LOVE

I used to have theories on love, many theories. I was able to make sense of it. Well so I thought and I am humbly going to say that I am in a place of not knowing.  

But here’s the thing. There is no logic in love.

So I am not writing about love today, I am wondering about love. As human beings what we most struggle with is love, love for ourselves, love for others, relationships, connections etc.

It’s supposed to be who we are yet we can’t quite seem to understand it. In human form love is not simple. It tests us, it makes us question things about ourselves and life and it brings out our insecurities. So do we surrender to it or do we look at what we can learn from it? Is love something people get obsessed with because they are too scared to look at how much fear they really have? And are we confusing love with fear?

Could love be different for everyone or is there a certain set of rules and guidelines for it? Like we all supposed to feel ONE LOVE and unity? What about those people we don’t actually connect with? I certainly don't love everyone. I can show love and compassion yes but that is different from loving somebody. 

I am not sure about any of it.

People are always trying to explain love, and find its meaning. Maybe because it’s the one thing that makes even the most “tame” person, crazed and we want to understand that which we have no control over,that which controls us.

People have come up with many theories for love. For example, apparently when you first meet someone and fall in love it’s only lust, but is it? Could it be more than lust? What about past lives of love? What about soul families and connections?

Love is a projection...
Yes maybe. So perhaps we have to work on ourselves, rid ourselves of our baggage to experience "real" love. But what is real love? And what are we measuring it against? Is it real love when it causes no pain and only happiness? But that isn't life at all. Life is not all happiness.

This is what I have been told about "true" love. It has no fear, it has no expectations  it doesn't need and it is unconditional. I question this. 

Love is opposite to fear... 
But how can we know love if we have not known fear? Just like we cannot know the light if we have not experienced the darkness.

Love should have no expectations...
Does that mean we are not allowed to ask for what we need in our relationships? Can we EXPECT our partners to be faithful to us for example?

We have to love ourselves first before we can love another...
But can we not discover self- love through another?

Love is not love unless its unconditional...
As humans we really struggle with this, but if our love does have conditions then does that make its not love? 

If you need someone then you don’t love them because love and need are opposite. And if you have a fear of losing someone then it’s not love...
But as children we needed our parents does that mean we didn't love them? The thing is, is it ok to say I need you? Is it safe to need someone? Is it not ok to need one another?

Is love supposed to big, or is it understated? Do we settle for small love because we are too scared to want ferocious love? And does ferocious love exist and if so can it last a lifetime or does it always have to fade away and change?

People say love is the answer to everything yet it has the ability to take away everything we thought we knew about ourselves and others. In society we are supposed to find THE ONE, meaning we must only really love one person. Connectedness between humans is a natural, reoccurring process but if we are apparently only supposed to truly ever love one person then we spend our lives searching for this and in the meantime what about other connections that could be made, whether they are small or big?

Love is all there is...
That is wonderful concept but in theory love is not all there is because there is fear and there is darkness. That is the reality of the world we live in and it is part of many of us.

But maybe one day on our death bed, we may still not have fully understood love but we can say that we experienced the greatest thing that any human being can experience which is love in all its extremities. We can say we felt the pleasure and the absolute elation of love, we felt the depths of its darkness. We felt crazed, we felt hopeless, we felt lust, we fell in love, we fell out of love, we cried, we laughed and all in the name of love.  At times we waited desperately for it, at times it came out of the blue knocking us over the head, and at times it was unrequited.  We experienced the kind of love that made us poets, love that made us sinners. We loved love, we hated love. We swore off it, we couldn't get enough of it. We became addicted to it, we let it go. We knew everything about it, we knew nothing of it. We knew its wonderful fantasies as well as its hard realities.

We are love but we cannot always control love and is that not the gift of humanness?

Maybe tomorrow will be different and I’ll come up with another theory on how I have discovered love. Maybe not. Maybe it’s the part of the mystery of life. 

But at the end of the day, the question is, did we let love in, did we let it un-tame us, did we let it send us into a craze, did we let it shake us, rattle us, awaken us? Did we look at fear in the eye and say “I am going to love anyway”? And did we look at love in the eye and say show me all I need to know about my fears and about how I hold myself back. 

I would love to be able to love completely unconditionally one day, but perhaps for now its about asking LOVE to teach me all I need to know so that I may really know and understand love, through myself.

