“Killers don’t seek their victim’s approval,” Unknown.  This was a response to someone in the context of someone struggling with their identity after having to take a drastic action to protect themselves and their family.  I’m not sure who actually wrote it but it struck a chord.  While this particular example is more than slightly graphic, there is still truth to it.  Why do we worry about the opinions of others?  Nature doesn’t seek approval.  I’m certainly not advocating for those who hurt other people by any means—I AM, however, advocating for the idea that we have virtually 0 need to worry about the approval of others.  If I’m a shark then I need to be a shark—there’s no shame in that.  Never let anyone make us feel bad for who we are.  Never.  We don’t need their approval to be as we are made—if we are made in that way it can’t be bad.  Sometimes we have to do things outside of our nature, and it makes us question who we are, if we are still the same person.  I’ve also read somewhere that there are times when good men have to do real bad things, doesn’t change who you are.  So don’t let anyone make us feel bad for taking the only option that made sense no matter how rough.  There are instances we will have terrible options for choices to make and we will still have to make a choice. 

It’s for us to honor and recognize our nature.  We were given the instincts we have for a reason.  We were designed as we are for a reason.  Sometimes we don’t know how we will react or what we are made of until we are in the situation.  In those split second decision moments we don’t have the opportunity to slow down or think about anything let alone question our character as a result of what we do next.  There is a time for approval but it isn’t as common as we are trained to think.  If we are the ones dealing with the consequences of our actions, it isn’t for anyone to judge what we do.  In fact, we operate a whole lot more smoothly when we aren’t caught up in the what-if game, worrying about others’ reactions and thoughts/opinions of us.  We will all face moments in life that make us question our integrity or test our resolve.  We even face moments that test us to see if we will move or how committed we are.  When faced with a tough decision that results in an outlier action, that isn’t necessarily a mark on our character depending on the cause.  If I hurt someone in an act of self-defense or defense of others, is that really a terrible thing?  If I break someone’s ribs performing the Heimlich or CPR, does that make me wrong?  Sometimes we have to make a choice between bad and worse and that doesn’t change a thing about who we are at the core.   

“The thing about life is when you stop moving it’s over,” John Dutton, Yellowstone.  Ok, full transparency, we’ve been on a kick with watching Yellowstone and it always amazes (worries) me that I find these tidbits of wisdom in these shows that demonstrate people of questionable character using terrible means to get what they want.  I’ll just chalk that up to recognizing the light in the dark and move on, it’s easier that way 😊 .  Regardless, this applies.  Motion is key to life.  When we stop moving the body stiffens, we lose range of motion, and we slowly deteriorate until we are frozen.  We have to move.  When we stay in the same place, rooted to our routines and habits, we miss out on all the other opportunities that could be available.  We have to move.  When we stop moving, we stop hearing the music in the world, worse, we stop hearing our own rhythm in it.  We have to move.

The past is behind us for a reason and when we get stuck there, we waste time and energy on something we can’t change. Time is one resource we can’t ever get back.  We can move with purpose, we can move with care, we can move with abandon, we can move cautiously, we can move with curiosity…frankly, I hope we move through life with all of those things at some point.  The rhythm changes all the time and we can either keep up or sit it out and wait for it to come back again, hoping we find it.  The context of this quote was about trying to maintain the traditions of over 100 years of family experience, protecting what they thought was theirs.  Repeatedly trying the same things when they are past their prime won’t change the fact that they don’t work any longer. 

We are meant to move through life, to experience life.  We aren’t supposed to sit on the sidelines watching life pass us by.  Sure, there are some interesting moments that we can spectate through, but for the most part, we are meant to act in that story.  It’s easy to see how we can live a life without really living it—but still think we’re living it.  There is a difference between being alive and living—and it takes some of us longer to remember that than others.  Feel all the things.  Breathe in the air.  Feel our feet on the ground.  Enjoy the sound of people laughing.  Those sounds infiltrate our lives like a symphony, telling us what to do and how to respond to each other.  Find something that keeps us moving all the time, the thing we want to keep moving for.  Then we keep dancing until we reach our end and it won’t be because we stopped moving, it will be because we have learned to dance our last dance.   

