Time Heals...

The oldest cliches are often the truest, even if it takes us so much time to realise how true they are. I keep realising one of them more every day these days. 

Time heals. It's true, and it couldn't be truer for me than now. I can sense time making every hardship just a tiny bit easier on me. I can feel it within the healing journey I have been taking for over a year now. Time heals. It stretches the pain and loosens the grip of anxieties and fears which hold us captive for long periods of time. It is proof that we will make it, because we have made it through before. Time heals. It is a coping mechanism that makes us willing to be patient, as long as the pain will slowly fade with it (time). It is all about hope and faith, the hope that tomorrow will be better and the faith to keep going because the people around us love and cherish us. Time heals, and if it doesn't heal, it makes us get used to the pain.

But it does heal, one way or another.

I haven't got enough time to ponder the things I love about myself today, so I will first write the things I am grateful for:

1. I am grateful for empathy.
2. I am grateful for my good health. Nothing ever beats being healthy!
3. I am grateful for my wisdom to know that I have been through hardships before and I can get through these too.
4. I am grateful for the personality shift in me. It is teaching me millions of things.
5. I am grateful for Mama and her beautiful spirit and amazing humour.
6. I am grateful for the in-depth conversations with Taha.
7. I am grateful for the desire to have kids, which I thought I would never ever have in my life.
8. I am grateful for being closer to Allah, even though I am still so flawed but I try.
9. I am grateful for the sunshine, as well as the rainy days, and the beautiful weather of the UK
10. I am grateful for slowly learning how to get myself out of the selective memory and the nostalgia to go back to Egypt

Resolutions and Gratitude

Resolutions are a fantastic opportunity for us to start over, not on New Years' Eve, but on any eve. They give us second chances. Endless chances, to be precise.

Things to be grateful for:

1. The breath. That deep, deep breath.
2. Being able to stand in the kitchen and make breakfast and lunch and desserts.
3. Grateful for being present.
4. Grateful for anxiety. Without anxiety I would've never known who I truly am and strived to be the best version of mysef.
5. Grateful for technology during times like this.
6. Grateful for being healthy.
7. Grateful for thoughts, whether real ones or intrusive ones. They teach me so much through pain.
8. Grateful for love. The healing power of love. For having people around me who love me.
9. Grateful for water and especially clean water.
10. Grateful for the clean air we breathe.

Self-love and the Other 100 Things

There is something that is as important as self-love. It is this ability to see the beautiful things you have in life at the darkest hours of your soul. It is being able to look darkness in the eye and tell her, "I still have things I am a hundred times more grateful for than being scared of your existence." Gratitude, love, and courage are more powerful than fear and the accompanying intrusive thoughts that come with it. Gratitude gives you inner peace. Love gives you the courage to hold on to life. Courage gives you the confidence to realise that you can.

Next to the 100 things I love about myself that I am writing, I have also decided to write 100 things I am grateful for. For the latter, it should be a lot easier than the former. So let's start today's list.

Today's 5 things I love about myself (reached 50!):

1. I love the routine I have been able to do in the morning.
2. I love how much faith I have in realising new solutions to existing problems all the time.
3. I love the progress I made throughout this past year, and how it made me love myself more.
4. I love how much I've grown over the years to be a better version of myself.
5. I love how I am always capable of bringing my true self out of the very bad moods I experience every week, hell, every day even.

Today's 10 things I am grateful for:

1. I am grateful for Taha, for how amazing he is, how he's always there for me, always fighting my negative thoughts with me, always pushing me to do the things I love. His sole existence is my backbone.
2. I am grateful for my family, for how much we've all changed to be by each other's side, for how much they love me and I love them.
3. I am grateful for my beautiful, supportive friends who are always there for me.
4. I am grateful for having left Egypt, after years of pursuing that.
5. I am grateful for being in the UK and having achieved so much in just about two years.
6. I am grateful for finding meanings in life in the most immaterial things, like inner peace, love, compassion and self-compassion, and self-fulfillment. 
7. I am grateful for having a sister in the UK who listens to my thoughts and allows me to be myself.
8. I am grateful for Allah. For His presence in my life.
9. I am grateful for prayers and their healing power.
10. I am grateful for being able to recognise right from wrong.

Self-love and Gratitude

1. I love my excitement when I talk about the things I am most passionate about.
2. I love the way I speak.
3. I love how sometimes I improvise pieces of advice to the people I love and it actually helps them with whatever they are going through.
4. I love how capable I am of knowing when to talk and when to shut up, when listening to someone's suffering.
5. I love how much I am becoming okay with the changes in me.

Can we choose to say الحمد لله for every time we feel negative? Can we choose to say it in the face of every negative thought?

