Struggling to Meet the Forgivemyself Challenge: I am already forgiven

There is rain tapping away on the back porch and flooding in cool air. I have a week of rain ahead of me, which under some circumstances would give me the blues, but instead it has turned me inward. I’ve been working on finishing all those things that I have procrastinated on.

One of those things is the #forgivemyself challenge which @riverflows nominated me for. I procrastinated on this because I read a few excellent posts which honestly broke down deep feelings and told interesting life stories. I can’t do any of that, because there is nothing I feel needs forgiving.

That sounded really arrogant.

This is my personality type. It is not that I don’t have bad memories, failures, and things that I wish I had done differently, but I don’t hold it against myself. If you are a believer in astrology, then for my sign this makes sense. My main astrological trait is that I’m moody. I can terrorize myself about something, and then the wind changes. Being fickle certainly has its upsides.

Recently I was trying to explain to children why it is that we don’t tear the house to shreds and act like maniacs. I was groping for words. The one I found was “respect”, but I couldn’t define it. Google advised me:

We treat our toys and possessions with respect because we deeply admire their functionality.

"I deeply admire having a glass to drink out of, therefore don’t get hyper and bounce off the walls, causing my glass to bounce off the ceramic tile. You deeply admire your toy vehicles for their ability to entertain you, so don’t break them."

I deeply admire my functionality. And staying fully functional for me requires release, often times immediately.

I’m starting to sound like a rather immoral character—the sort of person that has no remorse for bad actions. Untrue. I definitely have remorse, sometimes extremely, but usually the wind changes after a period of time. I remember that I am not a perfect person and can’t expect to act like one. The best way for me to honor a screw up, and to immediately forgive it, is to commit to change the action that caused it. My primary job in life at present is being a mother, and this absorbs most of my time and therefore creates my internal conflicts. There have been so many nights (I am grateful I cannot remember the number) that I sat up regretting losing my temper, or not doing all that I could, not paying enough attention, not… And I cry, and I feel terrible, and then I always vow to make a change. Sometimes the change comes slowly, but that vow to change is the token of forgiveness.

A somewhat flawed bouquet of flowers picked by a toddler.

But where is it that the respect for one’s self comes from? Do some people earn it? Is it something that is gleaned from having a happy, supportive childhood? Or is it innate? It must be different for all people, but I think mine is innate. Again, back to that shifty astrology stuff, I’m pretty sure this life philosophy is another common trait for my sign.

I don’t mean to imply that people that need to find forgiveness don’t respect themselves, this is simply my mechanism, and every spirit is unique.

There are some things about my character that I would like to improve upon: Being less mediocre, pressing on when the going gets tough, calming down my short temper, holding myself carefully to my moral standards, reducing negative thinking, having stronger willpower…

I am a flawed human. I forgive myself for all these failures, and now that this prompt got me to list them, I need to make a point of vowing to improve upon them.

I’m not sure I followed the basic guidelines for this challenge. I need to add “improve following directions” onto the list above.

Here’s a picture of this flawed but forgiven human well embellished by no makeup, no contacts, post-dog walk in the rain, and very flawed lighting (but you just don't care about lighting post-dog walking in the rain):

This is the work of a flawed phone. I dropped my phone and cracked the little selfie window. (Note to self – Must be gentler with electronics)