Self-love
isn’t just
a bubble bath,
a scented candle
or a comfy blanket.
Self-love
is more than
good food,
exercise
or relaxation.
Self-love
isn’t the same
as self-centeredness,
selfishness,
not loving others.
In fact,
self-love
is essential
to love another.
After all,
if everyone
loves themself,
no-one will be unloved!
This poem was written for dVerse’s Poetics, for which the prompt is to write a poem about self.
Hi everyone. Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s Wednesday and I’m joining in with the Wednesday Hodgepodge. Here goes.
1. What does love mean to you?
To me, it means thinking that (and acting accordingly) someone is special to you. This special someone could be God, someone else, but it could be yourself too. I mean, I know that in many traditions, it is commonly believed that to love is to value someone higher than yourself, but I do think self-love is love too. In fact, I recently commented on someone else’s blog that, if everyone loves themselves, no-one will be unloved.
2. Is love blind?
I am blind, so my love certainly is. However, whether love in general is blind, I honestly wouldn’t know. I’m not even 100% sure what this expression is supposed to mean. Probably something along the lines of love preventing people from judging the person they love. Which would be weird, since justice is also characteristically thought of as blind. Oh well, maybe it means love prevents people from judging others based on appearance. In that case, as someone who has never been attracted to anyone for their appearance (in fact, I didn’t know my now spouse’s hair color until we’d been together for several months) but seems to be in the minority here, I cannot be trusted to give my representative opinion on this.
3. How do you remember Valentine’s Day as a kid? Do you have any special plans for the day this year?
I don’t remember it as a kid. In fact, I don’t think back in the mid-1990s, it was a thing for kids here in the Netherlands. In high school, I do remember kids handing out roses and can vaguely remember once having gotten one, probably as a prank.
My spouse and I aren’t celebrating this year. In fact, though we used to give each other small presents each Valentine’s Day, this year, since we both have a lot on our minds, we decided to take the pressure off by agreeing we’d give each other presents whenever we felt like it. I honestly feel that, in a committed relationship, love is an everyday thing. If you need Valentine’s Day to remind each other you still love one another, I doubt the relationship is going to last.
4. Are you a fan of the movie genre known as “rom-com”? What’s your favorite (or one of your favorites)?
I’m not a movie watcher, so no. In books, I do like them occasionally but I wouldn’t say I’m a fan.
5. What’s something you recently put your heart into?
Nothing. I’m struggling a bit, so I don’t feel inspired for any bigger (or even smaller) projects.
6. Insert your own random thought here.
I enjoyed a great Thai meal out with my mother-in-law yesterday evening. We went to Buddha Garden, the same restaurant in Apeldoorn I’d been to with my spouse and parents for my birthday. The food was just as delicious as it’d been the last time I went there.
Hi everyone. Today’s Word of the Day Challenge is “Teenager”. This reminded me of a question a fellow blogger, I think it was Emilia from My Inner MishMash, once asked: in what ways we were not like a typical teenager.
This post could have been a lot shorter had I had to answer in which ways I was like a typical teenager. After all, I wasn’t like a typical teenager in any way. That doesn’t mean I didn’t try. Like, I pretended to be a Backstreet Boys fan even though I knew next to nothing about them and had hardly heard their music. I also pretended to have crushes on boys (and girls) even though I hardly knew them and quite frankly didn’t understand attraction.
I tried going to school proms the first few times in high school, but didn’t fit in at all. I also tried wearing what other girls my age wore. My mother asked my younger sister for advice when clothes shopping for me. However, somehow I always missed the mark. I couldn’t wear makeup nor was I interested in it.
With respect to interests, I have no idea what teenagers in the early 2000s were into. I did read what I assume was somewhat popular Dutch YA fiction, but had no friends so couldn’t discuss it with them.
With respect to socially appropriate behaviors, I was way off. Still am. I didn’t know how to take care of my personal hygiene, for example. I remember my sister gave me a deodorant as a birthday present when I turned fourteen, but I didn’t get the hint. Months later, when my teacher reminded me about hygiene because my classmates had been complaining, I still had no clue what an appropriate bathing and personal hygiene routine was.
Back in the day, most teenagers drank alcohol. I tried wine at home when I was fifteen (the legal age for alcohol consumption was sixteen at the time). When I was sixteen, I went out to a pub with a few classmates. I had two beers, the most alcohol I’ve ever had in a single sitting. Later that evening, a guy we were with from another school offered me and another girl in my class some pot, which we accepted. Since I hadn’t smoked beyond a whiff here and there, I probably didn’t inhale anything, as the stuff didn’t have any effect on me whatsoever.
