I found this while looking through a journal I started last January. Someone had recommended (in some book I'd read - I forget which) that a person post a picture of herself as a child, from a time when she accepted herself and loved herself unconditionally, a time when she didn't question feelings but just felt them, didn't spend time worrying about what was wrong with her body or her thoughts, when she ran and jumped around unabashedly, screamed and cried out or laughed wildly, was deeply in touch with Spirit and could have a conversation for hours, all by herself, a time when she was nothing but honest about what she wanted or didn't, when she trusted her vision of the world and whatever she created. "She reads to herself, creates an art showing in the privacy of her bedroom, or dances with her beloved stuffed bears as her audience," writes Patricia Lynn Reilly in Imagine a Woman in Love with Herself. There's a poem, too, with all of these ideas----- The poem is actually how the book got started.

Here is an excerpt from my Morning Pages a few weeks ago:
"It turns out I have forgotten how to truly love myself. I try to remember when I last did, for surely I must have felt this unconditional love for myself as a little girl. I need to find the picture of myself as a child and frame it, put it by my desk. .... I could do anything, sitting at my little coloring table, playing make-believe, drawing with Nana, proud of myself no matter I tried to do...I can change it back."