I am feeling a overwhelming amount of emotions, and I can’t stop crying. I just discovered Gabrielle Bernstein and, this may not make sense, but I feel like I found my future self. I was listening to the latest episode of Jay Shetty and he had her on, and now I just listened to one of her episodes from her podcast “Dear Gabby,” and I just keep crying, but not out of sadness… I feel like it’s almost out of gratitude? I am just feeling like I meant to stumble upon her.

She said she has several self-help books and she wrote them within her journey and she felt that her readers would benefit from being on that journey. I keep going back and forth about writing a book and thinking that I have to do it once I’m “fully healed,” but we aren’t really ever fully healed, are we? Life keeps going, new stresses and traumas come about, we just learn to navigate and develop new ways to self-soothe.

The ideal self-soothing techniques would be tuned into self-growth, rather than self-destruction, which is exactly what I am trying to do now. I am actively trying to give myself grace and remind myself that I am human, and I think a lot of people could also benefit from doing this. Being hard on ourselves doesn’t necessarily help us; sure, it’s good to expect more from yourself, but not to the point where you break yourself down to nothing.

We deserve to love ourselves, and the more love we have for our authentic selves, the more we can love others. The world would be such a better place if everyone looked at people though the lens of love and empathy, because instead of judging and being critical, we’d be welcoming and understanding. People can do much more together than apart.