🖊 WRITE 🖊

Why?

I need to positively reinforce the healthy, step-by-step choices I made in 2024. I want to reward my patience, self-compassion, growing self-awareness, kindness, and fairness—especially in learning to silence my (self-)critical side.

I’ve noticed that rewarding my own healthy behavior motivates me to take beautiful steps, even if the reward comes from myself. That’s why I’ve put together a Xmas package—just like last year—to celebrate my healthy adult modes’ steps.

These gifts are thoughtful, and the intention behind them is to make delayed gratification less intimidating and maybe even more enjoyable. Training myself to delay gratification, helps me act less impulsively and reap the benefits, such as more patience and calmness.

But that doesn’t mean I’ll never give myself gifts “just because.” Instead, this is simply one way I reward healthy behavior.

By the way: My love language (for receiving love) might be physical touch—I enjoy hugging a lot—but being too vulnerable in this area has caused some turmoil. That’s why I learned to act distant🥶, eventhough I love it so much. After that comes words of affirmation, then quality time, followed by gifts, and finally acts of service. Although receiving gifts is fourth on my list, a thoughtful gift can really hit home. I distrust physical touch the least(despite my vulnerabilities) which is why I ranked them highest. The lower ranked, the more I tend to question why it’s given. The higher it ranks, the more I instantly trust it. So the lower it is, the more likely I am to wonder, “what do you want in return?” The higher it is, the less I question it.

What?

I’ve added a twist to the things I already enjoy to explore something new—like white chocolate with truffle. I love white chocolate, but I’ve never had truffle before. It’s often praised as a luxurious ingredient, which makes me curious to taste it.

I’d like to try chives in chips instead of in my mashed potatoes and goat cheese in biscuits instead of in my tuna salad or on top of my cassoulet. (By the way, I miss those dishes, but they’d be more convenient to make if I had a larger fridge.)

Non-alcoholic rosé—pink is a beautiful color to me, and I do enjoy sweet rosé. Preferably, I only drink alcoholic rosé during a spicy, solo date—as a cherry on top, if at all—instead of using it as a way to seem less anti-social.

I’m choosing a path to be less anti-social, and I’m grateful for the safety, grace, and love I receive as I grow step by step.

After processing the shame of being —very—clumsy at times, I sometimes realize that I’m kind of an okay human being 🙂 if I say so myself.

I love cheese, but these cheese cookies seem new to me as well. The cookbook for baking cookies is exciting—I enjoy eating cookies.

This book might inspire me to try something new— maybe even to upgrade my cookie recipe :). I often eat cookies as a snack, a treat, or even a quick breakfast (alternating or together with cake).

So an upgrade might make a big difference in those small moments.