All Parts of Me

(Written in February 2010)
I’ve been having this odd thought — it comes from some of the passages I’ve written describing myself as a wonderful person: “lovely, loving, creative, generous…” I’d be ashamed to read those passages to someone — they seem like the most horrible form of “bragging”, of “thinking I’m so great.” But they were written out of an honest and compelling experience/realization. And intellectually I can see that from some perspective they are true. I hold that version of me next to how I’m feeling now: tired, depressed, struggling, and I can’t make them fit.
It was good to talk to Elizabeth. I read her quite a lot from Resource — she said she enjoyed it. I read her the piece describing me as “lovely, loving, creative, generous…” and asked if that sounded like me. She said “Yes… but it’s not all of you.” That really shifted something. Of course. I’m not just that, I’m all the others too: the Astronomy teacher, the tough little drip, the wounded ones. The “radiant one” is perhaps my soul, I serve her, and I sometimes get to embody her, but the wounded ones are also parts of me, parts that I serve by working on healing.