Living a transparent life

I often feel like I am surrounded by people who hide behind everything, but mostly from themselves. Maybe I notice it because I used to be one of those people. But when I look back, keeping secrets kept me from finding the peace I so desperately craved.

My philosophy became to live a transparent life. I have nothing to hide, or be ashamed of and most importantly I am learning still to hide nothing from myself. Reality can be difficult but let me tell you, that avoiding reality is much, much worse.

We like to live in illusions because they have kept us going. We believe certain things about ourselves, about the world and about others and we get stuck in that. We operate from our egos and we think that our opinions are more than opinions and we feel that we are entitled to judge others and make comments about how others are living their lives. But in this we become rigid and unhappy because we cannot see past our noses. We cannot see past the illusions we have created for ourselves and others and life. We land up living in a farce that we call our lives. We choose to “stay asleep” rather than wake up to what is really there.

We like to see things in a certain way because we are so afraid of what the reality is and that we may not be able to handle it. In fact deep down we know what the truth is but truth can often turn our worlds upside down but if we are hiding so much then our world can’t be that put together in the first place. And so what if it’s not?

I have committed to writing about my truth from the moment I began to write and I don’t know how many times I have said this, but it is truly freeing. I write about it yes, but I also speak it, and I am it. And every so often life brings me a new experience so that I can once again move past the illusions and see what is truly there. Sometimes I don’t want to, and sometimes it can take me longer than I would like to admit but I eventually do.

I get millions of different comments from my readers on my writing and some will almost feel sorry for me and think that I am now in some state of depression when I write about some of my painful processes. This is because they have the belief that when you talk about difficult things you must be really unhappy, when in fact it’s the opposite. When painful things come up I write about them and I feel them and move through them but in all of this I can still be joyful and grateful and light. But I have had to learn how to do this. To learn how to stay in my light no matter what the darkness brings. Or better yet to embrace the darkness for it brings gifts beyond our imagination.

We like to see things in a certain way because we are so afraid of what the reality is and that we may not be able to handle it. If we look to see what really is there then maybe we will see that things aren’t as great as we make them out to be, or even that our relationships are not necessarily what we make them out to be, or whatever it is. These are just examples. So we keep hiding behind what we think is there, instead of admitting to ourselves that this may just be an illusion we have created because we are too afraid to face the truth, to face ourselves.  And we are afraid of being judged. Let me tell you that I have never felt judged doing this. Yes people think they know what I must be feeling but judged, no. Maybe you judge you...

But I say so what? So what if things are actually crappy or so what if we have to face ourselves and the truth. So what if it’s hard? There have been times where it was so hard that I thought that this might just kill me. As dramatic as it sounds it’s the truth.

Be true, be vulnerable, be you, speak your truth, and commit to peeling off the layers you built in order to get through life. They no longer serve you.

I celebrate you in being the true, authentic, transparent you.

Love, always

Taking on my Father's "Addiction". A painful relationship between a Father and Daughter

So by now you know that ever so often I open myself up and write about whatever process I am going through, and I do this in the hope that my openness and transparency will benefit my readers in some way, in any way. But in no way is this easy and every time I post a piece like this it’s at risk of feeling vulnerable and exposed. But being the woman that I am I trying to move beyond fear and challenge myself. This is as real as I get.

As a woman most of my identity was based on how my Father saw me. And the most difficult thing about this is that having a really troubled and shitty Father made it hard to find myself as a woman because there was no one to mirror off of or get that affirmation from. I know there will be many women and men who can relate to this.

I can’t speak for others but my relationship with my Father was everything in the world to me. I put him on a pedestal. I remember being about eight or nine years old thinking that there was no ways in hell I was ever going to ever love anyone like I loved him.  

As a little girl you look to your Father to show you that you are loved by a man, you are worthy of being loved by a man and that you are seen by a man. But I can’t say I ever experienced this. You see in the past I would have said that my Dad tried his best and he showed me love in the best way he could. And I would have said this because a part of me wanted to still feel sorry for him and be the understanding daughter that I always was. But this is not the truth; well it’s not my truth. He didn’t show love because he didn’t know what love was.

He told me he loved me when he needed me. He told me he loved me when he was high and when he was lonely. This was more manipulation than anything and I fell for it each time. Obviously then I was too young to know any better. And those were the only times he said “I love you”. I can count them on my fingers. But I lived for those times. I yearned for them. He created a yearning in me that I have had since then. A yearning for an unrequited, dysfunctional "love".

I grew up thinking that love was painful, and it had nothing to do with freedom or joy like people said it did. Love for me was heavy. And here’s the biggest one, love was about filling voids in each other.

Except I filled my Dad’s void and he created one in me.

