one that reflects on how a Narcissist Abuser can steal our song of self-confidence, as they have no song of their own. I have found this metaphor to be extremely helpful when dealing with my mother, who still tries to steal my song, as she had done for most of my life. This Meditation is titled "When did you stop singing", and I am intending to pursue Narcissistic Abuse further this year so that I can gain further insight.

I hope that if you read this blog, you will find some of these resources helpful. I would love to hear your thoughts on them.

Remember: Hope smiles from the thresh-hold of the year to come, whispering "it will be happier...." Gratitude App.