A friend of mine was once criticized by another about her style of parenting. She was understandably upset and as we were in a group setting at the time we asked her to elaborate on what had been said.
We listened with love and a lot of compassion for how hard it must have been for her to take in the criticism, which was not offered in an accountable or constructive manner.
Then a very wise friend of mine asked so very very kindly, ‘have you ever had any of those thoughts about yourself?’
‘Yes!’ My friend responded. And the emotion really came to the surface. It was much more painful to see how she saw herself than to be with what another thought.
In sharing openly, she was able to take the criticism back inside to meet her own self-talk. And from there she was able to work on how she treats herself. She found her power there.
In reality nobody can ever say to us anything we haven’t already said to ourselves. Usually we have just done a good job of hiding it.
All we can really do in the strange, beautiful and unpredictable world is deepen our relationship with ourselves so that when those words come, we are strong enough in our self-compassion, our undefendedness and our ability to be with ourselves and we get to be more empowered rather than more deeply disempowered.
And we might (might) even end up thanking the other person for bringing to our attention a deep layer of self-criticism and self-abandonment. Might. Remember even a centimetre counts.
❤️
About Hollie
