As I am sure has been apparent to those of you who follow me
on a regular basis I have been on a new journey lately towards self-love. I have found that though I can always accept
quite readily that God loves me and I can sometimes accept that other people
love me, I have an incredibly difficult time loving myself. Some of this struggle comes from growing up
within religion where self-love was labeled selfishness as the continual
reminder to “die to self” repeatedly echoed through the empty places in my
soul.
I have lived my life mostly unaware what trouble hating
myself has caused me. As I began my
self-hate recovery journey a little over a year ago I saw chains break inside
me that I had no idea where held captive.
Not long ago my cousin Catherine challenged me to something she called “She
Speaks Truth to Herself.” The challenge
was to write a letter to myself speaking truth to my own heart. It was incredibly difficult and incredibly
healing. [Click here to read my blog of that challenge]. So, when she asked me
if I wanted to preview her poetry chapbook with the same title and write a
review of it I was super excited to say yes!
She Speaks Truth to Herself by Catherine Valentine is a
fantastic little chapbook packed full of truth and healing words. I’m kind of a sucker for poetry anyway
(probably because I really suck at writing it) so it wasn’t incredibly hard for
this collection to win me over. In this
book Catherine is fearlessly authentic and beautiful exposed. My favorite piece in the book is called “Broken.” Here is my favorite stanza:
This is God’s church, these are His people--
the wounded, the broken, hypocrite and liar.
In good company in the church of the broken.
I would
definitely recommend this chapbook to anyone who is interested in poetry,
truth, or authentic people. I hope it
will encourage you to start your own self-love journey and in turn free places
in you that you didn’t know were captive.
It surely has helped do that for me.
For more
writing by Catherine check out her website here: www.catherinevalentine.wix.com/cvalentinewriter
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