Why are we so hard on ourselves?

I received the following email from a friend and thought I'd share it with whoever is still reading my blog in an effort to just get back into the blogging thing.

Why are we so hard on ourselves and so much easier on others? Did somebody
say something once that stuck in our brains and won't go away? Did we mispronounce something in French, did we trip in front of some guy, did we make some huge mistake that we've never gotten over?

What haunts our fine bodies and our fine hearts and makes our heads spin with an image of ourselves we can't accept? We tell our friends not to be so hard on themselves and we tell our loved ones not to be so hard on themselves and we tell
ourselves we're just not being hard enough.

We are such funny women sometimes.

We blame ourselves when blame does not apply (terrible word, that blame). We feel guilty about what we should have done better (terrible word, that should). We are
harder on ourselves, harder than we would be on anybody else, anybody. Complete strangers! Big dogs! People we don't even like!

And the things we expect are so darn weird, things our mothers once said we should be able to do or our fathers wanted us to achieve or our great Aunt Charlotte wanted us to try and they didn't know that their words would stick like glue to our hearts with a list of expectations wrapped around it.

Look: all these expectations get old, real old, and only you know when to yell uncle.

Uncle. Uncle. Uncle.

Because for one moment of your life you feel like feeling ... perfect. You feel like dashing into those hills or those open roads or right into the air itself and that's just what you might do.

So Ha

You feel like that rusty old image you carry is slipping away, right over the edge of a mirror and out of view. You feel like moving and if you trip, you trip, if
you fall, you will get up. And the air feels like it will carry you and push you and it's like nothing your feared it would be. And of course everything you expected it
would.

Just do it