Today I am grateful for arriving at an understanding.  I had convinced myself that it was time to put certain things behind me and try to move forward with certain people in my life.  Let bygones be bygones so to speak.  And just when the moment arrived where I was going to suggest such a thing, the old behavior that made me question things in the first place reared its ugly head.  Thank goodness this was a sign when it happened because I would have found myself trying to please all over again, to be who they wanted me to be all over again.  Relationships are two ways and it shouldn’t always be about one person peeling away parts of who they are to make the other person happy.  It’s about what we get together.  It’s about how we operate together.  Fortunately (or unfortunately) the same realization happened with my husband at the same time and we have agreed that as much as it hurts to leave some of these people behind, it’s for the best.  Our family is what we have.  We still offer support for those who need it but they will no longer take priority over our family.

Today I am grateful for excitement.  I’m excited to try new things again, to do new things.  To live differently.  I’ve held myself so tightly bound in the very cage I kept talking about escaping that I didn’t realize I was tangled in it, unable to move forward.  But now I see the extent of the possibilities, the extent of being heard again, and I’m grateful to manage my life how I need to.  I had to take a step back in order to move forward.  I was sad to make some of these changes, hesitant to, because I wasn’t sure what would happen.  I wasn’t sure if everything would turn out how I wanted it to.  I undertook these changes to better align with who I am and what I feel and I am so happy for it.  I am finally able to look past parts of the sadness and disappointment of what didn’t work and now I am grateful and ready to move forward.  I’m excited to see things coming together how they are meant to.

Today I am grateful for seeing the truth and setting boundaries. I’ve let too many people around me violate my boundaries and I’ve let that obscure the truth of who I am.  I’ve disturbed my comfort and my principles for the sake of other people and I lost myself over and over again.  The truth is some people just won’t change, whether in our personal or professional lives.  It’s disheartening to believe a relationship is one thing only to find out the other person doesn’t feel that way.  It’s disheartening to believe people feel a certain way about your talents and abilities only to find out they don’t.  In both circumstances it feels like someone was biding their time with you until they could get rid of you or until you were tired of using your skills to benefit them.  Look, we all have to take care of ourselves, but we can’t ever let that turn into using others and we can never let that turn into people using us.  There is truth to the wolf in sheep’s clothing, and the fox in the hen house.  In both cases we need to get rid of that danger.  Some people just aren’t who they present themselves to be—and it’s up to us to either call that out or move on.

Today I am excited for personal work.  This isn’t just the mental landscape at the moment-although I could use some refreshing on that.  This is about my physical space.  I have never felt so determined and decided on what I want when it comes to my physical environment.  I’m not 100% sure what spurred all of this or made the timing align so that things would fall into place like this—but they have.  I’ve welcomed a whole lot of new in my life—revitalized health, new look, new style, new job, remodeling the house how we want it.  New priorities and beliefs.  Trying to be as healthy as possible in so many ways. Letting go of the toxic drains and patterns in my life including the people who use my energy to lift themselves up.  It’s amazing what happens when the outside starts to reflect the inside.  We are better able to do what we want to do, to do what we need to do to help others.  And it feels better because when it comes from that genuine space, it doesn’t feel like a strain on anyone.  Sure, it can be painful, but it is also a rebirth, an entirely new experience that awakens something inside—something we needed to remember. 

Today I am grateful for hope.  It’s been a while that I’ve felt the hope of something working out.  It was a scary path to give up what I had in order to jump to something new.  But I have wanted to create this life where I operate in my own space for a long time.  I wanted to get in touch with who I am for a long time.  I always allowed parts of me to shine through, my own little bits of style and flare.  This is a case now where it isn’t a show.  This is the comfort of becoming who I am.  And no, it isn’t the comfort of settling or seeking something safe—this is the comfort of finding what fits.  No longer feeling like I’m wearing someone else’s skin all the time, holding onto the scraps of what people give me and trying to mash it all together.  No, this is the full on integration, the alchemy of life where this just IS. The great IAM so to speak.  There is ALWAYS work to be done, this isn’t over, but to be on this path is a gift and I am both scared and excited and hopeful for all that is to come.  This opportunity to start over again is a gift and I intend to take it as far as I can.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