As we settle into a sort of trust in the universe, we find ourselves.  What is ours will always find us. We are never lost, so maybe to reference finding ourselves isn’t quite right, but sometimes we do have to remember.  We have to unveil the layers we hide inside.  We do have to let our edges soften, cut them down a little bit.  When we have those moments of being softened we feel like we are losing ourselves—I know I did. The reality is I found that I was giving up the pieces I had been wearing in order to protect myself and to be something that wasn’t fully me—it was something I wanted the world to see.  I had to let go of what I prepared for the world to see—just as I’ve talked about before, but what I had to integrate at this point was that I needed to let it go. Like, not bring it back at all, hack it all off and let it lie.  Get it out of my life and move on. If it was never meant for us in the first place then we don’t need to waste the energy trying to make it happen.

Sometimes the exposed limb feels raw and ragged—and sometimes it is, the cuts aren’t always clean.  But we learn to let them heal and with enough care they start to grow again, and grow into what they were always meant to be.  It’s like the elephant chained to the plastic chair or the cat raised with dogs—they mimic their environment and begin to think that’s who they are.  Once we remember who we are, that power is unleashed.  It can be scary to let it out at first because we aren’t used to wielding it.  But it’s amazing how easy it feels to just be.  We have to trust enough that what we hear, what we feel is divinely guided and we are meant to receive it and use it.  Allow the authenticity to wash over us and let the world become what we see it as.  An infinite possibility.   

There is something refreshing in not giving a fuck what anyone thinks.  The freedom in letting ourselves let go of anything and everything that holds us back.  That only comes when we let go of all fear.  There is so much insanity in this world, people are lost and some days I feel lost too.  The speed the world moves is nuts and we are constantly going just as fast, unable to hear our real thoughts, to find our real purpose, to connect to anything stable that matters.  I feel most lost not in movement itself, not in the humbling of ego to help others, but in the fear and trying to make everyone happy.  We can all BE happy but we can’t rely on others to MAKE us happy.  If we operate under the belief we have to make others happy we need to understand that’s our choice and no one is obligated to return that favor.  We can’t find happiness outside of ourselves.  Owning things, power over people, none of that matters.  There is no real propriety in this world—we don’t really own anything.  We are only borrowing it until we move on. 

We are of this world, our existence is our creation.  We are not THE world, we don’t make the world, we make our reality—reality is what we make it.  The world functions just fine on its own as we know we are far more parasitic than we sometimes care to acknowledge.  The world would continue as it is without any of our interference or attempt to control things.  We’ve changed course and how things look and operate, but the world can level all that in a moment if it chooses.  So we can’t be arrogant enough to think we can alter any of that.  We can only change our reality.  We define the parameters of what’s good/bad, and what we can/can’t do, what we will/will not do.  We are good and bad, light and dark.  We have balance in us if we choose to recognize it.  We spend so much time DOING to survive in this design of man, doing things we aren’t naturally inclined to do, that it feels suffocating after a while—when we start to wake up to the other options we have in life (living as we are).  When we break loose it feels like the whole world makes sense.  Like nothing can stop us and we’re out of the dream world we’ve been living in.  It clicks.

Breaking loose and finding freedom scares people because they take up a new level of responsibility in their lives.  See, just because we find flow and where we are supposed to be doesn’t mean it comes free of obligation—we still have things we will need to do to survive.  What we want, even if we are fully aligned doesn’t just appear to us.  There is still work to do.  The difference is there is ease in the effort.  Sure there are challenges. Sure there are days we may still have to fight a bit and make sure we are still on course.  But the thoughts and opinions of other people and what they think hold no weight so it’s one less obstacle to navigate in making our own choices.  No one has to agree with us in order for us to create the reality that calls to us, that only we can see in our minds.  We start truly living when we let go of what we hold in our minds what we think others think of us.  See how complicated that sounds?  If we can’t even articulate that without getting confused, think about how much that is actually confusing us.  Allow the freedom of releasing that unnecessary weight to wash over us and open up to the real wonders of life that we get when we work with who we are, who we are designed to be.

Just because I’m stepping down as a leader doesn’t mean I’m not stepping up to my life.  I feel like a broken record lately talking about this role change at work but the truth is this is one of the biggest decisions I’ve had to make in a long time regarding this career. I’ve worked for this organization for nearly half of my life and I’ve spent the last half of my career in leadership.  It was never an easy journey in any role I’ve held their over the years, but the leadership component was especially challenging.  I will admit my assumptions of leadership were off in some cases, but it was an eye opening experience seeing what leadership is really like on that level.  I found myself constantly fighting against it, fighting against the expectations of others, they way they had done it, the way things had been done to me previously that I said I would never do to another person.  And then things changed and leadership became something entirely different. 

