Can She Pass Her First Manifestation Challenge?

“Conjuring the thoughts is not changing my dread,” I admitted.

“If the feeling is strong, accept it and feel it,” said Eder, tacking in a new direction. “Hang out with the heavy feeling in your chest.”

I felt like this was wasting time. I’d rather cut to the solution. But I put my hand on my chest and concentrated on the unpleasant, leaden sensation.

“You appreciate your friends and nature so much,” she said soothingly, watching me through my computer screen. “What if you could feel that way about yourself?”

After her speaking engagement in Spain, Melina Bellows received supportive text messages from her daughter, Mackenzie, right.

Courtesy Melina Bellows

Lightbulb moment.

A warm wave moved through me. To my surprise, I found myself in tears.

“Why does that make me feel sad?” I asked

“Don’t analyze. Just breathe and feel,” she said.

The heaviness in my heart turned to actual, stabbing pain. I fiercely appreciate so much in my life, from my friends to the changing seasons and how the sun feels when I walk my dog. But it never once occurred to me to appreciate the appreciator — me.  

As we sat silently, I acknowledged that some long-unknown need was met.

“This is huge,” Eder said. “You were never trained to feel your feelings, which is a profound act of self-honoring.”

Again, she brought up self-love as being the tool that would move the dial for me.

Eww. Self-love conjures images of 1970s feminine hygiene products and women in flowy dresses wandering through daisy meadows. We discussed the difference between self-care and self-love. Self-care is booking yourself a massage; it’s an action. Self-love, in comparison, is treating yourself like a beloved friend going through a hard time. As women, mothers especially, we have been trained to care for others and put their needs first. It’s not convenient to stop and feel feelings when things need to get done. I harbored a deeply held belief that self-love is a reward I’ve earned when I’ve met certain conditions.

And yet it was undeniable that I experienced a shift when she coached me to feel that feeling. I decide to be more open to it. My homework was to appreciate myself in real time and feel my feelings.

‘Self-love is discipline’

Strangely, in the days that follow, the topic of self-compassion seems ubiquitous. My no-nonsense ICU doctor friend Amy told me she recently carved out five straight days to attend a self-compassion workshop. She recommended The New York Times bestseller Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself by psychologist Kristen Neff, whose TED Talk has been watched more than 3 million times.

Melina Bellows and her son, Chase. He joined his sister, Mackenzie, in cheering their mom up after her speaking engagement in Spain.

Courtesy Melina Bellows

Then, as I’m sweating my brains out on the Peloton bike, the instructor barks that “self-love is discipline.” The perspective that self-love is powerful, like a muscle, clicks. There’s a lot of evidence-based research linking self-compassion with psychological well-being. Among the thousands of research reports on the topic, one especially appealed to my Type A demeanor. According to an academic review of several studies that was published in August 2022 in the Annual Review of Psychology, self-compassion has been linked to emotional toughness, because self-compassionate people are less afraid of failure and more likely to be resilient. Another report, published in 2020, concluded that people who practice self-compassion are more likely to take action and achieve goals such as sticking to diets and even enjoying exercise

Thanks to that data and the shift I felt in my last session with Eder, I experimented with my recent training. Feeling my feelings was exactly what I was doing after bombing that presentation. Back in my audience seat, I embraced the clammy, foggy unpleasantness of the panic attack hangover as the cortisol dumped into my system, leaving me feeling jangly, fried and lightheaded. I resisted the tendency for self-flagellation and leaned into my new tool, self-compassion.

I grabbed my notebook and started scribbling to myself as if I was comforting one of my kids or a friend. “It’s over now. I never have to do public speaking again if I don’t want to. Maybe the audience didn’t know. Even if I wasn’t my best, I still expressed my essential points. I got some laughs and lots of questions during the Q&A.”

Maybe the presentation … wasn’t that bad?

As soon as the break came, I shot out of the conference room and sequestered myself at the pool. I texted my kids to tell them how it went. Both sent back supportive and encouraging messages, which made me consider that despite what just happened on that stage, I had mothered effectively to raise such kind humans.

I was on the way to go hide out in my hotel room when I was invited to join the conference for lunch. To my surprise and delight, multiple people offered congratulations and said they could relate to my talk, despite the differences in our industries. I got invited to participate in the rest of the conference, and I made authentic connections with some of the women.

Clearly, it wasn’t the disaster I thought it was. One person was so impressed, she recommended me to a professor at New York University to adapt my presentation for college students. A few weeks later, after an exciting Zoom call with the dean, I got booked to teach a Master Class, a program where the university brings experts to campus for in-depth educational sessions.

Six weeks later, my agent finally received the report card back about my performance after several requests, a concrete data point I was dreading. Yet I scored a 5 out of 5 in all 5 categories, a Yelp rave if there ever was one. Did my positive affirmations rewrite reality? 

 Yet while my professional life was suddenly getting super-boosted, my personal life was about to take a dramatic hit. I thought I had met the man I was going to marry. But after three years, the relationship was about to be over in an instant.

AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.