We started our Free Store conversation on Saturday morning by talking about our blog and how interesting and fun it is to share the experiences and ideas of our friends. George said our group can be looney tunes at times which made us laugh. We talked about how each person is equal to every other and that each one of us has valuable insights rooted in our unique life experiences that can benefit all of us.
We continued the conversation by discussing the fact that loving ourselves is the starting point for learning to love others. Someone said that religions often teach us to love others more than we love ourselves which is a bunch of bull which we thought was funny and true. Jesus did not say to love others more than we love ourselves but to love others as we love ourselves. So we looked at this from two angles. Since we can love ourselves we also recognized that we can do the opposite which is to hate ourselves. So a two-part question came up about the ways that we both hate ourselves and the ways that we love ourselves?
Our new friend Joshua said that he can't let go of the mistakes he had made and that he was having a hard time dealing with his past. Someone said that it can be as difficult to forgive ourselves as it is to forgive others. Sheila said that "I hate myself for letting Dave die." She talked about how his last wish was to be at home under hospice care with her, Rocky (their large part-Rottweiler dog that Dave used to say would try to crawl in your pocket if you let him), and Rick at his side. And she blamed herself that she was not able to do that for him. Marney said that it is normal to grieve and that ultimately it is a process of acceptance. Such negative feelings are a normal and healthy part of the five stages of grief as long as we don't get stuck in them.
George told us that he hated himself for not telling his mom that he loved her before she died. He said that he found it hard to say I love you but that he was learning to do it with the new friends he has made the last couple of years. Mark said that drug addictions are a way that we express hatred of ourselves. This led us to talk about how anything we do that causes harm to our bodies and emotions shows that there is something we do not like and do not accept about ourselves.
Marney told us that she hated that she was hyper and that she procrastinated. At this point Janice shared that she had lost her mom nineteen months ago. She had a hard time with it in part because she was not able to be at her mom's side when she died. But she was learning to accept it as God's will and was realizing that things can have a purpose even when we don't understand them.
Joelle shared with us that something she had heard in one of conversations a while back has stuck with her. She said that the idea that Jesus was completely human and that he experienced all the emotions that we go through had been very meaningful to her. She said, "I think about that when I get depressed." She also said that she was trying to connect with her mom through facebook but that her mom had blocked her which was very painful. However, she was going to keep trying because she did love her mom and wanted to find a way to reconnect with her.
As we moved our discussion to a conclusion someone suggested that by loving another person we are in reality showing love to ourselves since we are connected with others in ways that we don't even comprehend. Sheila said that we can love ourselves by doing something that we want to do even if it is just getting a haircut. Our friend Robert encouraged Sheila that God gives and takes away so that he hoped she wouldn't blame herself for Dave's death. He also said that he thought the serenity prayer was something that could help us a great deal. Initially he couldn't remember it but then it came to him and we all cheered him on as he recited it from memory. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference."
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