Part of me felt like this move was showing the corporate world that I couldn’t hack it.  Even though near the end I didn’t want to have to hack it anymore, it still felt like giving up, proving them right.  That the people who thought I couldn’t do it anyway were correct in their initial views of me and would gloat.  I didn’t want to do that.  But I knew in my heart that the leadership demanded of the role wasn’t the leadership I wanted to show.  I wasn’t allowed to lead how I felt.  I’ve always balked at authority for the things that never made sense to me—like if I’m working on a switchboard where I have 0 in person interaction then why the fuck do I need to worry about the clothes I’m wearing?  There is not a single soul that will see me.  If I can sort through over 10,000 pages a shift and get them all catalogued, then why am I spending my time counting other people’s work?  So when it came to leading, if I could lead from a heart-centered place and still get results then why is that an issue?  And if someone takes advantage of that, why am I not allowed to call them on it?    These were unnecessary conflicts.

With some time to process this and what this transition means, I understand now that this would have been a 0 sum game in the end.  At least for me it would have been.  I would have continued to find myself stressed and angry and frustrated and unable to do anything about it whether with my direct leadership or my direct reports.  My days would have continued to be stuck in the middle of people who didn’t give a shit no matter what I did, even if the results were exactly what they wanted.  No one listening to me either from leadership or staff.  So why continue that fight?  If people don’t see the value or understand what is being said then I can’t be the one to make them see reason.  So sure, I am stepping down from leadership.  But taking that step back is allowing me to step up in other areas of my life—the areas that really matter.  Sometimes we have to give up what we thought we wanted in order to find what we really needed.  I’m still leading, just in a different way: where it counts.      

New beginnings are beautiful even if it means the end of the previous new beginning.  Each beginning becomes a stepping stone.  We move through life building these stairs, constantly dreaming and moving upward.  The reality is sometimes that original beginning doesn’t pan out so well.  I remember reading The Midnight Library by Matt Haig and the main character gets the opportunity to look at other options for her life, what it would have looked like if she chose something different.  We don’t have that option, we don’t get to try on different lives and then decide what to do.  No.  We get an idea and we decide whether or not we will go for it and we learn.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t—or parts of it work.  We find people who are with us and learn some people only act like they are with us.  There are people along the way who support us or make us think they do.  Some people want us back and sometimes people don’t ask us to come back because they are afraid we wouldn’t.  Sometimes we need to break out of our shells so we learn to not cage ourselves.  Sometimes we move forward because people need to see us move on so they can move.  We are pushed to jump or walk away so we can lead others. 

In my current professional life, I’m tired of leading in this capacity regardless.  This is not the leadership I signed up for nor is it functional.  Much of that comes down to the organization itself being in the midst of big change with alignment, but there is part of it that comes down to the area I’m in and specific people and their opinion of what I do.  Those factors have made effective leadership incredibly difficult for me—this is not how I want to lead.  Combined with the fact we don’t have much clear direction regardless it’s been unnecessarily challenging. In that regard alone it’s time to make a change.  Moving on to new projects will open new things in general.  I’m excited and I feel more me.  I feel better able to put other people’s stuff back on them.  I’m no longer carrying anyone else’s shit.  No matter what that means.  I’m not responsible for how people carry their stuff/how they are triggered.  I’m sensitive, I’m empathetic.  I’m not a mind reader and I am not staying in the habit of keeping quiet for your comfort. 

I’m getting more comfortable cutting people out who are toxic to me.  If it doesn’t work I’m not forcing it to work anymore.  My energy needs to be on developing my life, my mind, my business—not on carrying you through.  Not preparing you to do what you need to do.  Not waiting to make a change until you’re ready to live your life.  And it is NOT my job to live my life, to speak my voice/opinion/mind, to use words and make choices based on your readiness/preference/or need.  No more than it’s your job to do that for me.  And the lesson continues regarding not needing to be something someone else wants us to be in order to be accepted.  If people only want to be around us when we are a certain way or can do certain things for them, that’s manipulation.  None of that is needed and if we have a lot of that in our lives then it’s our job to let that go when we move forward.  It is never our job to allow or tolerate other people treating us like crap in order to keep them in our lives.  Let that habit go.  No, not everything turns out how we think it will, not everything goes to plan, not everyone shows up how we want them to.  But each of those situations is an opportunity to get closer to what we need, what we want in our lives. So be grateful.