I can’t speak for everyone but I believe we all need reminders of faith every now and then.  I feel compelled to share a little bit about my spiritual journey at this point.  After such a tenuous relationship with faith, one where I didn’t trust myself, I see where it is a test.  I didn’t trust ME, let alone anyone else or a higher power.  But there’s something in connecting to that inner voice, the knowing that quiets the fear.  Just deciding.  In choosing to give up power/control, I’m gaining insight to the next steps. What I like. Who I am.  I’m working on accepting that’s what God wants—the surrender and trust that all is ok.  Instead of the mental/emotional/sometimes physical gymnastics of trying to contort myself into something I think others want, I just need to listen.  Be present.  Sit with the words and don’t worry about MAKING the words.  Like, we need to sit and hear what is being told to us rather than running with that inner voice where we think we are hearing guidance but really it’s the same drivel droning on that keeps us doing what we’ve done every day: fighting for control.  When we hear actual guidance, we understand that we are made, we don’t need to make ourselves.  We make the lives we are meant to have, yes, but even that comes from the gifts we are given.  So, I’m learning to make my life by hearing and healing and using the gifts He gives me.  It’s been a process to get here, and I feel it’s an important one to share.   

I’m still not a religious person.  No matter the controversy this may cause or how much I’ve learned on my journey, I still personally believe religion is man’s work, not God’s.  That isn’t to say I’m against groups coming together to share faith and belief and find connection to each other and a higher power—quite the contrary.  I feel all those things are entirely necessary in life.  It’s something I’ve sought in my life.  I never wanted to fear God and the truth is, as a child, I know I didn’t.  I had an innate knowing of my relationship with a higher power and I felt comfortable simply being myself.  It wasn’t until I was introduced to certain religious practices/beliefs of others that spoke of how bad we are, how sinful we are, how we need to beg forgiveness that I started to question the point of religion.  I never understood how someone could look at me and make those judgements—and it was judgement–because I NEVER felt that way as a kid.  I NEVER questioned if I was loved or if I was doing something wrong in the eyes of a higher power.  I always felt accepted.  I was taught to question that and it didn’t feel right.  It was other people who made me question not only my connection, but they made me question that belief as well as question myself.  It was those doubts that made me see the flaws in organized religion early on.

I loved hearing stories of faith and belief and knowing that there was an element of design in our lives that we had the ability to tap into at any time.  And if we managed to tap into it?  The entire possibility of creation, joy, love, and peace would be open to us.  I thoroughly believed in the concept of co-creation before I even knew what it was.  It FELT right to me.  I never believed I had to prove myself to God.  But once I started doubting that, I lost hope.  When things started getting rough for me and I couldn’t find that support, I lost even more.  The truth is, I have been witness and I have personally experienced enough  alignment in my life to know that it was more than just coincidence.  There are events in my life that can’t be explained as anything other than a miracle—there would be no feasible way for these events to have taken place without divine action.  So how did I continue to let myself doubt/let that doubt creep in?  Because I lost faith in myself.  I took up the belief that I needed to do everything on my own.  That if I made a mistake of any kind I wasn’t worthy of good.  When tough times happened or I struggled with something, I convinced myself I deserved it.  But it never failed that when I hit my lowest, even cursing God directly, something would happen to show me His existence—or that something existed.  That fact that I/we exist is enough testament to that as well.    

Little things demonstrate big growth in our lives.  The alarm went off an hour later than usual the other day– and I didn’t panic.  My mornings are busy like everyone else’s: working on my business, working on my writing, getting myself and my son ready for the day, lunches, snacks, feeding the animals, cleaning litter boxes etc.  All of that happens before 8AM.  I normally wake at 4AM to get that all in and I’m regimented to make sure I have time to fit in all the things I both want and need to.  I’ve had the alarm go off just a few minutes late before and it nearly derailed my entire day so the idea of an hour later than normal, an hour lost, would have absolutely sent me into a downward spiral.  Something in me that morning legitimately just didn’t care.  I didn’t give it a second thought.  I got up and picked up where I needed to.  Sure, I had to make some changes, I didn’t do everything I normally do.  But everything that needed to get done got done.  And the reminder I found in this was simple:  It felt good to let go.  It felt BETTER letting go.  Would I want to wake up unprepared an hour later every day?  No.  But did that ruin my entire life?  No.

Truth be told, I feared time because of what people would think of me.  I was raised that we are expected to be certain places at certain times and if we aren’t early then we are late.  That if we aren’t exactly on time then we have somehow ruined the entirety of whatever the event was.  The only thing that ruined anything by being late was the attitude behind it.  Now, do I think we should forgo all commitments to time?  No.  But are there times when life simply happens and if we are running late or if we have to change our course at any given time that it has nothing to do with anyone around us and is no real indication about who we are? Yes.  Before losing that hour would have ended with me berating myself all day, talking about how stupid I was to not check the time on my alarm before I went to bed, and likely snapping at people for no reason.  But carrying those tiny mistakes with us serves absolutely no purpose.  Carrying the tiny mistakes like that creates more of a burden than the mistake itself.

