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Katherine Mansfield, from a letter to Dorothy Brett (May 1922)

Kostas Karyotakis, tr. by Kimon Friar, from Modern Greek Poetry; “I Saw This Night,”

Anne Sexton, A Self-Portrait in Letters

- Evelyn Waugh, from Brideshead Revisited (1945)

Anne Sexton, from a letter featured in Anne Sexton; A Self-Portrait In Letters

I think it’s important to walk w compassion and love . Sometimes it’s easy to internalise that compassion and love is just reserved for other people but it’s not. Sometimes what we need more than ever is our very own love and understanding. To fill our own cup. To be loved by ourself. To be understood by ourself. To be cherished like a gift. To eat good food. To rest. To consciously choose to be surrounded by good people who uplift you. Life can be cruel. People can be cruel (unknowingly and knowingly), it helps to remember you are your longest best friend. Make sure there’s compassion and love for you.

I genuinely think that any change in behavior starts w telling yourself that your worst days, worst performances, just worst moments in general aren’t who you “truly are.” It’s all about unlearning any thought process that essentially chalks up traits you aren’t proud of to “this is who I really am” “in reality I’m lazy” “in reality I’m just a bad person” bc not only is that never true, but it impedes your efforts to try to do better as well. Anything we struggle with has roots in things like childhood trauma, thoughts you’ve been fed before, your upbringing…. but never that you’re inherently a bad person. What I’m learning this year is that a lot of us doing better & being better & improving really comes down to self-talk—to disavowing the very notion that deep down we’re simply bad.

you're not stuck. it's not over. you can claw yourself out again and again. find strength in yourself. find strength in others whom you can trust. the fight isn't over until you're dead.

ketzal_coatl

— Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

what they dont tell you about growing up as a very lonely little girl is that you grow up and still a part of you remains that very lonely little girl

Pearl (2022)