I am grateful for friends who know me so well.  For the friends I’ve known my whole life to the friends who I’ve met in this new phase.  The friends I met when I moved in here, the friends I met years ago at the apartment, the friends I have now after being a mother and my son is in school.  I am grateful for this because even though I’ve been relatively different people at each of these stages, there are people who understand these facets of me, who have gone through the same thing as me, who speak the same language.  Experience is a uniter.  Being understood is freeing.  Being seen is the ultimate validation of who we are.  It always amazes me how quickly some people learn about others, how they are able to look at a person and simply know them.  It is a beautiful thing to be known.  Whitney Hanson talks about love and a heart speaking the same language—this doesn’t have to be a romantic love, this is the frequency of one heart speaking to another and being understood.  My heart feels understood for the first time in a long time.

Even though I’ve been known and seen at these different stages, I’ve had shields up for so long that I wasn’t sure how to trust that people would care for my heart as I cared for theirs.  I never felt they really grasped who I am—and some didn’t.  But others did.  And those are the ones that I choose to focus on, the ones I choose to be grateful for.  Those are the people I choose to keep in my life.  When you are understood, your life flourishes differently.  We do have different people for different phases of our lives, that is the natural progression of time as well as the natural progression of progress itself.  We can’t stay the same and think things will be different.  So we need different people at different points.  I am thrilled to be seen and I am proud that I see.  I am so lucky to know that, even with a shielded heart, there are people who can see through it and allow me in—so I am safe to let them in as well.  Not everyone deserves access to that level, but those who do have free reign.  I am grateful for that vulnerability and that strength, for that simultaneous acknowledgement of independence and unification. 

I am grateful to be accepted.  There is an irony in this: the more I am able to accept myself, the more easily accepted I am by others.  Learning to love ourselves and accept ourselves are two sides of the same coin and both are necessary in order to flow and be present.  The more present we are, the more we are able to simply be—and that is a moment when we embrace who we are.  Typically it’s at those points, the moments when we stop looking for others to accept us, that we find exactly who we need—the people who take us for exactly who we are.  I had to learn a long time ago that not everyone seeks that type of relationship with us.  I spent too much time hoping and wanting everyone to like me, trying to be everything to everyone.  Instead of feeling more included, I felt further and further from myself and that is when I was most lost.  As soon as I began finding my way back to myself, I found others.  When we find our home in self, we are aligned with those who contribute to our lives.  I am grateful to build that support and to support others who value the effort.  I am grateful for being known.