Experientially using the knowledge we have to break old patterns, no matter how small, is huge.  Growth isn’t always easy and change certainly isn’t.  When we talk about the deep rooted habits/fears and nuances we carry, we are also talking about the beliefs we carry about ourselves.  That is harder to change.  So when there are opportunities to practice new behavior, we learn to integrate new messages and beliefs.  Tearing down old foundational structures isn’t an easy process and we don’t really know what we’ve changed about ourselves until we face a similar (or the same) circumstance and see how we react to it now.  That alarm going off that much later than it was supposed to and me not freaking out showed me just how far I’ve come, just how much the work I’ve done to change has shifted my course.  The work never goes away, the responsibility to something never goes away—we all have those obligations.  The only thing that changes is how we view it, how we handle it, and how we feel about it.  If we don’t like one of those things we are the only ones who can change it.  Talking about it isn’t enough—we need to put it into practice.  And sometimes we don’t realize how far along we are until we are in the situation again and we behave differently.

Remember the sun inside.  We need a little reminder today: There is always light inside of us no matter how dark or gloomy it seems.  We are asked to call on that light when things feel most dark.  In following yesterday’s piece, that light inside shows us the vision we hold inside.  So often in life we let the clouds darken the joy of who we are, we shrink ourselves so our light doesn’t get too bright, we forget who we are/what we are capable of.  There are times we let people tell us who we are and let them make us feel as if we aren’t that bright or worthy of feeling that light—like we don’t have that sun in us.  The remarkable thing about gloom is that the sun never stops shining even when it’s raining: we just have to wait for the clouds to pass.  So even if it feels dark to us, just give it a little time and we will see the sun again. It never left in the first place.

This isn’t about views, it’s about vision.  The views are fleeting, the vision is sustaining—we carry the vision with us no matter the views.  The view isn’t necessarily indicative of where we’re going, it just shows us where we are in the journey.  If the view doesn’t match the vision, even if we need to stay for a while, we must keep working toward that vision because we will carry the overarching idea of the goal with us no matter what’s in front of us.  That vision is what keeps us going when things feel a little bleak or, even if things look pretty good, it keeps us moving toward our dream.  Vision is something we see others can’t because that unique vision is for us, not for anyone else.  It was given to us for a reason.  Sure we can describe it and talk about it, we can convey passion and belief about it, but in terms of actually achieving it, only we will know when we get there.  Only we know when we see what was in our minds the whole time.    

The goal can’t be about what we want to see in the end (how we look), rather it’s about what we see for the big picture.  Sure we need to know what we want our lives to look like but vision entails more than that.  It’s about how our actions impact the world around us.  It’s a long lasting thing.  We can change the landscape any time—but we can’t change the overall course of our lives.  Let me explain because we’ve also talked about moving the ship just a little bit every day until we are on the right path.  I believe the right path and vision call to us all the time.  I believe that when we are on the wrong path, the path that doesn’t align with who we are, we are able to change that course.  We always have the choice to stay on the wrong path and see that through, but we also have the choice to follow the path that directs us to the goal we have in our mind, what our soul calls us to do.    

There is another difference here and that is views refer to how something looks and vision refers to something as it is.  If we are more concerned with how we look than what we contribute, the view will change quickly and the vision will sour.  Making something look a certain way is fleeting—we can change appearance any time.  If the substance underneath doesn’t match, the appearance will quickly fade away.  Not everything is as it seems.  Don’t judge a book by its cover.  While perhaps cliché or trite, those aphorisms are no less true.  We can play Wizard of Oz and hide behind the curtain only to be revealed for what’s beneath.  Or we can actually turn ourselves into what we see and feel inside.  We had the power to make that vision a reality the entire time—we just had to be ourselves.  Perception is a funny thing because we all get something different out of the same experience.  Don’t let someone else’s perception sway us from who we are—and don’t let our perception of where we are sway us from the vision of where we are going.