And maybe that's enough. 

The illusion of Motherhood

Someone asked me recently how I am finding Motherhood and I replied ‘’It’s OK ’. And I instantly felt guilty for saying that and wondered why I had responded like that. But after giving it thought I realised that Motherhood and your baby are two different things. I love my baby more than words can describe but Motherhood is challenging. I see Motherhood as being about me and my capabilities as a Mother.

From the moment I gave birth I felt like I was living with a blind fold on. OK yes I am now speaking as a mother of a 4 month old so I have had some experience but again I am in no way an expert on mothering. But here is what I do know so far. Mothering is about having to forgive yourself every day. Motherhood is about doing your best with what you know and when you know better, you do better.

You know how people talk about that motherly intuition you will have? Well at the best of times I wondered where mine was.

So why is motherhood so stressful? I feel it’s because we are told to take care of our children in a certain way. These baby experts say that there is no one set of rules for a baby as each baby is different but then at the same token by a certain age you should be following a certain set of rules and guidelines again set by these “baby experts”.

Motherhood is based around FEAR.

There are thousands of books that speak about routine, breastfeeding, stimulation, bedtime, nap time, formula, bottles and the list goes on to immediately a woman goes into survival mode and that in order to be a good mother she needs to be able to do all the things the books/people say she should. And yes, at the beginning it is like that, you are trying to keep your baby alive. But how much easier would it be if we actually told ourselves that we are more than good enough. But there is this thing we call ‘’Mommy Guilt’’ that is constantly there. Why? Because society values the Super Mom. What are super moms? Woman that work and manage to take care of their children, and still smile about it all. There is this stereotype about how a mom should be. She should be able to give natural birth, breastfeed her baby, get a baby into a routine, have a job too (because otherwise she is seen as doing nothing) and again still smile about it all. Women have to try be perfect and lead “balanced lives”.

And what’s more surprising is that it is mothers who are teaching other mothers this. Mothers that also feel insecure and not good enough but never speak about it. Mothers are portraying a sense of everything is perfect when it’s not. I remember talking to a friend once about the struggles I was facing and her response was ''but you do like being a Mom right?" And this is the illusion. 

So where are the books about how to bond with your baby, How to trust or develop your Motherly intuition or How to love yourself as a mother?

We live in a society where woman are not going by their intuition or are in their own power when it comes to the process of birth or Motherhood. Take this country for example; suddenly there is an epidemic of babies with ‘’large heads’’ because that is what doctors are telling women to turn them off having natural birth. For a woman to have fear around birth is perfectly normal  but Doctors don’t seem to support natural birth because it’s an inconvenience and so woman are not supported in this decision and are robbed of the experience. When a woman goes into labour and her surroundings and the people around her are not supportive of her birthing process she will not dilate and she won’t be able to give birth. Studies show that any kind of stress during labour hinders the process.

I am not pro natural birth, I am pro women being able to make their own decisions and not be led by other people’s fears and opinions. If a woman decides that a selective C- section is best for her for example, then that too is fine as long as she is confident in her decision and has not been intimidated to make that decision.

There is very little support for women so that they can be empowered and be the mothers they want to be. But what there is, is constant fear, guilt and exhaustion. And so children grow up with Mothers like this. I did. Unsupported, disempowered women who are led my fear because they have not been told that they are allowed to make the decisions, call the shots and trust themselves on any decisions they make.

The first week of motherhood was a shock to me. I struggled for six weeks to breastfeed and eventually gave up; it was heart-breaking, because I wanted to have that experience but also because it’s drummed into woman’s heads that “breast is best”! So when you faced with a baby that doesn't want to breastfeed then does that mean you are not giving them the best? At the time there was no one telling me it was OK and that I was still a good mother. In fact I had people and doctors giving me dirty looks when I mentioned I was bottle feeding.  And at the same token I was seen as better over a woman who had a C- section. It’s ludicrous. Not to mention that from personal experience its male doctors that seem to have the most opinions on breastfeeding and natural birth yet they are the ones that don’t actually know how to give women the support and courage they need for both of these processes.

