Self-Compassion: 3 Rituals I Use to Be Gentle with Myself

A guest post by Kandi Zeller

Welcome to A Glitch in the Good Enough! I’m Aly Prades, an ESL writing professor, enneagram one, and mom of two spunky kids in San Diego, California. I was recently diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which I once heard described as a “glitch in the good system’--things never feel clean enough, safe enough, sure enough, good enough. On this Substack, I write honestly and vulnerably about my OCD recovery journey, faith, motherhood, mental health, and my unrelenting pursuit of grace-filled growth. 

As a part of my Self-Compassion Sundays series this summer (too much alliteration?), I am excited to share my very first guest post by Kandi Zeller. Kandi is generous with her story, her compassion, and the lessons she’s learned amidst adversity. She offers three practical self-compassion rituals for us to try out. Thank you for reading and sharing and please leave Kandi some love in the comments! 

Self-Compassion: 3 Rituals I Use to Be Gentle with Myself

by Kandi Zeller

Self-compassion. It’s a healing balm for those of us with religious trauma (or trauma of any kind). But healing isn’t always easy, and I know that reality intimately as someone who lives with PTSD and probable OCD. That’s why I developed three gentle rituals for self-compassion that have helped me on my own healing journey. 

In the spirit of self-compassion, I just want to say right up front that it’s okay if any of these rituals don’t connect with you for whatever reason. Self-compassion is often about listening to your body, so I encourage you to do that with the below ideas. These are what helped me; feel free to adapt, throw out, etc. as needed. You are enough, and your rituals are enough.

Ritual # 1: Finding a journal that calls to you

I have a confession to make: I’m a spirituality writer, and journaling used to be like pulling teeth for me. Over time, I figured out why: (1) I was being too much of a perfectionist about what I wrote (or how much I wrote) and (2) I was worried to buy journals that might not fit my aesthetic perfectly and FOR ALL TIME (definitely putting too much pressure on myself). These sticking points were causing me to freeze and not do what turned out to be a self-compassion practice that worked really well for me.

About a year ago, I ended up going to Five Below and picking a journal with a cover I liked, not worrying about what I could feel like tomorrow, a year from then, etc. I listened to myself and looked with love and compassion on what drew my eye.

I ended up choosing an especially cool journal because it had these easy guided prompts that could be answered in one or two words, mostly about how I was feeling, why I was feeling those feelings, and how I was taking care of myself. This shorter form of journaling freed me from the I-have-to-write-a-detailed-tome-every-time compulsion I had about journaling in general.

Basically, this simplified journaling practice was born out of self-compassion…in its lack of perfectionism and in giving me the opportunity to learn more about myself and let myself regularly just sit, observe, accept, and feel my feelings with no judgment or wordy pronouncements. I’ve been doing this morning-ish journal practice for about a year—imperfectly and with lots of adjustments—and it has been an amazing journey of self-compassion.

Ritual # 2: Go ahead and sit with the questions

One of the most helpful and healing things I’ve ever done is just sitting with the questions I have, especially about religious things—acknowledging that I don’t have all the answers and sitting with that fact.

I talked about the spiritual practice angle of questions in a post I wrote earlier this year for Rev. Kyle Norman’s blog. This particular piece of mine is from a very Christian perspective, but I think the idea of sitting with religious questions is applicable to all faiths and even nonreligious journeys, so please feel free to adapt and adjust according to your circumstances. The TL;DR here is this: Rest in the love of your community (whatever that looks like), knowing that as “spiritual practice…follow[ing] [and today I would add ‘sitting with’] the questions deep inside you…can only further your understanding.” You’re not a monster for having questions. This too is a part of the journey. Sit with your questions as companions, not enemies.

Ritual # 3: Incantation for inconsistency

Along our journeys, we will make mistakes. We will be inconsistent. It’s part of what it means to be a living, learning, and growing human. I’m no stranger to living in that liminal space of inconsistency or perceived inconsistency: I’m both a Christian and a witch; both a queer person and living in a straight-passing relationship; a disabled person with mostly invisible diagnoses; both a product of white fundamentalist evangelical Christianity and someone who seeks to resist the harm there. So I created this incantation to undergird myself as I sit with questions and uncertainty, hugely inspired by this post by Aly Prades herself on this very Substack.

Here’s the incantation:

I will not always know. I will not always be right. I will not always appear or be consistent. But I get to be me. To exist. To try to love well. To be loved by my community. I invoke this power, rooted in my love and compassion for myself and others. I may be inconsistent, but I am enough. If I make a mistake, I can repair. And this is the magic of self-compassion. 

In conclusion, dear readers, you’re beautiful, complicated, and inconsistent human beings. On your journeys, I hope the above rituals are helpful, and if not, I hope you leave this post knowing one thing: you are loved, you are you, and that is enough.

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Bio: Kandi Zeller (she/her) is a disabled, queer, witchy, and exvangelical writer/editor at the intersections of spirituality, creativity, and justice. At All The Threads (her Substack newsletter), she shares random spiritual practices for after religious trauma. She also has a forthcoming book about witchcraft, rituals, and disability with Microcosm Publishing. You can find out more about her work at KandiZeller.com and on Instagram (@Kandi.Zeller).