“If you don’t stand still long enough to ask the hard questions, you’ll spend your life chasing the wrong answers,” unknown.  Most of us follow the same routine day in and day out, never really stopping to think about the why behind what we’re doing.  It’s what we are told to do, it’s what we are told the norm is.  We are told we are supposed to get work, to do a job, to work hard and often and produce and be productive in order to earn a life.  The reality is we consider making a living actually living.  The point of a living is to be able to live, not to get stuck in a pattern that sucks up our time and gives no meaning to life.  The fact we are alive doesn’t mean we are living—there is the phrase that says don’t live the same day for 91 years and call it living.  If we don’t take the time to ask if what we are doing gives us joy, gives us meaning, brings us peace and makes us FEEL good, then we will never know the value of our own time.  We will never know the real answer we need is.  We can’t know who we are if we are living someone else’s version of our lives.  

It is a hard question to ask.  It’s an even more difficult answer to hear.  And if we are brave enough to ask and then hear the truth, it can be an even more difficult pill to swallow.  We can create a beautiful life we feel no love or attachment for if we don’t ask ourselves the truth of who we are.  It can be by anyone’s definition successful and lovely but it can have no meaning if it has no meaning to us.  We never look at the   There comes a time when activity is just about activity—it isn’t about progress.  Movement for the sake of movement has its purpose, time, context.  But if we live our lives like that there is no way to gauge if we’ve moved the needle because we aren’t even sure where the needle is let alone where it’s pointing—and there’s certainly no way to tell where we need it to point.  We don’t want to ask the questions because we fear the implications if we get something wrong, if we have to start over. The things worth doing we would do over and over again regardless, and if we fear having to repeat the steps then we need to ask ourselves if what we’re doing is what we want to be doing—that in itself is a hard question.

We may not want to face the idea of starting over or readjusting or having to repeat an action, but if we don’t, we face larger problems down the line.  We lose opportunity to fix things if we don’t address an issue from the beginning.  The longer we ignore if something doesn’t feel right or if we’re not doing something right, the more difficult it is to change course down the line.  And if we never stop to ask, we can end up at the very end and miss the entire opportunity to do something we loved.  Facing the truth and course correcting is easier than carrying the burden of regret.  The goal isn’t perfection, it isn’t about getting everything right the first time—it’s about getting it right for us.  Sometimes we feel like we can’t stop, like there’s too much going on, like there’s so much happening that we can’t pause.  But how much we get done doesn’t matter if we’re going in the wrong direction.  So take the time to ask the question and be brave enough to listen and follow the answer—we’ve known it all along.

A few weeks ago I reflected on a very simple question: Are you happy with the life you made?  I looked at my home, the things I’ve accumulated over the years, the people I’ve allowed in my life, the entirety of my existence and started thinking about what this would look like when I’m gone.  What people would think of me based on what they’re seeing, what I leave behind.  I had a sense of melancholy with some of the last dregs of remaining turmoil from work, and I knew I was letting that cloud my thoughts, but this question about being happy with my life, specifically the life I made, hit me differently.  I questioned where I’d put my energy and if this was all how I envisioned things.  I knew the answer was no.  I felt a different kind of sadness come over me—like, we are responsible for our happiness and our decisions and I’m at the point in my life where certain options aren’t available anymore so why would I spend more time in an environment where I’m not happy?  Especially when I have so much around me that I’ve worked for, I have so much to show for what I’ve done, I have so much that shows me.  But is it showing who I want to be?  Who I really am?  That became part of this question as well.  I wrote the following piece thinking of these questions.

So, Am I happy with the life I’ve made?  Because all of these things around me, all of the things I do is a result of what I’ve chosen—this is all me, including how I feel about it.  I’m proud of it.  I’m grateful for it.  But I’m not happy.  I know that’s on me and my choices/thoughts/actions—it’s me who has created all of this, the good and the bad.  I feel like something still is fundamentally off.  Like just not right.  I don’t know if it’s timing—like I’m rushing things or if I’m behind.  Or is it an alignment thing?  Like I’m not WHERE I belong?  Maybe both.  But what I do on a daily basis isn’t bringing me joy.  That could be anxiety/depression/negativity bias—I know I’m trained to see the bad first.  And the challenges feel like a wasted effort because it’s like I’m fighting for something I don’t even want—I don’t know what I want.  My energy is ALWAYS divided and unfocused and I’m never settled, never rooted in who I am.  Why am I fighting for what I really don’t want?  Because I’m used to fighting?  My mind and body know little else.  I knew transition to a new life would be tough.  It would mean the death of what I knew/who  I was. I have to welcome the new and I get scared to say goodbye—that means it’s really over, admitting it didn’t turn out or that I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.  The chance to do certain things is gone and I need to make peace with what is.  Focus on the creation of the new. 

