I'm reading a book right now called "I'll Tell You One Damn Thing" by Jann Arden, which is a compilation of her journal entries, and I came across something I thought was particularly good in light of how down I know a lot of us are, and how hard we can be on ourselves. It made me feel better to read, to know someone else understood this, so I thought I would share it and hopefully it'll make someone else feel better too.

"We are born with a voice in our heads. It's with us in the womb, comforting and directing and guiding and soothing. Why it changes at some point is anyone's guess. It just does. Either our parents bend the voice trying to control us, or our friends change the voice, or our egos change the voice. Something does. Something changes how we talk to ourselves. We start out knowing that we can win and end up hoping we will fail. The voice tells us that we cannot win. The voice says, 'How dare you even think you could be anything other than what you already are?' We get programmed to think we are not able or capable or worthy. Perhaps the human condition is one that involves constant criticism. We are harder on ourselves than we would ever be on any of our friends. We would never talk about our friends the way our 'voice' talks about us.
"You have to keep going, even when you don't have a clue where you are going. You are fine the way you are, or are you? You know when you need to change. It's just hard taking the first step. You have to tell your feet to move. I just want to live. I'll take every blow and I will keep trying to find the girl that walks the hallways of my middle-aged body."

(((((((((((PC)))))))))))))

I hope you're all doing okay.