I self-sabotage.
Again.
I self-sabotage my complexion.
I fall into the familiarity of fixing.
A well-worn neural pathway centered on perfecting engulfs my attention.
Engrained patterns to strive and improve, particularly my appearance, silence the embodied wisdom of my body, a body that my logic questions to trust. In the effort to correct a perceived flaw, I startle my skin into a reaction wailing across my forehead and cheek.
In the seize of self-consciousness, I rack my memory for how I healed these reactions in the past, and in the desperate search, I step outside the emotional turmoil to witness this clear beam of truth: I’ve been here before.
The here echoes to several cringing experiences that have grasped at the goal of flawless skin and backfired into an outraged revolt.
I’ve been here before.
I’ve done this to myself before.
This is a pronounced pattern that propels an external reaction to an internal system of misbeliefs.
I am well acquainted with the context of these misbeliefs.
The scripts have been reviewed, revised, and rewritten. The stories circulate around my sensitivity, feeling safe in my sensitivity, and radiating confident ease in my skin, in my moment-to-moment expression.
I live in a sensitive body. I am a highly sensitive person. My skin swiftly speaks up about my stresses, and I fear others seeing me in these visible vulnerabilities.
I’ve been here before.
I curse. I complain. I cry.
And with the appearance of resistance, there’s the invitation for surrender.
Grace finds me here.
Here in the familiar of self-sabotage, grace streams gentleness through a spirited redirect on this repeated experience.
The repetition of lessons does not mean I am a failure or that I am failing to learn.
The reoccurrence of lessons shapes into spiritual opportunities to integrate the information I have gleaned and redetermine how I mindfully respond this time, and how I choose to compassionately proceed.
I reset my mind: I don’t need to pass the test, to squash and slay that life lesson as if in the rush of a relentless race.
In each looping, I arrive to encounter new nuances and fresh complexities to that particular lesson.
The skin and the healing happening with my relationship to my skin, with how I care for my skin, my emotions, my body, reflect and revolve around core life lessons that have been present with me since the beginning of my incarnation, and I sense will be with me throughout this gallop on earth.
Radical self-love.
The lessons show where and how I can cultivate greater love.
And the only work is internal work.
My inner calm influences the outer world. So the vibrancy of self-acceptance shines through skin I soften into loving. I see the self-sabotaging pattern in brighter understanding and implement relaxation techniques to cultivate a peace that provokes a kindness in my internal noticing and speech.
So when I look in the mirror, I meet myself, in breath-enlivened compassion. Through the meeting, there’s a befriending that beautifies the shadow.
Our loudest insecurities, our deepest pain-points, our rockiest routes – especially the ones in familiar terrain – beckon as passages to transformation, of deeper and lusher becoming.
And there is no end point. This is the journey, a continuous cycle recycling and rinsing and rising in possibilities to learn, live into those learnings, and love expansively.
The ripple of a reaction across my foreheads and cheeks calls for a practice of courageous tenderness. No matter the condition of my skin, I exist and exude in the living truth of my shared divinity and that I am whole, loved, and worthy of loving.
This is a sacred lesson I look forward to better befriending.