A golden rule
 

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume, you shall assume.
--Walt Whitman

Some of us may think Walt Whitman must have been terribly conceited to have written words like that. But he wasn't. He knew himself well, and accepted himself, even his darker side. He could laugh at himself and celebrate his humanness.

And because he loved and accepted himself just as he was, others could do the same. That's difficult to understand sometimes, but it's true: no one else is going to love and accept us until we come to love and accept ourselves.

We teach others how to treat us by the way we treat ourselves, so perhaps it makes sense to apply a variation of the Golden Rule: "Do unto ourselves as we would have others do unto us."

Can I allow my kindness to myself overflow to another person today?

Dorothy Briggs wrote a beautiful book called "Celebrate Yourself".
I just remembered it's time to re-read it. :wink3:

Yes I can and I will. Thank you Doug. I am only just beginning to learn to celebrate myself, and it's wonderful. I love knowing that I do have something to offer others and I have the ability to share my experiences, good and bad, in order to help someone.

Only when I accepted my disease could I move on to accepting myself, it has been quite the journey...This has also allowed me to better accept others. This is where, and I can't believe I'm saying this, I'm grateful for my disease, it has brought me a better understanding of myself, others and life in general. Not to say I completely understand, but since being in recovery, I'm accepting life on lifes terms. To accept my darker side has brought me closer to forgiveness.