Outback Jack's Journey

This Monday morning I got up and did a 30-min Les Mills Core workout. When I got to the bathroom the pic to the right is similar to what I saw in the mirror (not me as I've committed to not sending shirtless pics of myself, I have chest hair, and a beard, but similar abs and obliques definition). I realised I needed to connect with my unseen child in the shower. I did. He was feeling alone in his bedroom, just wanting a hug from his Dad, to be seen, acknowledged, and for Dad to say, "I'm proud of you just the way you are."  I cried.  It was awesome.

On Monday night my 16yro was meant to start an online learner driver course. I went out shopping and asked her to prepare some vegetables and to do her course. When I came home she was still preparing the vegetables (as I think she’d just been watching YouTube). She helped unpack the groceries. When we were done I said, “Oh aren’t you meant to be in your course now?” She was 45 min late. She was teary as she tried getting on but they said she was too late and needed to rebook ($50). She could have finished the course on Wednesday and been driving with me this weekend. I said to her that she’s allowed to make mistakes, and that I make mistakes and had missed a work meeting on Monday! We rebooked for this weekend. We thought it started at 10am. I woke her up at 0830 and went to the gym. At 10am she called and said it had started at 9am! 🤦🏻‍♂️ We have to rebook again, but due to our holiday to Queensland, she won’t be able to do it until late 22-23 July. 😢 I also had the time wrong for...

I just finished talking with Scott, who's been on a week of therapy for sexual abuse in Washington state. He said the leader said to him, "You were made to want to make love to anything beautiful. You want to merge with beauty." This begs the question, "Are you going to make love to everything that arouses you?" Clearly he's not, but needed to have an attitude other than shame for when he was aroused by different people and things in different scenarios. I often have close friends give me compliments because they know I've filtered them out of my internal narrative. My shields are down now and I can receive compliments, it's not to get a big head, but receiving them now improves my mental health, my internal perception, and my self worth. Yes I need to be not reliant on other people, and just value myself and God's perception of me, but my default position is to criticise myself, put myself down, self-condemn, self-hate, and self-loathe, so rece...