One that I have tried to fill my whole life. This is what happens though with parents like this and with many, many parents in general They shouldn’t have had children at all, and they had them for their own selfish reasons, and to fill their own voids and so as children our goal becomes to fill their voids, yet this just creates a void in us. Well in my case anyway.

And so I thought I knew what love was, because the way my Father ‘’loved’’ me was all I knew and in my mind it’s how I thought I should be loved by a man and how I should show love. The only thing is I can no longer call this love. Maybe that’s the saddest part of it all for me.

So in the past I knew love to be filled with neediness, pain, expectations and a lot of crying because my love for my Father was unrequited. And so, unrequited love in the form of men and relationships became the theme of my life. Love became a game, a game that was exciting, dangerous, painful and manipulating and I needed it to sustain me. It was normal for me, it made me feel alive…for a while, but it always ended in pain. Love for me equalled desperation. Yes that is the word I have been looking for to describe the love for my father, utter desperation. I spent my life loving a man who never loved me back.

 
My Father had an addiction to prescription medication and although I did not take that addiction on in anyway, I definitely took the emotional side of the addiction on (not that I had a choice then), because addiction does not only come in the form of a substance. So yes I would call this an Emotional Addiction. And trust me it’s so hard to break. I needed it, I lived for it, I felt empty without it and I was always seeking it out in people. The yearning I always had, I lived for. I am not even sure I am explaining it right but the intense feeling of it is difficult to put into words.

When he died that intense pain I felt around our relationship just grew. And I was even more attached to the fact that love had to be painful like this, it had to be ‘’I love you but I can’t have you’’. You need me so I am there for you but still where is the love here? I would die for you but oh wait, you died anyway. What is wrong with this picture?!

Seriously I am watching these words go down on the page and I am somewhat confused and flabbergasted at how I was able to live my life like this. It's like being handcuffed to him almost. This has been one of the hardest and longest processes I have ever worked on. Today I am almost an observer of this all and suddenly I want to laugh so hard! Because Dearest Dad, you really fucked up so badly. But still I love you; yes I do because somewhere deep down I actually do know what love is, even if I forgot for a while. In fact I am the most loving open-hearted person I know when I am not operating from a wounded place.

The thing is, I don’t know what it’s like for other women/men out there that have had bad or worse or no relationships with their fathers, but I know that this is how my relationship with the most important man of my life shaped the way I know/knew how to love.

There really are days where I still want to be the little girl and I wish my Father would come back and do it differently this time. I wish he could have shown me what real, unconditional love was.

It’s like a slap in the face when you realise that the kind of love you have been chasing isn’t actually real. And the love I shared with my Dad wasn’t love at all. It was the idea of love. It was manipulation, and I was a puppet on a string. I spent my life mourning what could have been with us.

So ok this is the story but now what?

Now I am left asking what love really is. And I am fearful for I can’t answer that right now. I am fearful of letting go of the idea of love that I had because it defined me. His idea of love for me, or the way he showed it, really defined me. I often still get so mad and wish that there was even a memory of Father-Love that I can go back to in my mind but there isn’t.

So now I need to create my identity without this emotional need and void that lived within me. But I honestly don’t know how. But in my experience when you set the intention, ask for an answer and then let it go, the answer always appears.

But through all of my writing and all the processes I have gone thorough I am certain that I have what it takes. So I guess to try and find that love within me again as an adult today is what this is about. So here I am setting this challenge for myself. And as God as my witness I will become the woman that I was always meant to me before I was exposed to the madness that were my parents. Herein lies my journey and it’s really difficult but somewhat beautiful at the same time. The beauty that is always in the chaos.

So as a grown woman I am now on the journey to figure out what love is. I know it begins with The Self but when you don’t even have memories of how this looks from your parents it’s difficult to just imagine what self- love looks like, never mind implementing it. But that’s not going to stop me.

I am feeling strong even if I am questioning how I am going to finally move through this once and for all! I know that there is always a way….This is one of the many steps I have taken to be the woman I know I really am.

And to remember that there are bigger forces that support us in everything that we do. The universe is always working in our favour. I recently had an experience that helped me to come to this realisation about me and my Father and now being able to feel the sadness around it is my idea of the universe supporting me so I can move through it.

When there is stuff that we still  need to work on life makes sure to give us the experiences, the people and opportunities we need to work it through whether we are aware of it or not. That is why people often say that they are stuck in the same patterns and whether they move jobs or go into new relationships the same stuff keeps coming up. This is because life is saying "ok so are you going to work on this now finally?". Life keeps knocking until we are ready to open that door no matter how unpleasant it is.

Every time I work through an issue and face that which is painful I walk with a lighter step and a more peaceful heart. So with gratitude I end this off.

And so it is.

I am a sexual woman...but what does that really mean?

I am a woman of 29 going on 30. I am not sure why I have the need to mention that but maybe because the need to talk about this comes with this age.