So after weeks of stress and tears I eventually decided that I had two choices, stay stressed and go with the nonsense that society puts on women and keep taking that on or decide that I was going to do it my way. But I experienced a lot of judgement from people when I said I was treating my baby homoeopathically for example and I was laughed at by a Doctor when I said I think my child is lactose intolerant and he should go on Soya for example. I was told I was crazy to not give my child drugs at the age of 3 months. It took everything for me to stand by my decision and go against the "professionals’’ and now after sticking to my guns, I finally have a pain free, reflux free, colic free baby.

As a woman standing your ground and doing things differently in an industry that is extremely opinionated (the baby industry I will call it) is extremely difficult. Society is full of illusion and masks that people wear. And we compare ourselves to others but what we are comparing ourselves to is not the reality.

My reality is that there were some days when I hated being a mother. I have sent my Husband messages saying that it isn't for me and I can’t do it anymore. He never judged me for it and he just tried to convince me that I was doing my best.  

So where am I now? Well I have stopped being so focused on things like routines, schedules and stimulation and whatever else I am supposed to be doing and have decided to just spend time with my child. Doing that has helped me to be less stressed and reminded me of the beauty and unbelievable sacredness that is a bond between mother and child and why I had him in the first place.

It’s amazing how differently he behaves when I am calm and we are together and I am holding him and loving him. He has this expression like all is right in the world. And all is right in the world because he needs it, because he needs to understand that there is no limit to how much love and affection I can give him. There is no limit to how much love he deserves.

We are living in a world where people have very little self-esteem and so placing rules, regiments and conditions on our babies and children is where it all begins. Humans crave love and affection  as it’s a basic human need and for some reason we are saying no to our children already? What does this say about society? I have heard women saying things like don’t carry your baby too much because you spoil them. No! When you attend to your babies every need all of the time, you send the message that they can trust you, that their needs are valid and that as a parent you are reliable. And yes that does come at a sacrifice to the parent but it’s also about how you look at it. 

Everything is about teaching a child that we honour and value them from an early age instead pushing them. Think of the pressure we as adults feels in life in general. Why wouldn't we want to shelter our children from that for as long as possible? And yes there will be those times that children will have to learn independence etc., but that is not what my post is about today.

The purpose of my post is to remind ourselves of why have babies. You know the saying love makes the world go around? It’s not corny it’s the truth. The world is filled with love starved people who are looking for acknowledgement and it starts with our children.

So back to why do we have children? Personally one of the reasons I had a baby because I wanted the privilege of raising a child. I don’t think there is a greater privilege but also I wasn't a happy child growing up and I wanted to do it differently for my child. But with that comes the greatest of challenges because it has tested my own self esteem more than ever and every day I have to work through my own insecurities. 

Some days I feel like I am the worst mother in the world and some days I feel like I am a pro! And that’s how it goes.  

Perhaps it’s also about one’s attitude towards motherhood. Because the fact is its beyond tiring and you often have no time for yourself but I can imagine when you look at your child one day who is happy and healthy and confident you can say that you did that. And no one else may know or see it but you will know that in this life you taught another human being to trust and love and be happy with who they are.

So forgive yourself every day because you are human and mothers are not know it all’s. And yes, you may spend hours rocking and holding and soothing till you are blue in the face and it may look like nothing comes from it but in that we are teaching our babies that their needs are valid, that their needs are attended to and that it’s OK to have needs.

So to end off, this is is what my baby boy has taught me about love and why having a child is the biggest privilege, a privilege that supersedes the sacrifice...

Love is when your baby needs constant love and affection, so you learn that you have the ability to give it 24 hours 7 days a week. You learn that there is no limit to how much love you are able to give and how much love you receive.

Love is when your anger and frustration dissipates quicker than you have ever let go of anger and frustration because that kind of love gets into those little cracks.

Love is when you look at your baby and you see yourself and you have to love yourself through your child.

Love is when your baby has felt you at your absolute worst but still wants to be with you 24 hours a day seven days a week, unconditionally no matter what.

Love is when accepting your child for all that they are in the hardest moments requires you to know how to do that for yourself because love for your child requires a love for oneself.

Love is when you didn't know how much your heart could stretch and how much love you were actually capable of giving and you realise that just because of that, you are a wonderful Mother.

Love is when you weren't sure if God existed and then your child was born.

Now that’s a privilege.  

