Write a letter to your 100-year-old self.
I love a random blog prompt that fits with my ideas and who I am!
Sometimes we talk to ourselves in a way that we would never speak to our friends or family, thus hurting ourselves. We take a scenario that happened to us and get upset at ourselves and blame ourselves, but if we had a friend talk to us about the same thing we’d be more compassionate and loving.
In comes the practice of self compassion. I’ll expand on this in a few future posts as I’m exploring this with my clients and myself, but this is basically self explanatory – practicing compassion towards ourselves as we would to others!
When I work with my clients who are feeling down towards themselves or are being extremely harsh on themselves, I love practicing writing a letter to our future selves or loved ones. I will work with the client to choose a scenario they are struggling with and then they write a letter to someone as if they are supporting them through the same challenging scenario. The idea is you’re more likely to be kind to someone else than to yourself, and then we read the letter out loud and explore why we can’t consider these things for ourselves.
So I guess this is the perfect opportunity to practice what I preach!
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My dearest Kristina,
I can’t believe you’re turning 100 today! What a major achievement and to look at all the things you’ve done in your century of a lifetime is so amazing!
Most people would start with a celebration of work accomplishments but I think we should start with your self growth throughout your life time. You have gone through some hard struggles and have navigated very low mental health and high anxiety your whole life. But despite all this, you have taken the time to work through and find strategies and self compassion to remain soft, loving and bright🩷 You have not only taken time to work hard to support your Occupational Therapy clients, your family and friends, but yourself too. And that is incredibly hard.
Over your lifetime, you took time to make genuine connections with everyone you came into contact with, being supportive and kind, but also being truly you. You kept strong to your morals and ethics, and never let someone change who you were. You took peer pressure and pushed it to the side, always living your true essence, and that makes all the difference. You took time to learn the importance of rest, of self compassion and of the importance of holding yourself as a treasure.
As you turn 100, I hope you know that regardless of your accomplishments in this life, you are leaving a legacy of joy, of support and sunshine. You took your time to learn as much as you could, to bring joy as often as possible and to as many people as possible, and to create a safe environment around you. Whether you were a listening ear, providing a safe home to sleep in, giving someone a hug or a sandwich etc, you did the best you could to make people feel safe. And through all of that you worked so hard to make sure you could do that to yourself too.
I’m proud of you. I hope you can take time to remember all of the magic you created in this world! To 100 more years babe xo
Kristina ❤
Be Your Own Sunshine 