Today I am grateful for courage.  Courage looks different in different situations—it isn’t all brass and bold and bullish, making a scene so people are aware of our power.  Courage is the quiet voice that tells us to go on, to stand up again, to have class when we would rather fight dirty or curl up and play victim, to not tell anyone about the changes we’re making and do it anyway.  Courage is deciding we don’t need any outside interference and doing what we want to do regardless because we know it is right, doing what needs to be done without fear/worry/shame, acting from the core of who we are without worry about what others think of us.  Courage is looking for answers we may not want to know but digging anyway, facing the truth even if we don’t want to hear it.  Courage is taking care of our own needs when we would normally put ourselves aside or making the choice to tell people no (or yes depending on the situation) when we normally wouldn’t.  When we have the opportunity to show that courage, if we take it, that is the most liberating thing we can do.     

Today I am grateful for empowerment.  Following courage and the act of showing it and taking the steps to feel it, I am grateful for the ability to remember power and know that I don’t need permission to show it.  We don’t always have to play nice, we don’t always have to find ways to keep the peace.  Sometimes what needs to be said simply needs to be said.  Not for a scene or a feeling or for anything other than the fact it needed to be said.  We can spend our entire lives waiting for a moment, waiting for someone to make us feel like we are worthy of what we deserve or that we are worthy to try and move forward instead of burying ourselves in the dirt.  Or we can decide we know exactly who we are and what we need and we can move forward, making decisions, and taking actions that will get us the result we’re looking for.    

Today I am grateful for honoring myself in all the ways I need to.  For welcoming the new life that I’ve been talking about building for years.  For putting aside any possibility of fear and doing it.  Saying yes to what works and not worrying about the potential fall out from the “no.”  Not worrying about all that comes with the yes and whether or not I’m worthy of it or if I can keep up with it and maintain it.  To just quietly say “thank you” to the old me for getting me here, and then saying “thank you” to the me that said yes to this turn of events, and being grateful for what comes with it all.  Knowing I can handle it all as it comes.  Knowing that I don’t need to worry about what comes tomorrow when I’m in this moment that I prayed for yesterday.  That I am powerful, that showing people I don’t need permission means doing what I said I was going to do in the first place.

Today I am grateful for confidence.  Not just the kind of confidence that comes from liking how we look or what we’ve done, but the kind of confidence that comes from absolutely knowing who we are.  I thought being friends with people and being with people meant fighting my way in and trying to be in every room every time.  I no longer feel the need to impress people or make people feel any type of way toward me.  This was a light switch moment—I clearly see the delineation between the before and after of when I felt a certain way and when didn’t.  I can’t pinpoint the exact second that happened, but I know what it felt like.  I didn’t feel the need to run into the party, introducing myself to everyone, to the people I didn’t know, to the people who ultimately had no impact on my life, to impress them for anything.  I didn’t need to make them do anything.  And I didn’t seek out their permission either.  I didn’t seek out their approval. I stood my ground, I felt rooted in who I was and I said yes to what I wanted and no to what I didn’t. 

Today I am grateful for inspiration.  I’ve always known I was a writer, since I was a kid.  I never took the time to explore this gift in a way that would make it viable to make a living, that it would allow me to live the life I want to doing what I love and now that I am actively working on this, it seems like there are always ways things happen when we least expect them. They don’t always happen when we think they will—they happen in their own time.  Not only that but sometimes we have to see the inspiration of all the things we want/try to put together actually come together from someone who has done it.  There is no one right way to make the life we want happen.  There is nothing that says we are bound to only do one thing.  Sometimes the young version of ourselves tells us what we already know and we have to be reminded that where we are now is where we told ourselves we’d be at some point—that even if it didn’t happen THEN, it can happen now—and sometimes we had to go through what we did in order to make the now happen.  The dreams we have speak to us for a reason and we need to remember that they are for us, no matter what shape/form/time they come in.  Making a name for ourselves doesn’t necessarily mean a name in one thing, a name with one definition.  Making a name is synonymous with making a life.  Making the life we dream of, the life we are gifted with.  We create ourselves and sometimes we have to be reminded through seeing someone else that we just need to keep going a little bit.  Just keep moving when we think we can’t and the next thing we know, all those dreams become a reality.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead   