Where it comes to Internet and social media usage, I was probably a rather naive teenager. I wrote posts like this one about my current rather than past life in my public online diary using my full name (I do think it’s still on this blog somewhere too). Not only did I not take my own privacy seriously, but I used teachers’ and other people’s full names when writing about them too. I’m so happy none have ever made a serious problem out of it and I also haven’t been the victim of online predators. That being said, I wasn’t one to make obscene comments, like some other people my age did back in the day using their full name. I would also panic when I accidentally clicked on something that might be unsuitable for minors.
In summary, in many ways, I was like a child in a teenage body. I still often feel like a child in an adult body, truthfully.
Hi everyone. I’m joining the Wednesday HodgePodge once again today. This week, it has a love theme, which had me a little confused about the date, since Valentine’s Day isn’t till next week. However, who cares? Here goes.
1. Something you’ve done recently that might be considered a labor of love?
I honestly can’t think of anything. I don’t really do much for others, truthfully, shameful as this is. I still haven’t even crafted anything for my husband for Valentine’s Day yet, even though I usually do something each year.
2. What’s one thing you love about being the age you are now?ab
I’m 36. This means, or so I think, still being young enough that my body isn’t completely betraying me yet (although due to my disabilities aging is starting to set in), but old enough to have at least some knowledge of who I am.
3. What do you value more: careful planning or the freedom to be spontaneous? Elaborate.
A little of both, I think. I mean, my days are fairly structured with my day schedule and I still think they aren’t structured enough. My desire for more clarity though isn’t because I don’t want to do anything sort of spontaneously, but because any transition is hard for me. And there still are many in my current day schedule.
4. A home cooked meal or a fancy restaurant? pink or red? watch the sunrise or watch the sunset? wine and cheese or champagne and chocolate?
Home-cooked meal, just because I can’t stand fancy restaurants due to the expectation of my table manners. Pink. Sunset. Chocolate (but skip the champagne please). In all honesty, none of the above particularly appeal to me.
5. What’s your definition of romance? Are you a romantic?
I have no idea about my personal definition of romance. It probably has to do with showing your significant other your love in a special, attuned-to-them way, or something. I’m not a romantic at all. I usually think up ways to show my love in a particularly special way to my husband, but in the planning, things often go horribly wrong so that I end up with nothing at all. As with my idea for a Valentine’s gift this year.
6. Insert your own random thought here.
I am struggling with too many ideas in my head for crafty projects and not enough of something I can’t quite pinpoint to actually make them happen. It could be the fact that my ideas are a chaotic mess and I have no sense of how to actually go from idea to plan to project. Of course, I blame my day schedule, but I’m pretty sure that’s not everything there is to it. Yes, the problem is in part that watching a YouTube tutorial on something takes time, something I do have in only hour-long segments with no guarantee that, when I start on something with one staff (say, watching a tutorial), I can actually follow it up with them too. I am not sure this is the entire problem though.
Hi everyone. Today’s topic for Throwback Thursday is first dates. Since my now husband, Jeroen, was the only person I ever actually dated, I’m going to share my experiences about meeting him.
As regular readers might know, we met on a message forum. More specifically, he met me there, because I barely knew him by the time he private messaged me. He, on the other hand, had read most of my posts on the forum, as well as my blog.
I wrote on there, for all forum members to see, that I was feeling lonely living on my own in my student apartment in Nijmegen. At the time, he had decided he wanted to expand his circle of acquaintances. Neither of us were really looking for love, so in that sense, maybe it wasn’t actually a date.
Jeroen PM’d me asking to have a cup of coffee or tea somewhere in Nijmegen. I agreed, then backtracked, fearing he was a “creep in his fifties”, as I worded it. You see, I had barely read his introductory post. He invited me to the forum meeting in Utrecht where, according to him, at least fifteen other forum members could vouch for him that he didn’t appear creepy and was nowhere near fifty. He was eighteen at the time and I was twenty-one.
Looking back, I still took an enormous risk, as I never went to that Utrecht meeting. I did tell my support worker where I’d be meeting Jeroen, but, me being an adult, I didn’t have a curfew or anything.
I can’t remember whether I was stressed beforehand. During our meeting up, I certainly was. I can’t remember who paid for my coffee and his tea, probably him. As I’ve mentioned before when discussing this first “date”, I tripped over some steps in the cafe, spilling my coffee. I screamed in frustration.
