“Sometimes the shit in our life is just fertilizer for new growth,” Wildwomansisterhoodofficial.  How absolutely delicious is this?  Oh, my reason-hunters, those who need to know the ins and outs of everything and have to dig endlessly until they feel satisfied that they have some sort of answer, the logic hunters.  Look, I am one of you.  I believe there has to be a reason for everything and I despise not knowing what it is.  I want choices to be made and I want results to be clear before I even begin.  Like every other human on this planet, I’ve also been through enough shit that I didn’t know how to wash it off of myself and I stood there, stinking and in pain, hoping for something.  But standing there never once removed that shit from my skin and it certainly didn’t stop it from seeping into my soul on some days.  There comes a point where we realize that we can’t stop the crap from coming, and no matter how sad or frustrating that is, the pain of waiting for an explanation that makes sense is worse than simply accepting we stepped in it and we need to go clean up.  In the most literal sense, when we step in dog poo on a walk in the park, it would be like waiting to identify whose dog it was before cleaning off the shoe and moving on with our day. 

This mindset is a beautiful switch in the game.  Sometimes what happens is simply meant to foster growth, foster movement that we wouldn’t have taken if something didn’t push us in a new direction.  We must always go toward the light in life and in order to do that we have to step out of the crap, no matter where it comes from, especially if we create it ourselves, and we need to accept the lessons we learn as the opportunity to become something greater.  If we continue to stand there waiting for the logic, we will get buried in shit.  I look around me now, seeing my life differently after the last year, and I can tell you I have never had a more tumultuous year on so many levels.  But I’m here now and I have to fully admit that, while there are still parts that make no sense to me, I wouldn’t be where I’m at without what happened.  I genuinely developed an entirely new appreciation for where I’m at, for knowing who I am on a new level, for understanding the people around me better, for seeing that my life is on track exactly as it should be.  Is it where I thought I’d be?  Hell no.  But is it clarifying what I actually want to do now?  Hell yes.  Many of the experiences of last year would absolutely qualify as shit—they left me hollow and scared and confused and unsure of what would happen, how it even happened. But without those moments, I wouldn’t appreciate where I’m at now, I wouldn’t understand the beauty of where I’m at now.

I understood/understand fully that I demanded perfection in many cases for most of my life and I was guilty of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in more than once circumstance.  Just because it wasn’t perfect didn’t mean I needed to throw out the entire thing. That’s not how life works.  We don’t get to throw tantrums for things not being perfectly how we expect them to be and think it’s going to turn out ok.  We are meant to say yes to what is and learn to adapt to it.  We learn to create our own magic by appreciating the power of what we have.  Crappy things happen all the time but that doesn’t mean it’s a crappy life or existence.  9 times out of 10 in retrospect we can look at those experiences and see that there was a reason for it.  And for that one time we don’t find it, we can at least accept that there is good all around regardless.  One smudge doesn’t ruin the entire landscape of our existence.  And the truth is we aren’t meant to arrive at the end in a perfectly preserved package anyway.  We have evidence we live and sometimes that means getting dirty.  That dirt teaches us how to get clean again and it teaches us the beauty in the power of perspective in growth.  There is so much joy and freedom in this world and we so often forget that we are truly bound by no one—all of the constraints we put on ourselves to adhere to some sort of societal norm are in place as some form of control.  I don’t propose anarchy, rules are necessary—but there are different means and reasons to operate within different scopes of the rules.  We aren’t a one size fits all society/life.  So don’t panic when we step in shit every now and then.  Wash it off or use it as material to grow from.