“You were enough when they overlooked you.  The way you exist is enough.  You owe no one an apology for being who you are,” Kyle Fuller.  The world is full of people who think they get to determine what people are worth.  People who think they have the right to tell others their opinion of their worth.  We’ve made it a norm—we put dollars to the work people do and give raises according to the quality of work (because we all know merit is 100% based on the quality of our work, right?). It’s entirely subjective and we think this is normal.  We judge how people make money, how they spend it and we make assumptions of their character based on how they look.  We critique their actions (tell me you’ve never called someone a shitty driver) and interpret their actions toward us.  No matter what we do, no matter where we are, there are some people who won’t see our value.  Intentional or not, there are people who don’t see the full picture, nor do they care to and they decide who we are and where we rank in their opinion.  Those people only see us for the value we can provide.  No matter what we do, we will not convince these people of our worth.

I have fought battles to prove my worth, my right to exist to people who didn’t give a shit no matter what I did.  I have fought the barrage of bullshit people slung about me—that they told others and those people swallowed those opinions as fact without speaking to me.  I never wanted to come across as a victim-the concern about how people saw me was just more concern about other people’s perception of me-and that was fine until opinions started dictating what I could and couldn’t do in my life, the opportunities available to me. Not addressing the actions of people misunderstanding me and the feelings that came with it led me to do really misaligned/fucked up things from jumping through hoops for people I barely new, putting on a show and not acting like myself, to trauma bonding and oversharing, and hurting myself if I didn’t live up to their expectations—or worse, when I did what they wanted and they still left me hanging.  It was all trauma response.  Opinion shouldn’t matter but when your progress is stopped by opinion, it matters.  I started to believe their perception and it fucked me up.  It really did leave me lacking and questioning who I am.  I also knew I had a lot of good in my life so I didn’t want to seem ungrateful.  But being grateful doesn’t mean being silent. 

We can love and speak honestly, we can be open to honesty, but we also need to discern what people know versus what they think they know—and whether or not it matters. I stayed silent and I internalized and I hurt myself and I blamed God.  This isn’t a religious segue, this is where the beginning of my questioning and deterioration (at least the holes) in my faith started to show.  Irrational as it may seem, I blamed Him for making me prove myself to others and never being enough for anyone here while somehow being too much, and for not having that proof/validation I sought from Him.  I felt I was an awful person because if I was a worthy person, why did I have to fight to prove it?  The fact I had to fight must mean I was unworthy on some level. Those instances I tried to push forward and became more insistent on doing things to make people see me, the worse it got.  Eventually I felt like I heard nothing.  I never considered I was simply in the wrong environment.  It took a long time to acknowledge the possibility and even longer to have the courage to get honest about where I was and whether or not I even wanted to be there.  Why was I fighting for validation in a place that decided my worth and I didn’t even want to be there in the first place?  The wrong environment can make you feel sick.  Sometimes God is just trying to get us to move.  I was never stuck with those people who made me feel less than.  Neither are any of you.  Remember your worth and remember you can move if you need to before you believe any BS someone tries to sell you on things they don’t know.

Have you ever gotten to the point where it feels like your mind can’t take anymore?  Like it isn’t possible to bring in anymore information?  I think of the lifetime of data stored in the mind, how we even figured out how it’s stored, and what we do with it.  How minds operate differently, what catches the eye of one person ignore by another.  Trying to keep up with all of it is pointless.  There is no way to manage it which seems like a cruel joke at times because for a world that has millions of options of things to do, see, experience, learn about, we do our best with a singular focus.  We have to decide what we want.  We have to decide what is relevant, what stays. When we reach that limit and decide something has to change, the mind changes its view on what’s important.  Time and experience and so many other factors help us narrow down what matters most—and what matters most changes at different stages of our lives.  I’m finding that I have to take a bit of a different path to get where I wanted to go.  My mind can’t take in anymore information related to this period of my life.  It’s time to shift focus and let go of what doesn’t work.

