“It takes effort to catch yourself before you start retelling the old stories. It takes imagination to see the new story as being real before it has fully manifested. But it’s so worth it when it begins to happen around you and you realize that you don’t even miss the old stories because they never made you happy anyway.”
Michelle Gordon
There’s a poem I once read with lines that run through my head even now. It went something along the lines of this:
“There are voices in the attic. I think they’ve come for me. I hear you laugh, ask if I’m still writing to you, and I guess I must be.”
Very bad paraphrasing, wish I could locate the piece so I could do it justice, but it was written by a poet on Instagram many years ago whose name I don’t remember.
Such is life.
I have been considering the emotional sustenance that comes from cognitive restructuring. I am thinking about those moments when you begin to recognize that the authority to change stems from a series of small steps.
It is not merely that progress takes time, but often only registers when you realize that the characters have changed. The wording is different.
Setting and tone are rather important narrative devices. Repetition of the same scene could be construed as insanity, but it could also be the time it takes to realize which parts request modification and integration.
Sometimes a breath isn’t the act of drawing in air. Sometimes a breath is practicing a new skill, familiarizing yourself with an unfamiliar tool.
Lay down the chisel, the inner critic, the part of you that asks to be changed. You risk destroying the whole. You risk laser focus on details that actually aren’t all that pertinent. An entire spectrum of colours and techniques to learn instead. Learning anything new takes time.
STABILISE 
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