As for who did the talking and who did the listening, neither of us talked much. Jeroen asked me about my taste in music, to which I replied vaguely that I like world music. I honestly wouldn’t have a clue how to respond now either, as I’m not really that much into music.
This “date”, to be honest, was quite the disaster, but Jeroen had it in his mind that, if he tried to meet me another time, we’d have many more dates. And we did. We got married exactly four years after this date.
Hi everyone. Today’s topic for Throwback Thursday is first crushes. Let me share.
My first crush was a boy called MJ (that is, he had a double first name). I think he was a year younger than me. I was ten at the time and in the fifth grade at the school for the blind. Back then, we would always say we were like 90% in love with the other one. I don’t know where the percentages came from or if kids in other schools used them too. I certainly remember telling MJ that I had a crush on him and at that point, several kids in his class pushed me to kiss him. I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek but till this day feel intense shame about it.
I don’t remember feeling heartbreak when that “relationship” ended. It only lasted for a couple of weeks anyway. I do know that MJ passed away when I was in high school, something I didn’t find out about until many years later.
My second crush was a girl named Layla and I’m not even sure I’m spelling that right. I was fourteen at the time and had only met her once. She was in the grade below me at secondary school. At the time, I was still about as clueless about love as I’d been at age ten. After that first encounter, I never met Layla again and so I never told her I had a crush on her.
For years, I’d have fleeting crushes on various girls and boys who paid me attention, but I never told them. I never quite fantasized about having a husband (or wife, since same-sex marriage is legal here) when I’d grow up. In fact, when my now husband told me he was in love with me, I wasn’t so sure whether to reciprocate it. I did like him, but did my feelings go beyond mere friendship plus a little puppy love because he was paying me attention? In the end, it didn’t really matter, as our relationship and now our marriage is a happy one.
Today is Valentine’s day. Of course, my husband and I aren’t together now, as he had to work and I’m at the care facility, but I wanted to honor the occasion anyway by sharing something about my husband I appreciate. I looked to Lisa Shea’s collection of journaling prompts on love and romance. One of the prompts is to share a gift your lover gave or gives you that’s most precious to you. It can be a physical gift or an action or emotion. Instead, I am going to share a list of things my husband gifted me. Some of these things, I didn’t really appreciate in the sense that I liked the gifts themselves, but the gesture at the time was very much appreciated. And the story behind those gifts gives me and my husband a good laugh now.
1. A Planxty CD. This was the first gift my husband gave me when we were officially dating, for my 22nd birthday in 2008. I only listened to it probably once or twice when he came to visit. Then again, that same year, when he had his birthdday on November 12, I thought I’d gifted him a very well-thought-out present: a book of previously-unpublished philosophical texts by British Idealists. British Idealism was my profile research (high school graduation thesis) topic and he was a philosophy major at the time. He never read the book though.
2. Homemade apple pie. One year, I think it was 2010, my husband brought me a home-baked apple pie in the psych hospital. It was delicious!
3. A Tom Lehrer CD. This CD was much more appreciated than the Planxty one. In fact, I put the entire thing on my computer so that I can always listen to it, even now that I don’t have a CD player anymore (or the CD for that matter).
My husband had introduced me to Tom Lehrer’s song I Hold Your Hand in Mine back in 2008 and I loved it. From there on, I learned about most other songs. We still crack jokes about some of these songs.
4. Chocolate. It used to be kind of a tradition that my husband would buy me chocolate on Valentine’s and our wedding anniversary. Not that I’m a big chocolate fan, but I loved them nonetheless. One year, I bought my husband peanut rocks (chocolate filled with peanuts), but I’d bought him the milk chocolate ones when he preferred dark chocolate. Oopsie.
5. A bear soft toy. I can’t remember whether I showed this one on my blog yet, but last year, I got a gorgeous teddy bear holding a heart for Valentine’s day.
6. Winegums. I remember one day, my husband had been shopping at the wholesale store and he’d bought five bags of winegums (gummy candies) for me. He said he’d wanted to buy a prime number of bags and three seemed a little too few to him. You can imagine my delight, but, if you know me, you can also imagine I consumed them within a week.
7. A phone case. In 2020, when I’d bought my current iPhone, I’d asked my husband to set it up as a birthday gift and, if he wanted to give me a material gift anyway, he could give me a case. It turned out I could do the setting up mostly myself with some help from my staff, but I did get a pretty sturdy phone case.
I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting something really important my husband gave me. Of course, the most important thing he gave me, and continues to give me, is his love. I hope he feels I give him the same in return.
Also linking up with Senior Salon Pit Stop #200.
