Self-Love and Kindness: Moving toward a softer, values-based life

Hi! My name is Allison. Welcome to The Kind Self Collective (TKSC). I am so grateful that you are here. I thought I would begin this first blog endeavor by letting you know a little bit about how I arrived here. I am meeting you now as a new business owner, a registered social worker, and therapist and practitioner, and a deeply committed propagator of self-love and kindness in an often not-so-kind world. Through TKSC, I aim to create a space alongside you where we can accept the most challenging parts of ourselves and the world around us, while not being consumed by these hard to hold truths that we continue to uncover.

I have arrived here through grief, dread, through fear and discomfort, along with an intense gratitude that has been cultivated over a lifetime. I have carried the weight, the wet blanket of despair, and have heard the relentless voice of my inner-critic berating me when I am already feeling my most small, insignificant, and low. A state of overwhelm in my neurodivergent mind has long been my baseline, it has informed the ways in which I move through and understand the world with my whole body and my whole heart.

It was approximately two-years ago that I stopped consuming alcohol and tobacco, and started exploring new ways of moving my body, primarily through yoga and running trails. I began to expand my capacity to hold space for all of the awful I had been carrying and witnessing everyday. I started practicing the art of slowing down, of noticing, and turning inward with curiosity rather than judgement. This is where kindness began to grow, when I began to soften, and to converse with my most protective parts which, had simultaneously, kept me safe and also immobile for many years.

As I have continued on this mindful path of self-discovery, of intentionality and curiosity, through learning to build community with myself, TKSC has become a manifestation of my own values and the ways in which I chose to embody them in all areas of life. TKSC is a practice that believes that all humankind deserve kindness, that we must begin to slow down and notice how we are relating to ourselves and the world around us, and recognizes that mindfulness is an ongoing practice, never perfected, but explored through child-like curiosity and unwavering compassion.

So, I am hear to hold that space for you. To remind you that you are worthy of the same kindness that you extend to others. To provide you with softness when you feel your most rigid. To introduce you to the parts of yourself that you've strategically displaced or refuse to hold, because all of your parts deserve kindness. Afterall, you are a whole person and that is pretty amazing.

A tranquil lake reflecting the surrounding trees, symbolizing peace and mindfulness.

For more on holding ourselves kindly, I invite you to explore Tara Brach and her talk on having Tea with Mara