Writing can be a tool to reach deep inside yourself and bring small, dark hidden things to light. It's one of our greatest gifts as people to be able to bring ourselves healing, even if it often seems that the only "healing" can come from outside - from parents, from romantic partners, from friends, even from mediums, pastors, rabbis, or from the spiritual world.

The truth is that while the people in our world can help us, love us, support us, and hold us, our comfort and self love comes from exactly there - ourselves!

But how do we strike up a conversation with the weirdest, darkest, most hurt parts of ourselves? We talk to those parts. We hold them. We ask for help again and again, hopefully knowing that we are always walking with something larger that holds us.

Here's a list of questions to get you writing and thinking along these lines.

1) What do I need right now?

2) Do I feel supported within myself?

3) Do I feel supported within my close personal relationships?

4) If I don't, can I take responsibility for my own fears?

5) Can I see my own goodness? What does it look like?

6) Can I hold the parts of me that feel "dark" -- the parts that get angry, mad, hurt, ashamed. What do I do with those lonely parts? Do I hold them? Do I pretend they aren't happening? Do I push myself through my feelings and "try" to be "more spiritual?"

7) Just for today, just for this minute, how would it feel to unconditionally accept myself? The big parts, the small parts, all of the parts?

8) Set out tea and cookies for the small scared parts or the furious angry parts. What does this part look like? Does he or she have a name? How does he or she feel? Can I let this part of you simply have the floor?

8) What kind of space do you yearn to create? What kind of relationship with yourself?

9) What is your intention for the rest of your day?

10) What kind of hope and longing do you intend to fulfill tomorrow?

May you have long and deep conversations with all parts of yourself.