Of late, I’ve felt like my mind has tried to absorb too much.  To do too much.  I’ve often talked about trying to live multiple paths at once and the universe has brought me here, where the two paths start to diverge.  I can’t keep a foot in both sides—which I’ve known for a long time.  But the day is here and I have to decide.  I envisioned leadership and the work I do so vastly different than what I’ve been doing.  Deciding to let it go altogether is terrifying to me.  Not just because of the change but because I am losing something.  Granted I’m losing something to gain something, but there is still a feeling of giving up now that the one path didn’t turn out so well.  But I also know that continuing on that path would ultimately force my hand regardless.  So I find this new way, this path to peace, to who I really am and I still feel overwhelmed.  Because there is a moment in transitioning to something peaceful that feels heavy.  Like worrying if we prepared the next person to lift it up enough. 

When we try to align our lives with who we are, we have to let go of something else.  We may always remember, but we have to let it go.  We have to live as we really are.  I know I’m not all good, I’ve made mistakes, I’ve ben selfish.  I still question if I make the right choices.  But I’ve done good too.  I’ve protected people, I’ve given to people.  And now, so I can give more, I transition to a role that affords me what I need.  Time.  I am grateful.  I will take it one day, one moment at a time.  For my son, for my husband, whoever needs me.  And for me.  To breathe.  To find my center.  I am so grateful this dream is coming true, no matter how different this route is, I feel it in my gut that this is the right choice.  So I can find the silence and not be afraid of it anymore like I talked about yesterday.  So I can hear the silence tell me more about who I am and I feel comfortable looking in the mirror.  That the person looking back is a true reflection of me.  So when the mind is overwhelmed, when it feels like we can’t take anymore, perhaps that is just the universe pushing us through the tube to the next phase of our lives.  It’s telling us to focus on what matters. Listen and you will hear it.

It’s been forever since I’ve sat in real silence.  My mind is always going so that in itself is never quiet, and I have too many anxieties about what others are thinking/feeling to ever just sit with someone and not talk.  It’s too quiet and my mind tells me stories about what’s going on in the other person’s head and it WILL tell me I’m doing something wrong, that I’m wrong somehow, that I need to make that person feel comfortable.  Make them tell me everything, make them validate me.  Quiet and silence felt violent, even unbearable, because even in silence, my mind finds ways to wander, to tell me the things I don’t want to hear, the things I fear, the things I’ve done, the things I may or may not do.  The things I’ve avoided about myself because I’m afraid they’re true.  We all have those dark parts of us we have to wrestle with and I hid mine because I didn’t want that to define who I am.  When it’s too silent, my mind decides that for me and I’m afraid I know exactly who I am–and that person isn’t very likeable, that maybe I really am the sum of the worst of myself.  The only thing violent about the silence is myself. 

I seek the peace that comes with silence.  Silence is supposed to be peaceful, to settle us.  I’ve too often let it unnerve me to the point of creating the scenario I feared in the first place—I made the fears come true.  I think of the times when I’ve felt the most settled, the most peaceful and it’s always been surrounded by nature, with my family, or with a real revelation from my work or even my reading.  The sensation that comes over my body can’t be described as anything other than “right.”  There’s no need, no desire to be anywhere else.  No need to  rush or do anything else. The peace of knowing all is well no matter what, that we have done enough, we are enough.  Whenever those moments arise, I try to ride with them as long as I can because it feels good. It make sense and I’m somehow able to let go of the idea that I have to live or do things a certain way at all.  It’s the flow. But there are times when sitting, either alone or with someone, where I can’t bear to let that happen.  There is something in my mind about not knowing what’s going on in that other person’s head that drives me crazy.

So I guess like anything else, it’s practice.  We have to practice getting comfortable with ourselves, with the truth of who we are.  Like I said, we all have parts of ourselves we aren’t proud of—we all disappoint ourselves at times.  We don’t need to torture ourselves with them.  We can learn to accept them.  I’m not advocating for punishing ourselves over and over again for the parts of ourselves that didn’t quite live up to what we expected.  I’m also not saying to wear them as a badge of honor.  There is a middle ground where we can learn from what we’ve done and move on.  If we want the silence to be our friend, to tell us the truth, we need to learn to accept all those parts.  No one will ever be as cruel to ourselves as we are.  And the truth is we are the only person who will be with us from the very beginning to the very end.  Why not make that a loving partnership?  Or at least an understanding one?  I speak from the experience of carrying the weight of other people’s expectations on me, of not feeling like enough.  Let the silence guide us to the best parts of ourselves.