Please Be Gentle With Yourself

Summary

The website content encourages readers to embrace self-compassion and gentleness as essential aspects of true strength and resilience.

Abstract

The article titled "Please Be Gentle With Yourself" emphasizes the importance of self-gentleness in a world that often promotes harshness and self-criticism. It suggests that allowing oneself to soften and be vulnerable is a sign of true strength, akin to the flexibility that prevents fracturing under stress. The author, Maia Thom, draws from personal experience to illustrate how love and friendship can teach us to be soft and to embrace our sensitive hearts. She argues that by being gentle with ourselves, we cultivate resilience and the ability to thrive, rather than merely survive. The piece concludes with an invitation to the reader to recognize their own beauty and divinity, and to practice self-love by honoring and celebrating their own qualities.

Opinions

The prevailing societal norms encourage harshness and self-neglect, which is detrimental to personal well-being.
True strength is found in the ability to adapt and be supple, rather than being rigid in body or thought.
Self-gentleness is equated with the capacity to rest and to balance periods of exertion with relaxation, mirroring the natural cycles of expansion and contraction.
The author believes that those who are truly strong have learned to soften and to receive love and compassion, which is often facilitated through loving relationships.
The article suggests that self-compassion is not only beneficial but also necessary for personal growth and resilience, likening the self to an inner garden that requires tending.
The author encourages readers to see themselves through the eyes of those who love them, fostering self-acceptance and self-love.

Permission to soften

Please be gentle with yourself You are a work of art

Please be gentle. How often in life have we been taught the opposite? To be harsh, to push ourselves to excel, to push our bodies to the brink or else we’re seen as not working hard enough. To live in a world that glorifies violence is to live in a world that teaches us to betray ourselves.

Please be gentle. How long have you longed to hear those words? How long have you waited for an invitation to soften? How long have you yearned for someone to honour your sensitive heart?

I waited for most of my life. It came first in the sacred space of friendship, in a space filled with a kind of compassion I didn’t yet know how to receive. It came in stubborn love, in friends who chose to love me through my tough exterior, who were patient enough to stay until the walls came down.

Love teaches us what it means to be soft. When we are harsh, when we are sharp and angry and edged in fear, we are stuck in a mode of survival. To thrive, we must learn to soften. We must learn to rest. The exhale follows the inhale, contraction follows expansion, night follows day with a stunning consistency and so, too, must we breathe. Those who are truly strong have learned the value of learning to soften. Those who are truly strong humble themselves enough to receive.

Strong spirit, wild heart, open mind.

True strength is not rigid in body nor in thought; if it were, it would fracture upon receiving impact at the wrong angle. True strength is supple enough to adapt. True strength is resilient. When you are gentle with yourself, you can grow to be more resilient in the face of life’s challenges because you are tending to your inner garden rather than merely poking at weeds.

You are good enough, as you are, here. More than that: you are beautiful. You are divine.

So. Please be gentle with yourself — you are a work of art. You are more than worthy of a life that honours all of who you are.

A gentle nudge: sit with yourself for a few minutes today. Contemplate one quality you find beautiful in yourself, either external or internal, and honour it. Celebrate it. See yourself for a moment as those who love you do and let yourself receive your own love.

As a poet, writer, and artist, Maia Thom works with words to create spaces for people to breathe and come home to themselves. In 2020, she published her first anthology, Kitchen Table Talks: Simple Reminders + Thoughts on Life. You can find her on Instagram as @maia.thom where she shares poetry, art, and practical wisdom to offer daily moments of calm.

Please Be Gentle With Yourself

Permission to soften

Let Yourself Be Held

Permission to receive