Sexuality seems to be a touchy subject because the mere utterance of the word sparks instant stereotypes. Usually when you mention the work sexuality people automatically think of sex.

As a woman when I think of the word sexuality I think of expression, art, vibrancy and intuition but yes sex comes into it of course. For me, sexuality is more personal and individual than someone having to make us feel sexual. As a woman I think I always felt as if it was the man’s job to make me feel beautiful and sexy and in my power. I do think this is a normal thing though but I also think it can be rather dis empowering to sit and wait for a man to make you feel those things, or to have to have a man in your life in order for you to feel those things.

I have really begun to notice how important sexuality has become in my life. Perhaps because I am more in touch with myself and self-love has become a theme in my life and maybe because it is actually a natural thing for women whether we acknowledge it or not.

As women our sexuality has not really been celebrated enough and often women operate from a wounded place to get the attention they want from a man and they base their sexuality on the reactions and affirmations of men. The wounded woman is the woman who was never noticed by her father so she unconsciously seeks it out in other men.

But as women and men we can all agree that there is nothing more beautiful than a woman who can own her sexuality and her power.

I have seen it in little girls who want to wear their party dresses to bed at night. Little girls who twirl around in their dresses because it makes them feel pretty and “like a girl”. At that age we are not necessarily going to say it’s a sexual thing but it’s about feeling like a girl, and there is something very special in that. And as adult women we love to feel like a woman and only a woman will understand what this means.

For me sexuality is about celebrating yourself as a woman. Because as women we have unfortunately been tamed. Yes I said tamed. And there has been this stereotype put on us that men are the sexual ones and we are the ones that turn over and say "no honey I have a head ache".

But let us just realise that sexuality for women holds an enormous amount of power. It’s a life force, its beauty, its art, its everything.

But can we own our sexuality and separate it from anything man for now? Because even as women we are able to notice another sexual woman because even if we have not owned it in ourselves, we do want to.  Yes all women want to. All women want to feel like they are powerful in their femininity and in their sexuality.

But I feel I must again mention that I am not talking about in relation to men. I am not talking about flirting or wearing revealing clothes, none of that. I am talking about admiring oneself as a woman. Knowing where your power lies as a woman and that even without a man, we are sexual powerful beings that could rule countries, worlds, universes, galaxies because of the feminine power we own.  And with that sexual, feminine power comes our intuition, our knowing, and our ability to Mother, our ability to transform. Our ability to aid men in their transformations, our ability to heal, and the list goes on.

So now I’m going to get a bit personal but I’m in this now, so I might as well go all in! As a woman it’s important to notice our bodies. Not how does my body look to “him” but how beautiful my body is to me. How and where it curves, how it feels to have beautiful soft spots, how mysterious some of our parts are, and that although we can be vulnerable in this place, there is power.  How beautiful we are to touch, to be felt, to be kissed, but to be admired by ourselves.

I feel that society has naturally taught us that women are vulnerable but not necessarily powerful.

Things are changing, relationships are changing, dynamics between men and women and even women and women are changing and so it’s time to own our power as woman. It’s time to let ourselves feel and express our sexuality in whatever form is right for us. Even if you just believe me that you are powerful that’s enough for now. The feelings will come. But again when I say powerful I don’t mean having power over someone else, or a man, or being more powerful than someone else, I’m talking about inner power.

For a woman that inner power is subtle, but it’s there and it’s noticeable but it’s not flaunted and it’s not for show.

But you don’t have to be a thin, model-type woman to give yourself permission to be sexual. So on the topic of sex, is it ok to love sex and want it, often? And is it ok to want mind blowing, life altering sex? Fuck yes. But first and foremost it goes back to owning your own sexuality and loving yourself, your body purely for the fact that you are a unique woman. Purely for the fact that you are a woman.

Gone are the days of the tamed woman, and gone are the days of sexuality being dependent on any man (or relationship) although let’s not forget that we do need them sometimes for the part they play in celebrating that side of ourselves. But they celebrate it with us, not for us. That’s the difference. And when you can truly celebrate yourself, you open yourself up to be celebrated.

And so sexuality is beauty in itself, it’s a form of love and expression for ourselves and another. It’s a powerful force in our lives, it’s who we are and it’s truly a gift when expressed in the right way. Because let me just say that sexuality used for manipulation or control is not sexuality.

There is a wild woman in all of us. Some of us let her out but others keep her locked up for fear of judgement. And some of us have just completely forgotten she is there or pretend she doesn't exist. But this woman is free, beautiful, and expressive, artistic in any form, loving, but powerful, very powerful and all women know what this place feels like even if it was only for a few seconds.

So let me say that I am a sexual woman, and yes I love the act of sex but I also have truly began to understand the meaning of true sexuality, of expression and the gift in this.

 

From one Wild Woman to another, I celebrate me and I celebrate you.