Needs

I acknowledge my needs today, and I feel free to make them known......

I acknowledge my needs, and it is all right to meet those needs without feeling guilty and ashamed. I will take the risk of today to express myself and my needs to those I trust.

I will face the frightening voices from the past that tell me I am unworthy and threaten me. This day I answer those voices, and I move beyond them and gradually reveal my needs to those who care.

I understand fully that no one can fill my emptiness, no single person can make me feel complete. Even when I make my needs known, others will not always answer. Sometimes they cannot.

Today I realize that even those who care about me most cannot read my mind. My needs will not go unnoticed today as I begin to make them known.

Almost everyone that I have been in contact with the past few days wants more than anything for winter to be gone. Several have also shared that they feel depressed.

January is a long month, February is shorter and once March hits we can begin to feel optimistic, even if only in anticipation of warmer weather.

So, because I've chosen to focus our need to escape the blues during this gray (and white) season, I've compiled a list of things to do in February.

• Groundhog day Punxsutawney Phil is the famous groundhog in Pennsylvania that gets pulled out on Feb. 2. Legend is if he sees his shadow and retreats back into his home there is six more weeks of winter... funny, there always seems to be sun on Feb. 2??!



• or you can watch the movie, Groundhog Day with Bill Murray and Andie Macdowell.



• Celebrate the birthdays of two of the most infuential people of our time, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington and maybe you're lucky enough to have that Monday celebrated as Presidents Day off. Three day weekend!



• There are four weekends this month and one of them is Valentine's day. You don't have to have a boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife to celebrate the day of love. But it can be a day where you spread the love to friends, family and yourself. Congratulate how far you've come in your recovery by treating yourself.

• February is the shortest month of the year, only 28 (sometimes 29 days) but once its over we enter March and get ready for spring. Thankfully with Daylight savings time on its way we are already seeing a little more daylight each day.

Ok, I am trying here! Anything good about February you'd like to share?