Finding the positives about each day

Right now there is a lot going on inside. There is a lot of talking back and forth, arguing, a lot of flashbacks. Therapy was so hard on Thursday night, and we're all reeling inside from it. Still cant talk about it. Just too much, too overwhelming.
But today, some good things happened anyway. And that is what I have to focus on. An old friend who I used to teach with called me. She moved far away, but we still talk on the phone a couple times a year, and today was the day. We talked for a good long time, catching up on each other's lives. I miss her so much. And it made me feel so much better to just be on the phone with her. I don't confide my secrets in her or anything-- our relationship isn't like that. But just to have someone familiar, that I've been friends with a long time, who knows a lot of the same stories I do, who teaches similar to how I do, who loves kids the way I do... it just really helps. Also, she had good news to share with me about some things going on in her life. And I needed to hear some good news SO badly. I was so happy to hear from her.
Finding the positive things about every day is so important to me. Every day each of us (even the 5 year old) looks for things that went right. I dont think we used to do this (it seems like I was raised by parents who have a glass-is-half-empty world view). It was something that my therapist got us started doing several years ago-- she made me keep a notebook, and write down 2 things every day that were positive or that I'd done well. It was really, really hard to do at first. For a while I even stopped doing it. It made it more dificult that the 5 year old kept tearing up the notebook every time she got angry, and we had to keep buying new ones.
But now finding positives comes really easily, and for that I'm grateful. It helps us keep on going every day. Even right now while Mae (the 5 year old) is having terrible flashbacks and spending hours crying inside, she's still finding pleasure in the rain or cuddling up with her dog. Its still a good world, no matter what people did to us or said to us. People can be real jerks, and lots of bad things happen, but we just try not to focus on that anymore. It wasted so much of our energy and just made us sadder. We have a part named Nobody who still does that, and she has no energy left for anything else. Those of us inside who have been able to look for positives every day, have found that we find the positives every day. We've noticed that we tend to find what we look for. In people and in the world.
[I wonder if that can also be true about whats inside us?]

Posted by pilgrim | Filed under:

1. Posted by donna on December 21, 2005