The need for intimacy

I am the kind of person that likes to connect on a deeper level with people and if I am not able to then I get bored quite quickly. I have always been that way. When I was small I was always intrigued by people who were able to look me in the eyes and talk to me and want to know me even though I was shy and quiet and timid. One of my biggest challenges is that people are not always open to connecting on a deeper level.

Perhaps it’s because they do not know themselves on a deeper level?

Until the age of 29 I was watching the movie of life through glasses that other people had put on for me. And at age 29 through a deep dark process I decided what I wanted my life to look like. I decided what kind of people I wanted in my life and what life actually meant to me.

Before that life didn't mean much. Quite honestly it meant nothing. Earth felt like a place that was forced on to me by my parents who selfishly conceived me (I know I know I know) and that there was no reason for me to be here. Then I found a little word called transparency.

I asked myself why I was actually holding back. And it was then that I finally found purpose through being honest with myself. I wanted to tell people and show people how this can too change their lives but it didn't always work that way. I wrote and wrote and I was even ridiculed by some of my “closest friends” asking me why on earth I was putting all my personal stuff out there for the world to see when “that kind of stuff” stuff should be spoken about in private.

The thing is that people are actually looking for a way to express themselves without being judged. People are looking for others who will accept them for who they are not for how many followers they have on a social network for example. Perhaps it’s because they have never experienced anyone showing an actual interest in their lives, perhaps they don’t even know that unconditional acceptance and non-judgement exists.

Opening up is probably one of the biggest risks you can take because you don’t know how others will respond and what they will think of you. What if they realise you aren't the person they thought you were. Well in my case I think that was a good thing. I was unapproachable to some extent and closed off and when I began to share my life I revealed my mask as hard as it was.

I know how it is to want to hide. To hide from myself from people and from life because there were things I was ashamed of. I had secrets that I didn't want people to know about. I had issues. I wanted my life to seem perfect. 

Connecting is about sharing yourself, all of yourself and I am not saying you have to treat everyone as a therapist but at the same time the fact is we all crave intimacy on some level and that doesn't mean just sexual it means being close to people, letting people see us and acknowledge us and we crave being our ourselves. Intimacy happens through sharing who we are. 

We all have a story to tell and we are all looking for people to share our stories with, our lives with. We are looking for understanding and closeness, as humans do and that happens through sharing and transparency.

Doing versus Being

There are so many of us that pride ourselves in being busy. We look up to people who seem to be juggling the world because they seem more important than those who aren’t. It seems that the expectation is that the more hectic people’s lives are the better they are doing. And the busier they are the more successful they are.

Or perhaps it’s that the busier we are the better we feel about ourselves? We feel like when we are doing something then we are achieving but not so much when we are just being. When people constantly talk about how hectic their lives are there seems to be a sense of fulfilment in that for them but in the same breath they look tired and unhappy.

It’s the same with talking. We struggle to just be quiet, and we always need to be saying something. Talking fills gaps, it distracts us from our thoughts, we feel less alone and we also get the attention we want.

We talk to get acknowledged and to be heard and we talk to connect with others. When we are quiet we have to acknowledge ourselves, we have to listen to ourselves, we have to hear our own thoughts and we have to connect with ourselves. It’s a difficult thing to be just be in the now moment even to clear our minds of thoughts and just enjoy looking at something or sitting somewhere with nothing to DO but with everything to BE.

When we are quiet, we can finally see how we talk to ourselves. What do we say to ourselves? What do we believe to be true? But how long do we actually allow ourselves to hear these thoughts before we find a distraction.

I am really inspired by people who have gone to an ashram or even just done it themselves, people who have not spoken for a certain amount of days. Imagine how you get to know yourself, imagine how familiar you become with your thoughts, and how you are almost forced to learn how to clear your mind because suddenly there are no distractions and you realise that you don’t want to be stuck with your negative thoughts any longer.  

I believe that success takes on another dimension when we are able to be with ourselves, to be quiet for a while, to not find the next thing to do but rather find the chance to just be. Even if this is with people or alone, we can still just be.  I get that our lives are actually really busy but many people will keep doing things to keep busy even in their free time.

If you ask two different people what they do with their lives and one answers that they have been busy with work, friends, family etc and the other answers that they sat meditating all week (for example), let’s be honest we would think the meditating person is a bit strange and we would wonder why they don’t have something to do? Or didn’t they get bored and lonely? And our immediate thought is that this person doesn’t DO anything.