There ARE pieces that will fall away, we have no control over it and some things that fall away will be things we want to keep.  We will have to bury that too.  I have known that, I thought I did. But as things change, losing family, losing my mind a bit, there are pieces I held onto (am holding?) like a toddler afraid of wading in the water, holding their mother’s hand.  Some of those pieces are the pieces of dreams I had that will never be.  So it’s burying both what was and what will never be and we can be equally attached to both.  I was buried a long time ago thinking I’d be in bloom, and I am, but I also cut some of those blooms and buds ending some things before they could even grow.  So I guess with the things I wrote here, the thoughts, I have no choice but to surrender.  Which hits my faith.  Can I trust even if the worst happens that there IS a reason? Can I trust that I will find my way to the life I’m supposed to?  Can I trust that letting go is the right thing? That what I love, what is meant for me will find me?  Can I accept that I’m NOT a bad person in spite of mistakes?  Will I be carried through?  Will I receive the guidance I need?  Will I be strong enough to see it through? Will I find me?

I can’t carry what no longer works.  No matter how much I love it or thought I wanted it.  I have to admit there is no other way to solve this, to happiness, to help, to ME, other than to surrender all of it. Let go.  See the big picture and see that the best for all, to do the right thing, it’s ok to put myself first and to celebrate me.  I no longer want to confuse appreciation and gratitude with settling.  I thought I had to accept everything I got in my life from other people’s junk to their clothes, to the things that no longer fit in their lives but I didn’t want to erase the possibility it might work in mine as well.  I wanted to be grateful for every opportunity even if it wasn’t something that quite fit me.  I said yes to things I shouldn’t have and I tried to be everything.  I forced broken things to linger long past the time they wanted to lay down and be done.  I kept the things wanting to live at bay, allowing more time for those last dregs of hope to take root.  And now, there is this mish mash of things that have nothing to do with who I am, little pieces of all I tried to build that never really took off—and I’m grateful for it.  But I know in order to find happiness, it’s time to release it and say yes to what actually makes me happy.

Happy Mother’s Day

Today I am grateful to celebrate this day honoring all the mothers out there—Happy Mother’s Day.  I am grateful to my mother for bringing me into the world, for all she has done, for all she has taught me, for letting me know I’ve been loved.  I’m grateful to my grandmother and all the women before me for being the change, for creating a world where I could exist and create my family.  I am grateful to be a mother.   I can’t say I have an overly innate motherly instinct but I have formed a fiercely protective bond with my son.  There has been no relationship like it in my entire life.  It’s an entire change of who I was, a learning of who I could be, of who I really want to be.  Every choice is about what’s best for him until he learns to decide that for himself.  I haven’t been perfect—in fact I’m pretty sure I’ve already instilled all the patterns I was trying to break in him already.  But I know I love him like no other and I know that imperfect or not, I will always be there for him no matter what.  Because that is what mothering is: a constant presence of love and support to allow things to grow in their own time and in their own way.  Mothers in particular are hard on themselves as we have these expectations of what we are supposed to be able to accomplish and what we are supposed to be like and if we don’t look like some cross between June Cleaver and Superwoman we feel like we’ve failed.  It is no exaggeration to say this job is beyond 24/7—this is something that takes over our entire being, our souls.  This is why women get lost in motherhood: to grow the next generation we have to give pieces of ourselves so they take root.  And we just hope it is for the best.  We can only do our best and who we are is enough.    

Today I am grateful for being seen.  I’ve fought for years, nearly my entire life to be seen as I am. Instead it’s been what felt like a battle to be understood.  I went through so many different groups of people thinking I’d found those who understood me, who accepted me, only to be left out in some capacity.  Or treated like I was an inconvenience.  Or constantly having to explain myself if I wasn’t acting within the same norms/parameters that they saw me in—like if I was having an off day, I wasn’t allowed to be any different than my normal demeanor. It’s only over the last few years that I’m seeing those who truly accept us never make us feel like we have to be/do/say anything other than exactly what we normally would be/do or say.  There’s NO pressure there.  I’m not saying there’s NEVER pressure there, but I’m saying there’s never pressure to ACT in those groups.  There’s no need to put on airs or try to be something else.  No one makes us feel like we have to be someone else or like we need to behave a certain way.  As I move forward with new facets of my career, I see that it’s easier than I’ve been living it.  There’s n need to fight for anything with the right people.  It’s ease.  

