Yes, It's Your Responsibility To Heal. But You Know What? It's Okay To Be Angry About It. It's Okay To

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I am going to see my dad today. He is still on the ventilator and probably will be for the next few days.

I am not ready to lose a parent.

I have hope that the hospital he’s at now can fix this. But I am still scared and overwhelmed.

Having a traumatic childhood means you cannot talk even objectively about your basic foundational experiences without it being "venting", even if you're not actually venting. You just straight up have a huge chunk of your life you can't talk about, full stop, without it being trauma dumping.

And it not being socially acceptable to talk about your own childhood is super alienating. Sometimes people want to know why, and any answer you can give them is going to be off putting.

It's to the point I get irritated when something I said is framed as venting when I'm literally just talking about my life experiences, doing my best to keep emotion out of it.

Powerful stuff here. One of the biggest things for me was realizing that I had been in survival mode for years, something that kept me from developing close friendships with others during my teen years and early 20s. There is some interest now, but time also has moved on.

Reminder that you're actually interesting. Your hobbies are interesting, your interests are interesting, you are important and loveable and people appreciate you. You're just a loveable, interesting person.

This is new to me. Sure, asking someone not to talk about certain subjects seemed obvious, but the rest? Nobody ever really told me what a boundary can be, nor did I feel like I could do some of the things mentioned.

This #SelfCareSunday wisdom comes from "Raising Good Humans" by Hunter Clarke-Fields (a book about parenting with some really great sections on mindfulness and self-care). I really love the simple way she explains setting boundaries as establishing what your needs are. This topic has been kind of tricky for me in the past, so I appreciate the reframing to help me understand it better. As I've made a comic about previously, my chosen theme for this year is being a cycle breaker, and setting boundaries plays a huge role in that. A hard cycle to break is "people-pleasing" and putting others' needs first at the expense of one's own well-being. I'm hoping to work on that this year!

you will live and you will say the wrong things and make mistakes and people will love you anyways.

Credit: @dissociativedaydreamer

a normal and average sunday consists of lying on the ground thinking about how much I'd like to go back and do everything again because this time I'd do everything right