Babies know how to just be because that’s all they know. It’s the one time in our lives that we are allowed to just be and no one judges us for it. Until we grow up and suddenly being is not good enough, now we must get up and do do do! And we are not taught to find a balance of being and doing.

Many of us were not taught growing up that it’s so important to just be. I see this so often that when parents talk about their children they describe the success of their children by how busy they are in terms of their profession/school/sports etc. Imagine a parent bragging and saying that their child has decided not to work and do "nothing" for a while? What if the parent would brag about who their child is, and not what they do? But would that be good enough?

Success in society is based on what you have to show for yourself on the exterior not on how happy or content you are.  Cildren are praised for how well they do not thier ability to be or who they are. So they grow up thinking that to feel good about themselves they need to be doing something with thier lives and there is no focus on their internal world because all the focus is on what they are doing on the outside. And so we grow up in this constant rat race of believing that in order to be somebody, we have to always be doing something.  

Just being can feel really uncomfortable and often we will feel guilty for doing nothing, but it’s not nothing, it’s just not doing. It’s in the being that we begin to really know ourselves. It’s in the being that we get messages and signs about our lives. It’s in the quietness that we find the peace we really crave; it’s in the nothingness that we find everything we have been looking for. Where we find all those things we have not found while we are doing and trying. It’s in the being that we find the connection to God or the universe and to ourselves.

Why are we so quick to judge others?

It occurred to me recently that the only thing I can know for sure and make comments about is myself. That is why I write about myself. I have always had an issue with believing people who dish out advise and tell people how to do things instead of talking about their own experiences of things.

The day that changed my life was when I watched the documentary on Neale Donald Walsh’s life (the author of Conversations with God). The documentary showed how he was at the lowest point in his life and he lost everything to the point where he lived on the streets) and then he began to write and find answers. And the whole world saw his difficult journey but the whole world saw how real and difficult life can be. I was so moved by how real he was and how unashamed he was to put his life out there for people to see and learn from.  And I said to myself that one day I was going to do the same.

 But back to the theme of today, I think we are very quick to make presumptions about others when really we don’t know.

I have noticed with me that when I become opinionated or I have too much to say about someone else that it’s really just a distraction from myself. It’s easier to focus on negativity of others and how they are living their lives instead of acknowledging what’s really going on in our own lives.

I think human beings have forgotten how to love and support one another. People have even become scared of the word love or it’s only reserved for certain people. But what if we could drop all our judgement and just find more compassion and understanding for other people.

I think we are constantly trying to protect ourselves and so we are always on the defensive and our guards are up. But these walls don’t protect, they keep away.

It doesn’t mean we have to accept behaviours that we don’t agree with but instead of coming from a place of judgement we come from a place of compassion.

But perhaps this comes down to self- love once again and that is why it’s so difficult for us. I feel like everything comes down to self- love. If we don’t love ourselves and basically if we are hard on ourselves and treat ourselves like shit can we really treat others nicely?

For some reason society has built a stigma and some sort of guilt around self- care, especially  with men. They must be good providers but when it comes to loving themselves, finding compassion for themselves it’s seen as weak. But I am not sure how common it is for a Father to say to a son that he needs to love himself and take care of himself and be there for himself. A man is mainly acknowledged for how well he provides for his family and others.

So can we really be honest with ourselves? Can we be that self- aware that when we find ourselves judging someone else, in that moment we can acknowledge how shit we are actually feeling about ourselves?  We are constantly compensating for how bad we feel about ourselves with things, whether it be material things and talking others down.  

We often will find ourselves in situations where we are treated badly but I really do believe that people treat us the way we treat ourselves. And people treat us badly for as far as we are willing to let them do so.

It’s a difficult thing to acknowledge that we really don’t love ourselves enough or maybe at all. And there are many reasons why this could be but the fact is we can’t blame others anymore for this. No one is going to ride on their white horse and pull us out of our self-loathing. Only we can do this.

But acknowledging it doesn’t mean we fall into victim mode where we now feel sorry for ourselves because we feel that we are not good enough, its more about owning the fact that perhaps all the bad things we think about others is really what we think about ourselves. When we own our stuff we become empowered, not victimised. It’s easy to be a victim though because then we always have someone to blame and so we never have to take responsibility. But then we stay unhappy waiting to be fulfilled by someone or something.

