Still me, let’s see

With how quickly the first semester of 2025 has flown by, I’m grateful that I didn’t dive into the “new year, new me” trap.

So muchs happened that it feels like the last seven months were at least three and a half years long.

It’s not that I didn’t have dreams to focus on or goals that I wanted to reach. I rather opted to go into the year with an full prescription of extra kindness.

Kindness toward my inner child who had her parents (biological and not) scattered in different directions leaving her feeling a bit lost at times.

Kindness toward my inner professional who sometimes needed to do breathwork from the bathroom floor on the days where the feeling that there aren’t enough hours in the day to get to everything started to overwhelm her.

Kindness towards my inner student who wanted to accomplish more academically / technically but couldn’t muster the energy to focus on that after hours.

Kindness towards my inner artist who is surrounded by so many WIPs and is crippled with indecision about what to complete first.

Kindness towards my inner survivor who tries to manage anxiety, the lingering effects of medical trauma and chronic migraines with a sweet spirit but sometimes needs to slip on a porcelain mask of forced strength to keep those around from seeing how truly tired she is.

Kindness towards my fallible nature who repeated needs to consciously decide to endure prolonged frustration and uncertainty when het patience wears thinner with each passing day.

So with this theme ooming in the front of my mind, I’ve learned some things about the act of being kind:

1. It requires practice. Much like exercising a muscle to strengthen kindess a conscious commitment to do it.
2. The more one practices being to oneself the easier it becomes to be kind to others.
3. Being kind doesn’t require one to abandon their boundaries that protect one’s peace from external influence. One can be kind from behind those boundaries.

To quote Maya Angelou, ‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel’. Remember the “people” includes you – so be kind.