APPENDIX B — A Guided Reflection: Coming Back to You

For the moments you need five minutes that belong only to you.

Find a few quiet minutes — the car before you go inside, the porch after the house has settled, five minutes before anyone else is awake. Nowhere to be. Nothing to fix. Just you.

Start here: three slow breaths. In through your nose, out through your mouth. On the third breath, let your shoulders drop an inch you didn’t know you were holding.

Now, gently, ask yourself:

What is one thing I used to love that I haven’t made room for in a long time?

You don’t have to answer out loud. You don’t have to do anything about it today. Just let it surface. Let yourself remember that it existed — that you existed as someone with wants of your own, before every hour belonged to someone else’s plan.

Ask yourself one more question:

If I gave myself permission to rest for a moment — really rest, not the kind where the to-do list is still running in the background — what would that look like?

Sit with whatever comes. There’s no wrong answer.

Before you go, say this to yourself, quietly, and mean it as much as you can today:

I am doing the best I can, and my best is good enough. I am allowed to rest. I am allowed to want things for myself. I have not disappeared. I am still here.

Take one more breath. Then go back to your day — but see if you can carry one sentence of that with you.

You matter too. That has always been true. It will always be true.

For more tools like this one — tapping, Louise Hay meditations, and other practices for rediscovering yourself — visit the Rediscovering You section of this page.

With gratitude and a Ray of Hope,

Doreen G. Fulton