Kathy's healing journey evolved into an adventure of curiosity, compassion and building a healing community. Kathy leads with her heart and helps transform any healing journey into one that honors beauty, love and gratitude. As the founder of LEM, Kathy is active in creating content for the membership site, as well as dreaming up events and work-shops to celebrate the community as it grows!
“Beyond physiological needs (hunger, thirst, sleep, shelter), fundamental human needs include attention, affection, appreciation, and acceptance. Our emotions (both comfortable and otherwise) derive from needs.
When we perceive that our physical and psychological needs are met, we feel comfort, pleasure, and happiness. When we perceive that our physical and psychological needs are not met, we feel distress, pain, and sadness. When pain-based or unmet needs are stored rather than resolved, it often leads to anxiety, hostility, guilt, and eventually depression.
Contemplate and define what needs are not being met in your important relationships. Once they are identified, you can not only strive to have your needs met but also resolve any stressful emotions.”
— Mary Beth Janssen
From an excerpt from The Book of Self-Care – remedies for healing mind, body, and soul -I highly encourage you to pick up her book and bathe in it with some bubble bath of curiosity. Let’s put our focus here for now, ”You cannot only strive to have your needs met but also resolve any stressful emotions.”
If there were an action (a ‘to do’) at the LEM Self-Care Center, the invitation is just this…Going Inside. I personally engage in the Center with some of these ‘to do’s’ as examples…
For visual sake, here are lots of selfies taken over the years while tending to my inner landscapes…inspired by my MS alarm. Shadows and light, not afraid of the depths (most of the time)
Attention – I love to practice seeking attention from within. I have spent the majority of my life seeking attention from the outside in. I now sit and attend to emotions, feelings, thoughts, new ideas and perspective that come about when I engage with attending to my inner needs at the Center, as an example. Maybe it’s spending time in the water room, meditating. Or in the wood room, connecting over tea and new questions with someone. Or my favorite, the Earth room, engaging with my creativity. Whether it’s meditating, forest bathing, soul-conversation full of self-reflecting, or a brilliant event at the Center, I am continually seeking a healthier version of attending to the self through experiences, with others and especially on my own.
Affection – I look to give myself and my loved-ones affection in new ways. As an example, I love using the 5 Love Languages to create conversation around new ways to meet affection needs. I love me some words of affirmation with a little quality time and gifts sprinkled in there, whether I am giving it to myself, or asking Jake for a fill up. Like a plant that you haven’t watered in a long time, asking for words of affirmation without filling yourself up first, runs right through you.
Appreciation – One of my favorite things to do in the Center is to write myself a love note or a note of encouragement. I can ask Jake and the kids all day for words of appreciation, but it becomes an addiction when I need and crave them outside myself. It sets my loved ones up for a disaster, this I have learned for sure;) The first time I wrote myself a letter it was at a Soul Song workshop with the beautiful Susan Glavin. There is nothing quite like getting a letter from yourself, just when you need it most! It’s a brilliant experience!
Acceptance – Self-love and care for me is the practice of, acceptance as I am. I invite change, but always in the practice of loving what is. To play in feelings of vulnerability when trying something different. To feel into when I am feeling uncomfortable and want to go to my M.O. of blame and separation. I am seeking deeper understanding of who I am through what I feel rather what I am told about me and what I should door feel.
When these 4 A’s (attention, affection, appreciation, and acceptance) are not attended to, they start to affect my physiological needs and vice versa. Maybe the alarm to go within comes in the form of sleeplessness or an appetite change. Or maybe my appetite or sleep is changed by an unmet need within? It’s for you to explore and uncover if there is a call and a curiosity. I find replenishing feelings of comfort and pleasure when I engage in self-care. I invite you to explore your own terrain if this resonates with you at all:)
Images on the left remind me of the frustration, sadness and judgement I used to practice. The images on right bring feelings of pleasure, curiosity and admiration. I’ve learned to create feelings of wholeness by bringing love and compassion to the versions of me that feared to be seen and loved…the versions of me that tried many numbing tactics (and finally physically numbed) as to not feel the discomfort of change and feeling.
