❤️ Patience

Greetings from Oxford, where I have now settled in and getting ready for term to start. This week I have been reflecting on emotions that take unusually long to resolve.

Sometimes, emotional problems are a quick fix. You know exactly what went wrong. And then you fix it. Done.

But other times, some emotions can take days, weeks, and even months to resolve. Possibly even years.

Take the pattern of niceness, which I have had for as long as I can remember. My earliest memories are trying to be "nice" even as a 9 year old, with the intention of keeping peace between my family members fighting. I am 27 today, and I still am discovering and undoing these patterns.

The same goes for larger emotional problems - those involving deep heartbreak, shaming and isolation, or some deep rooted trauma.

So here's my invitation for you: can you use this perspective to be more patient with yourself? Are you trying to unfix years worth of patterns in a few days. Are you applying a compassionate timeline to your healing and your growth?

Every moment you rush is a moment you miss to heal.

I wish you all the patience and compassion in the world.