I think my husband is perfect. He is the ever-most-beautifullest, ever-most-lovablest
person in the world. That’s why I chose him as my lover.
My husband and I can finish each other’s sentences and it doesn’t get annoying. Or sometimes it does. Then we say “banana spider” and the other knows we’ve bored them out of their mind.
We joke that, when we get old and suffer with dementia, only the two of us will still understand each other, since we have so many special phrases and words between the two of us. At least I hope we’ll have something to laugh at ourselves about then.
Honestly, it’s too bad that my blog is in English and my husband and I communicate primarily in Dutch. After all, our expressions sound even better (or should I say even weirder?) when written or spoken in our native language.
Written for Twiglet #257: “Even Better” and FOWC: “Lover”.
A few weeks ago, like I’ve mentioned before, my husband pointed out that I cannot and should not do life alone. I at once cannot and do not need to rely on myself alone to solve the puzzle that is life here on Earth. I have God to help me.
That same day, John 15:5 was the verse of the day on the Bible app I use. It has been on my mind ever since and could easily be one of my favorite verses so far. Oh yes, I know the Bible wasn’t originally written in chapters or verses and the wider context is important too. I will get to that.
“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5 ESV)
This is good news! My husband was initially worried that I would be disappointed by the rest of this chapter, because, well, it is good news only to those who will listen. This verse, to me, however, captures both the positive and the negative message that the wider context of the chapter reveals: Jesus is the vine, while we are the branches. If we abide in him, we will prosper; if we don’t, we will perish.
Today, as I was thinking of what to write for my blog, I opened Bobby Schuller’s book You Are Beloved and saw him discuss this exact chapter. Schuller says that, in Greek, the word that is translated as “abide” in English, is “meno”. There is no literal translation for this word in either Dutch or English (the Dutch Bible translation I use says “remain in”). Meno, according to Schuller, means something like coming home to a warm place after having been in the cold for a long while. We can come home to Jesus.
I loved the imagery Schuller evoked. As regular readers of this blog might know, I have never felt that I was truly “home” anywhere. No, not even in my current care facility. I didn’t feel very safe with my parents and, after I moved out, have been in so many places that were all temporary. Now that I can stay here, still, I struggle to believe it. Regardless though, in Jesus, I can rest and be home.
Schuller also makes it very clear that we can only truly love one another if we know God’s love for us. Through Jesus, we are loved in all our sinfulness. If we realize that God loves us, imperfections and all, we are able to extend this love to other people.
In my experience, this isn’t even a fully conscious choice. God’s grace extends to us, and due to that we are able to extend our grace and love to others. I am reminded, as I often am lately, of my music teacher’s telling me and my fellow students about a show on Dutch TV at the time called “God changes people”. Because the first several syllables of this phrase are the same as those in a Dutch swear word involving God, I was tempted to start cussing with God and then change my wording mid-sentence to “God changes people!” I still use God’s name in vain at times, but each time now, I am reminded of this. I credit God’s work in me for that.
I am linking up with Faith on Fire and Grace and Truth.
Okay, the first week of January is already over and people have come to say it’s weird to wish each other a happy new year even if this is their first time meeting in 2021. It may be a bit late for me to pick a word for the new year. Then again, it’s one of Mama Kat’s prompts for this week. Besides, last year I didn’t choose my word for the year until January 10. I had the flu to excuse it with then, but oh well.
Last year I picked “Wellbeing” as my word for the year. I was somehow convinced it’d be a bad omen though. It wasn’t, in the sense that I didn’t end up in a major health crisis in 2020. Then again, the world at large did.
This year, I’ve had a word in mind for several weeks now and yet I keep making up my mind about it. I want to deepen my faith this year, so shouldn’t something like “faith” be my word of the year. That’d be too easy though. Rather, I based my word for 2021 on Bobby Schuller’s book. It is: BELOVED.
I want to focus this year on the creed of the beloved as Schuller outlines it in his book You Are Beloved. It is:
I am not what I do.
I am not what I have.
I am not what others say about me.
I do not need to worry.
I do not need to hurry.
I can trust my friend Jesus.
I also want to focus this year on my relationship with God and with others. After all, “beloved” does not just apply to me, but to my husband and others around me too. The fact that I am a beloved child of God, also, implies that I need to accept God as my Heavenly Father.
Now of course my thoughts are going back to the idea that this word of the year would be tempting fate. I fear that, now that I chose “Beloved”, it will mean I’ll lose my husband or other important people in my life this year. Even if this happens, though, I can show my love for them. I can start to express love right now, after all.
What is your word for 2021?
A Multitude of Musings 