More thoughts on self-love

I had a couple of other thoughts on self-love in my brief blog hiatus. As I mentioned in my earlier post, what most of us new moms agreed on was most important in self-love in the world of new mommyhood was compassion. I realized that for me this is kind of like that old Chinese koan " The sound of one hand clapping is the sound of one hand clapping," yet in my world, when I am practicing compassion with myself it is more like, "The dishwasher is not getting unloaded because the dishwasher is not getting unloaded." This keeps me present and keeps me from being hard on myself or beating myself up for not doing more - because what I am doing is being with my son, and while I know that this is one of the - if not the most important thing I can be doing - there is often that little voice nagging at me that I should somehow be doing other things like discovering my next six figure income or sweeping the floor or doing a couple hundred crunches just to see if an ounce of muscle tone might return. Self-acceptance is not really my forte, (this is probably why yoga is so good for me) - but making up my own versions of old Chinese koans somehow helps.
I did also, by the way, get some sweet smelling soap from the Farmer's Market for my shower. Oh, and I bought myself a new pair of earrings. Earrings are still important - because you know, earrings are important.