I am not particularly in a lovey-dovey mood today. الحمد لله

I am not exactly okay with the thoughts I get upon waking up every single day. الحمد لله

I am not in the mood to cook nor eat nor do any house choirs. الحمد لله

I am not feeling great about my life in elghorba. الحمد لله

I am feeling anxious about having kids and raising kids in this country. الحمد لله

I am not at all feeling present today. الحمد لله

Negativity and Self-love

Negativity. This awful feeling you fight every morning, in order to get out of bed and do what's worth living for, rather than drowning in the awful thoughts of worthlessness. Negativity really makes you think that the content of the thoughts in your head is of importance, while it is the feeling of negativity that brings all these thoughts which otherwise would have never existed if we weren't that gloomy and just, negative. The thoughts themselves are of absolutely no importance at all.

I have been trying to understand why I am feeling so grumpy and irritable for many days of the week, and I keep realising that it is because I have become such a negative person who doesn't see any optimism on the horizon that I am so grumpy. Pessimism and negativity are integral in anxiety, and they seem to be best friends who never get separated. This is exactly why gratitude lists come in handy, because they tell us about the good things in life. They tell us that when we think good thoughts, optimism fills our hearts and we become more at ease with the universe, accepting all that is possible and all that could be. This is why I come to write about the things I love about myself. I want to remind myself of the beauty inside me so that I can have more confidence to face whatever life will throw at me.

I was raised to believe that Allah tests those whom He loves the most. So I thought that in order for me to be loved by Him, I must be tested somehow. This is wrong on all levels. Allah loves us unconditionally because He is Allah. We don't have to be tested with so much difficulty to be loved by Allah or to earn our place in Jannah. 

May we live to learn from the mistakes of those around us and not let our beliefs fool others.

Today I came with absolutely nothing in mind for my 4th 10 things I love about myself. But let's see how I will do with improvisation:

1. I love how thorough I am when it comes to searching for something Taha and I are looking for, whether a flat to move into or any information we need.
2. I love how hard I have worked to get closer to Mama and develop a better relationship with her as her daughter, after years of burdening her with my craziness.
3. I love how conscious I am about my feelings, my thoughts, and my emotions.
4. I love how much I don't really care about all the mainstream trends and fashions, and just follow my own fashion.
5. I love how responsible I am financially and how I am always able to give even when I don't have much.
6. I love how I try so hard to see the good in people and in life, no matter how negative I can be sometimes.
7. I love how I made myself love reading.
8. I love how I was the reason for people to love reading, and how some people now see me as a role model for their kids to read.
9. I love how creative I can be in the kitchen when I am truly in the mood.
10. I love how sportive I want to be, and how I am always keen on trying new sports to take care of my health.

Self Love and Acceptance

You wake up realising you just literally have to accept whatever feelings and emotions visit you in the morning. You realise that is actually the only way for you to handle life right now: Acceptance. Acceptance brings peace and the ability to embrace whatever is keeping you awake at night. It helps you become aware of your feelings and emotions, and not be bothered by their existence. 

Acceptance heals through letting go of the anger and resentment. It is through self-love and being 'easy on yourself' that we achieve peace and quietude.

My self-love list is going to get more difficult by the day as I run out of things I love about myself. But the goal is to think and keep thinking of myself as a method of healing and loving myself as I am.

So here we go:

1. I love how much I care about people.
2. I love how much I love to listen.
3. I love the way I kiss Taha.
4. I love the way I make love to him and sometimes cry when my love for him just overfloods.
5. I love my attitude when it comes to working out and trying so hard to be healthy and fit.
6. I love that I am always open to new hobbies even if they don't last. 
7. I love how much I love smiling to strangers.
8. I love how much I'm willing to change the bad habits I have in order to make Taha and others around me happier.
9. I love how creative I am sometimes when it comes to problem-solving.
10. I love how calm I am. I just love how calm I can be when faced with something difficult or when others around me are faced with something difficult, because it allows me to be there for myself or for them.

Self-love

I don't particularly feel like talking about myself today. I just woke up feeling I wanted to live the day, is all. But my promise to myself remains, so here I am bravely coming to mention the second 10 things I love about myself.

1. I love how patient I am when it comes to many things in the house. When I'm in the mood to clean, I am very patient and precise.
2. I love that I am finding ways around writing after having abandoned creative writing for some time.
3. I love how I take care of myself and my look, particularly the dresses I wear at home, to attract Taha and make him want me more.
4. I love how I do the things that scare me even when I am having very bad anxieties. 
5. I love my fingers, I do, as silly as it sounds, but I love how musical they look and suit my piano playing.
6. I love my kindness. I can forgive so many things because I feel like kindness is the single most important trait to have in life.
7. I love how much I care about people and ask about their mental wellbeing even if mine isn't that great either. 
8. I love my hair.
9. I love my eyes, especially when I put on some eyeliner and look at myself in the mirror when I laugh.
10. I love how self-confident I am when it comes to work and negotiating my rates with clients. I don't give myself less than what I deserve.