To have and to hold.  The vows of commitment.  The pledge of relationship.  The promise that we will stand fast, that we will be there side by side through life's ups and downs.  That we will ride the waves of our experience.  No matter what.  We enter into that pledge with another so that we may know with utter confidence that we are safe in the heart and mind and arms of one who loves us.  And in that safety we play and create and mate and risk and, ultimately, grow.

Yet there is a relationship I must consciously commit to before the one I forge with a partner.  There is a bond cemented deep within me that is the foundation for all my important connections with others.  It is my relationship with myself.   And it is in the safety of a healthy realtionship with me that I can grow into all I am meant to become.

The origins of my relationship with me grow out of the bond my parents had with me.  My way of being with myself, especially in the experience of vulnerability, was first imprinted upon me out of hundreds of tiny interactions with my early caregivers.  How am I toward myself when I cannot have what I want?  How do I relate with myself when I cannot make life bend to my will?  How do I be with me when I cannot make another person do what I want, when I cannot get the information I need, or when I cannot get the circumstances to change?  

How do I treat myself when I come face to face with limits to my personal control over outcomes that matter to me?  

If I am warm and interested and nonjudgemental or if I am impatient, critical or neglectful of myself, I am likely reenacting those early patterns laid down long ago. 

But now I am both the one who is having the experience of vulnerability and also the one who is responding to that feeling of dissonance.  I have the choice to either respond in a way that creates safety and fosters growth, or in a way that creates a sense of threat and stunts growth.  It is up to me.  It is my responsiblity now.  It is my choice today.  But the problem is that we cannot choose if we are not aware.  That early patterning must be made conscious and, if necessary, corrected if I am to create the kind of safe space that will allow me to become all that I am meant to be.   

And that awareness begins in the body.  It is in the ways we listen to and take care of the body here and now in the moment as it calls to us that we can see our core relationship with ourselves. 

Do I push my own boundaries and ignore myself?  Do I wait until I am starving to eat, until I am exhausted to rest, until I almost pee my pants before I go to the washroom?  Do I wait until I am about to blow a gasket before I express my dissatisfaction with something?  Do I criticize myself for not attaining some perfectionistic standard (of performance or appearance)?  Do I numb out (with food or alcohol or television) or abandon myself (with distractions) when I'm not feeling the way I think I ought to feel?  Do I chronically suck it up and pretend to be unaffected by the challenges of this life, believing myself to be bigger than I really am?

Do I lean in and listen for little bodily cues of vulnerability or do I wait til the body is screaming blue murder before I am  worth paying attention to?  And what kind of attention?  Is it warm and interested and nonjudgemental, or is it harsh and shaming?  Or is the attention all freaked out and overwhelmed, like I can't handle myself, and these feelings are in themselves a disaster?  Is the quality of my attention impatient, like I'm just too damn much work? 

Or do I tune in like a good parent to little signals that speak of my human limits...   Noticing shifts in my muscle tension, taking care to feel clenching or twitching or tighening in my arms and legs and feet and hands and neck and back and shoulders and...   And do I tune in also to energy shifts, agitation or buzzing or speediness...  And not making a big deal but not ignoring them either.  Recognizing them to be a call from the body asking if we are safe...   And commiting myself to answering that call with my attention.  Holding myself in the reflective awareness of my frontal lobes as I am having the experience of dissonance in the body.  Holding and having, having and holding...

To have and to hold.  Being with myself.  Like someone worth loving.  Safe in the knowledge that I am not alone because I am there.  No matter what.  So I can matter.  So I can grow.  

And I offer this as your commitment to you.  That you let yourself tune in and have your experience of being human and hold yourself there with all the care you have inside yourself, for yourself.  Because you do matter.  Here and now, in this moment, in your body.  No matter what.

 Photo Credit:  Peanut Edith