I believe if we can see it in ourselves, and then have compassion for ourselves for feeling it then we can begin to love and support others around us. And then we don’t even have to try because it will be a natural process.

It’s empowering to own how vulnerable we can really be and feel. It’s dis empowering to constantly blame others for making us feel a certain way.

But why should we change anything about our lives right? Why should we suddenly start acknowledging things in ourselves? Because we all so badly want to be loved and accepted by others and we are on a constant search to find this acceptance everywhere we go, when really, the person that is going to love us the most is starring at us in the mirror, every day. When we can really feel that, love from others will just flow and acknowldegement from the outside won't be so important to us.

We so badly want to be understood and supported and loved for who we are and seen for what we do but we cannot seem to give that acknowledgement to ourselves. And the more we seek it out in others the more unfullfilled we seem to feel. It's a difficult process this, one that I often battle with. But it comforts me to know that so many of us feel the same way and so we are never really alone.

So something for me to ponder on and practice for sure.

Love always

Becoming the Lone Wolf

I haven’t written in a while mostly because I was approached by an old friend who has been following my blog and seemed to believe in my writing so much that he is putting a website together for me. Excited is an understatement and as usual it’s always a shock when someone comments positively about my writing, albeit, a pleasant shock. So I wanted to wait to post all my new stuff onto my website but I have been having writing withdrawals. It seems that writing is not a part of me, it has become me and without it, well I can no longer imagine it.

I still laugh because I remember when my Mother bought me my first journal, I wrote often, but with much resistance, and most of my entries began with “I f.ing hate writing but for some reason I do it anyway”. Oh yes, I had the dramatic teenager thing down to a tee. But I once saw a quote that said the hardest part of writing is the actual writing; this could not be truer. It’s a mixture of difficult and exhilarating at the same time, for me anyway.

I must say though another part of why I haven’t written also has to do with the fact that I have become a bit of a loner. No I don’t mean a hermit, or a recluse, I mean I have become someone quite independent and enjoy being in my own company. I used to hate being alone in every sense of the word. I was out every weekend with friends, and the thought of being alone for an hour used to send me into some sort of anxiety. But it’s amazing how much you learn about yourself when you can actually just be with yourself, without any resistance. I have found a new found love for nature and this is where I recharge my batteries as much as I can. Trees seem to be a better source of comfort for me than people lately.

I came across an article recently that spoke to me on a deep level. It spoke about the Archetype/symbol of the Lone Wolf.

So that is what I would call myself lately, the Lone Wolf. The article describes how although wolves normally live, travel, and hunt in packs, occasionally a young wolf will choose to leave the pack and set out on its own.  The Lone Wolf is an archetype, a metaphor, a symbol for freedom, independence and self-reliance. The term Lone Wolf describes a person who is an individual in the truest sense of the word. The Lone Wolf is someone who prefers to work alone, is Self-Reliant and enjoys the peace and contentment of his, or her, own solitude. The Lone Wolf lives by his, or her, own rules: rules which are in harmony with universal laws and its own personal Divine Nature. I am sure there are many people who can relate to this.

So this pretty much explains where I am at. I feel like I have distanced myself from expectations, demands, of society and people and I get very turned off by people who believe that things should be a certain way. We don’t even realise how some of the people we choose to spend our time with have these unfulfilled dreams and expectations of themselves and without realising it we have taken their expectations upon ourselves, only to find ourselves in a position where we feel anxious because we haven’t reached certain goals or we think we are not where we should be in our lives.

So, I would describe it like I have become un-tethered to the pack.

In the last few months, so many things, ideas, thoughts began to NOT resonate with me and I often felt guilty because suddenly my thought process and the way I viewed life was completely different to so many people. And often that old feeling of "maybe I should rather not say certain things and do the right things in order to feel like I fit in better" would be better, but who would it be better for? Certainly not me.  

So I took a writing break to talk myself through this process and find my way in this new way of being and most importantly not judging it. Let’s just say that if you ever have a strange, bizarre idea about the universe, and life, I would be the first to listen because let me say that society’s way of thinking can be very narrow minded, and its one way only and that can be suffocating to many people who just don’t fit into that box or way of thinking.

So here is to the beginning of a new chapter, a different, awakened Talya, and some new ideas and writings about life that I have in stall.

And the truth is, alone= all one.

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