Taking More Gentle Care of Our Selves 


Though we rarely get much support and encouragement for it in the so-called real world, taking the very best care of our selves is our first responsibility to all beings on this planet. When we are being loving, tender, kind, gentle, forgiving and emotionally generous with our selves, we are filling our deepest selves with rich nourishment. Click to Continue…
The more fully we nourish our selves, the more likely it is that we will have abundant, healthy energy with which to grow our selves; energy that we can then radiate and share with all the beings and creatures around us.

Finding time and ways to listen inward to our deep selves and learning to trust what we hear inside of us are at the beginning of this practice. Talking lovingly to our selves, making time and safe space to be with all our feelings – happy, sad, grieving, confused, joyful, angry, rageful, goofy, bratty – are essential. Treating our selves as lovingly as we would treat anyone else we truly cared about is the path.

 Choose the card below that speaks to you in this moment.

Feeling Not Ready
Kristen Ruth Smith Kristen Ruth Smith

Feeling Not Ready

Giving our selves permission to let opportunities pass when their timing feels wrong for us, knowing that Spirit will continue to send us more/better opportunities until one that feels just right shows up.

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Beginnings and Endings
Kristen Ruth Smith Kristen Ruth Smith

Beginnings and Endings

Acknowledging that beginnings inevitably involve endings, we come to understand, to honor and to embrace the intertwining of grief and joy that we experience at such thresholds.

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Be Gentle with Your Self
Kristen Ruth Smith Kristen Ruth Smith

Be Gentle with Your Self

Choosing to become curious witness-observers exploring the intricacies of our own ways of being, feeling and doing allows us to become more gentle and generous 
toward our selves.

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Our Slowest Parts
Kristen Ruth Smith Kristen Ruth Smith

Our Slowest Parts

Choosing to listen to the quieter voice deep within that asks for us to go only as fast as the slowest part of us feels safe to go – so that we may be more gentle and cherishing of our tender selves.

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Not Pushing Our Selves
Kristen Ruth Smith Kristen Ruth Smith

Not Pushing Our Selves

Honoring the vulnerable parts of our selves by committing to listening to, comforting and providing for them whatever they need in order feel safe to move forward when they're fearful.

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Celebrating Our Selves
Kristen Ruth Smith Kristen Ruth Smith

Celebrating Our Selves

Honoring the courage it takes to risk living in the middle of our healing journey – learning to love, accept, know and enjoy our inmost selves – in a world that does not support or value this choice.

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Letting Go of Goals
Kristen Ruth Smith Kristen Ruth Smith

Letting Go of Goals

Framing more broad open-ended intentions (instead of specific goals, affirmations, visualizations) as a way of honoring that we may not yet know what's really right for the who-we-are-becoming.

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Making Room for Feelings
Kristen Ruth Smith Kristen Ruth Smith

Making Room for Feelings

Committing our selves to making room to safely feel all of our feelings, no matter how "extreme, unreasonable, immature, not like our selves" we or others may think they are.

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Feeling Confused
Kristen Ruth Smith Kristen Ruth Smith

Feeling Confused

Reminding our confused/doubting selves to stop doing, thinking, talking, figuring; remembering, instead, to take breaks, to make time to be still, to listen inward for 
the knowing in our belly feelings.

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Not Berating Yourself
Kristen Ruth Smith Kristen Ruth Smith

Not Berating Yourself

Opening our hearts to embrace our less than perfect selves with generosity and compassion, knowing that this is what will grow us, open us to deeper knowing 
and help us to heal our woundedness.

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Too Much Work
Kristen Ruth Smith Kristen Ruth Smith

Too Much Work

Recognizing when something we're engaged in is no longer (or not from the get-go) nourishing or enlivening to us; finding permission to stop or not to start engaging in these processes that feel like "too much work.”

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Being Yourself
Kristen Ruth Smith Kristen Ruth Smith

Being Yourself

Valuing the riches and rewards of learning how to enjoy being with our very own selves.

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Accepting Who You Are
Kristen Ruth Smith Kristen Ruth Smith

Accepting Who You Are

Discovering that as we come to value our own ways of being, no one else has much trouble with these ways.

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Feeling Frightened
Kristen Ruth Smith Kristen Ruth Smith

Feeling Frightened

Becoming more gentle, loving and generous with our frightened selves, especially when it appears "there's nothing to be afraid of.”

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Feeling Not Safe
Kristen Ruth Smith Kristen Ruth Smith

Feeling Not Safe

Valuing our inner timetables enough not to move forward with anything (however inviting) for which we don't yet feel ready or safe enough.

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Loving Yourself Unconditionally
Kristen Ruth Smith Kristen Ruth Smith

Loving Yourself Unconditionally

Accepting that the dismantling of self-hatred is always an inside job and then devoting our selves to a daily practice of compassionately, unconditionally 
and fiercely re-mothering our selves.

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Giving That Depletes You
Kristen Ruth Smith Kristen Ruth Smith

Giving That Depletes You

Finding permission to give to our own selves the exquisite devotional caring we all too often give away to others (who also need to learn to give this kind of caring to
their own selves).

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