September has always been a strange month for me - a bit numinous in that my birthday always coincides with my grandmother's death fifteen years earlier. Its also about beginnings (school/fall) and now it reminds me of endings as well. A year ago this month is when my marriage began to unravel.
It was a long journey and the passage through was somewhat heart
opening and breaking. Collateral damage, fantasy strangled, delusion debunked
and people, real-heart-beating people got hurt. With the help of some amazing people being accepting and fair and the lessons from those who were not, I have found the way to here- Right now, where I sit in humble awe of all that
had to happen to put me in the right direction.
I believe in a divine or inexplicable energy interwoven in all of us. I believe in the possibilities of angels or universal forces and a higher power that guides. It comes in a whisper from inside your ears, or a feeling when you hold your child. Those moments when you just "click" with someone or you feel embarrassed to say out loud that you just witnessed something so strange, but real.
Sometimes it is in a stranger's smile or a song you are sure to have heard somewhere before. It can be in a picture that gives you goosebumps, or the voice of an old ancient text being read not by your ears, but by and to your heart from the pages before you. However you interpret these things, I know them to be true, and invaluable and ever present. I will honor and live my life with pure gratitude and acknowledge of their existence. I do not seek them, but I will celebrate and live in awareness to see them, and the magic that trails along with their presence in everything we allow ourselves to see.
Sometimes it is in a stranger's smile or a song you are sure to have heard somewhere before. It can be in a picture that gives you goosebumps, or the voice of an old ancient text being read not by your ears, but by and to your heart from the pages before you. However you interpret these things, I know them to be true, and invaluable and ever present. I will honor and live my life with pure gratitude and acknowledge of their existence. I do not seek them, but I will celebrate and live in awareness to see them, and the magic that trails along with their presence in everything we allow ourselves to see.
There is a beauty in being comfortable walking into the shadows and
dark corners of our psyche and our truth. This beauty is ineffable and most usually only
able to be felt deep within yourself if you are lucky enough to push past fear to witness it. There is a bravery in what
once we have seen, lived and felt branded us. No one else, outside yourself can know what
it was to be there, acknowledge it, and come back to the light of our own love
and kindness by choice. It is yours, unique and a gift. If you so gather the (she)
balls to face it and follow through with honest assessment and compassion.
My son has a look in his eyes that can warm my soul to the core and cheeks that beg for chewing on. My younger daughter is a spitting image of my father and sister, but has the soul-imprint of my mischievous and magnificent heart to give love and be curious. My first daughter is the grace and the gathering of all that my husband and I are and have been. She is flexible and beautiful, but confused and continually changing, she is compassion personified but like us, struggles with self-care and boundaries of love and letting go. Sensitivity runs through all of them, and for that I am most blessed.
We all hold within our hearts and souls to recognize who we
are, and look into the deepest shadows and then simply, brush ourselves off of
whatever false beliefs have lead to us to hide from such darkness before, and
instead, lift our chins, deep inhale, chest out, heart open and walk forward to
whatever it is that is next. Where there is intensity of darkness, residing there as well, is intensity of the brightest and most illuminating light.
One does not
exist without the other and therefore you are always able to dabble and dance
in the polarities of each. Polarity gets a bad rap, but it is in every single part of nature. As far as you are willing to journey into one end, so
too, the other direction is available to teach you. I choose to go into the depths. I am no longer fearful of the
shadows and looming dark because I learned, and know now, that the darker and
deeper I push myself to accept only leads to the equivalent in light, and both always point back to love or a lacking of love, but answers and understandings come from that place: love. Self-love. All of it is myself, and my journey. I've spent too much time listening or believing what other people think I am, or am doing, or have done. Yet, I know nothing of their finer life details or journey, nor do I presume to. I know this very short and precious life is my own, and in using loving acceptance, it is only love I
find, in the light.... and in the dark places.
A simple contemplative
morning can lead to the knowing and understanding it takes to move forward. To move away
from fear and failure and hurt is to choose to grow from it, not blame it. I do just that…I move forward into change, and into the unknown because the most important thing I
realized today was that just because I “know” something or a pattern or a way of life doesn’t mean it is right for me. Comfort is not conducive to change. Complacency and fear of change stunts the potentiality we all possess. Does it feel safer? Sure. Is following your own truth and honest dreams a mass-accepted cake-walk? No, its a labyrinth of discomfort, dark, doubt, daunting nay-sayers. But this little light keeps reminding me that if I trust the journey and myself that I
will prevail and prosper. They key for me is to make sure I keep my soul’s compass in line with
my heart. They are the same and they are all I have when the days begin and
end, no matter how, when and what happened in between.
I intend to follow that compass. I hope I find others who do the same, and we
may encourage and love each other with the purest intentions, because ultimately
everyone is me, and I am in everyone by being all that is, and also by being
nothing, we are all everything for each other and we owe the world and each
other everything.
Cheers to change, moms, metanoia mistakes, magic, metaphysical, the menial and mundane,
missteps and mystics.
~~~~~~~~~
"Shimmer with a smile. Life is hard, bloom anyway."
