WINGS OF SELF-LOVE: Inspiration For Women In Crisis by Martha Trowbridge

For those of us who've suffered great indignities, for those of us who feel our lives have been a thorny string of shaming and humiliating experiences, for those of us who were conditioned since our earliest days to despise and degrade our selves, self-love may seem impossible.

Add to this the emotional, mental, physical and [likely] financial straits in which we may be trapped. WHAT about ourselves could we possibly love?

An excellent, perhaps puzzling question -- the answers to which your depression hopes you'll never find.

For once it sets in, to gain a stronghold and sustain itself, depression literally feeds on your sense of un-love-ability. Your sense of powerlessness. Your negative self-regard. And your sense of hopelessness. [1]

When you are feeling your lowest, your need for positive self-regard is greatest.

It's the time when you most need your Wings of Self-Love.

The magnificent Wings your Spirit sprouts in response to wholehearted self-love.

Genuine self-loving means thoroughly loving your self, despite failures, exhaustion, misery, indignities, financial straits, hysteria, aging, grief, relational or random violence, shame, terror, unbearable stress, loneliness, degradation, unhealthy weight gain or loss, depression, anxiety, dependency, humiliation, hopelessness, anxiety, serious physical illness, insults, depression, marital conflict, madness, broken body or Spirit, affronts, dysfunctionality, homelessness, greying, inner and outer bruises, heartbreak, disappointment and despair.

It requires your absolute refusal to succumb to forces that wish to overpower you -- especially those forces [2] that have the power to threaten your sanity.

It means total, unwavering belief in the innate goodness and value that each of us precious women harbor within us.

Daunting requirements, indeed, when getting out of bed feels like more than you can manage.

Constructing Your Wings Of Self-Love

Each of us, no mattered how shattered, how hopeless, how impoverished, how depleted, or how homeless we may now be, can construct glorious Wings for our weary Spirits. Wings we construct from our genuine self-love efforts.

The first, middle, and ever-eternal process

by which you build -- and sustain -- your magnificent Wings

is genuine self-love.

Yet, dys-Spirited as you feel, how do you begin? And where??

Self-Love begins with creating and sustaining

proper environs for your weary Spirit.

If I were a woman who wagered, I would bet that prior to the onset of your depression, the state of your Spirit within you was far from blissful.

I would also hazard the guess that you were -- and may still be -- unaware of the precariousness of your state of Spirit.

Yet, if you identify with any of the dys-Spirit descriptors I have thus far set forth, you are in crisis. A Crisis of Spirit, which requires your immediate and dedicated attention.

If you are considerably depressed, you are in crisis.

Accept and absorb this fact. It is the beginning of your genuine self-love overture, and of your transmutation into The Woman You Were Born To Be! [3]

Because you are in crisis, crisis-management is in order. Understand this -- without shame, without panic.

From this moment on, you must dedicate your entire self to respecting, honoring, and healing your Spirit. Let no one interfere, negate, minimize the value of, or ridicule your self-dedication. [4]

To move out of, above, and forever beyond your crisis, with all your heart, you must focus upon the primary goal of your crisis-management:

Throughout your sufferings, somehow, you must keep your Spirit alive.

Yet, given the weakened, hopeless, and 'hysterical' [5] state in which we shattered women find our selves, how is that possible?

It is as simple as this: You establish your Spirit's well-being as your absolute number-one priority.

Any Spirit,

no matter its state,

can be resuscitated

when

at all costs,

in every situation,

that Spirit is protected,

nurtured,

embraced,

and celebrated

by the woman in whom it dwells.

NOTES

1. I use the term 'sense' here, because the 'beliefs' and feelings we depressed women hold are merely -- yet oh so strongly -- the by-product of the chaotic, terrifying condition of our Inner Universe. Depression symptomizes this unbearably painful disorder. Ironically, embedded within these 'senses' and feelings lies great Wisdom: for depression speaks volumes to us about the serious state of our Inner Universe. Hearken! ... Faithfully practice genuine self-love, re-construct your sacred Inner Universe, and lo and behold! the sirens and alarm-bells of depression will quiet, and fade away; and no longer will you harbor painful, terrifying self-'beliefs' or feelings.

2. Whatever is going on around you, or within you.

3. The Woman You Were Born To Be is the fabulous, scintillating woman who, given your life's history, never had the chance to fully evolve. To discover how to discover her, please see my 'picture' book, The Woman You Were Born To Be, Copyright 2005 Martha Trowbridge. http://www.marthatrowbridge.org

4. If you are routinely exposed to significant others who threaten -- and extinguish -- your Rebirth efforts, your WingsWork [Rebirth work, utilizing genuine self-love efforts] can be done in total privacy! This is what I had to do ... and in fact, it created a wonderful secret I held dearly within me. I felt like a young, impish girl. It was wondrous!

5. I use this term 'tongue-in-cheek': rather than consider hysteria as pathological, in my opinionhysteria, like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, is a legitimate, logical, Spirit-protective response to overwhelming traumatic stressors. It is your deepest self screaming out in terror atall the negativity, chaos and pain it is facing. Your self, desperate for your attention, your self-compassion, and for your healing responses.