Today I am grateful for acceptance.  I know I needed this reminder this week because there have been a lot of things up in the air.  Things I had no control over but still had to work on.  In this regard I’m talking about personal acceptance, specifically of circumstances.  Like, knowing I did the best I could and this is where I’m at—and it’s all ok, type of acceptance.  I spent so much time worrying about what people thought of me and trying to tailor their opinions, to curate their views on my character and demeanor.  I wanted everyone to think the best of me.  Perhaps that’s a bit of human nature, but I never learned to accept how things were, I always tried to make them align with my vision.  But with time, I know that it came down to how I felt about myself.  The more I accept that I am where I am and understand what works, that where I’m at isn’t where I’m ending, the easier it is to make the next choice to head where I’m at.  We can’t get stuck in the mud of what we think we should have done. 

Today I am grateful for support.  We had a tough lesson in friendship this weekend.  My son learned that sometimes the people you think are your friends really aren’t.  He learned that sometimes people only use us for what they can get from us.  He learned that sometimes friendship hurts.  I asked him what he thought that meant and he told me he thought it meant that no one likes him.  I immediately told him no—it means that sometimes people we think are for us turn out  not to be, and we have to learn that it has nothing to do with us.  The right people, the right support doesn’t leave us questioning who we are or if we are good enough.  Especially our worth.  We’ve immersed ourselves in the sport life and I will tell you being around this team has taught us all how to be part of something again.  The support found in this group is a reminder that a common goal can drive an entire group of people to support each other so everyone is set up to succeed.  Success depends on each person doing their part and the team surrounding that person so they are able to do their part—and so on and so on until every succeeds.

Today I am grateful for chaos.  Truth be told I HATE chaos.  It confuses me, it unsettles me, it unbalances me and I have fought my entire life to get away from it.  Probably spent more energy thinking about ways to avoid chaos than the actual chaos I faced in some circumstances.  There is something to be said for the power of the mind and its ability to create concern…I digress.  Right now I’m experiencing a lesson in how chaos teaches us.  I’m unbelievably blessed to be able to make some changes in my home right now, make it more my own.  But in order to do that, I need to tear down everything that exists.  Since this project is something we’re doing on our own it will take some time and the house is in a state of utter destruction.  Torn up floor, boxes everywhere, walls coming down, walls going up, furniture moved, getting rid of stuff, putting new things in place.  And the thing is this: in order to see the big picture of what we are trying to achieve, we have to stay calm enough to see the vision, to keep the vision in mind at all times.  We have to be willing to let go of what we know/what we knew.  I’m letting go of what I carried including my initial vision into this house for what I’ve learned as I’ve settled in here, as I’ve learned more about who I am.  So in chaos as I’ve always said—I am firmly reminded there is creation.  It’s beautiful even if it doesn’t look like it.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

Reflecting more on what I wrote yesterday amidst the laying of a new foundation for myself, I want to add/amend to what I think about with control.  Control for me wasn’t always about being right.  No, being right was about proving myself, not about making others wrong.  But control over others for me was a self-defense mechanism and I felt like I had to control others all the time so I wouldn’t get hurt.  Not the first time I’ve written about that.  I have no real desire for power—I don’t want the responsibility of dictating what other people do with their days.  I don’t want to be the one calling the shots all the time—90% of the time people do what they want to do anyway. No.  I don’t want that type of control.  I want peace.  I thought I could gain peace in telling others what to do so I could avoid headaches and mess from having to fix it when it all falls apart.  But the truth is, we gain peace through doing what we have to do, doing what we are called to do.  Playing our role, the role we were designed to have.  Power comes through peace of mind which we get when we have power OVER the mind—not over others.

It’s funny how we can convince ourselves we’re doing the right thing in telling people what to do and believe that we know better than anyone at anything.   I’m living proof that for those who want to make others happy, they will give up their entire identity in a heartbeat if it means getting acceptance.  It’s easy to lose yourself when you’re the one laying that identity on the table.  When that happens one too many times, we build a defense, a wall, we tell ourselves we won’t let people hurt us again.  It’s also funny when we set those boundaries people talk about how we changed and we’re not the same.  And they’re right—we’re not the same because we’ve learned to be less accessible.  That doesn’t mean I’m controlling the narrative of their lives, I’m controlling the narrative of mine.  When we have that type of peace, we know what we are willing to engage in and we learn what we can let go of.  Not everything is a fight.  As a society we are trained to be reactive, defensive, to fight for what we want, to earn, to prove—and we make each other feel that way.  We have nothing to prove to anyone but ourselves. 

The point is we have to learn what it is we really want.  The brain is an amazing machine but it will always and forever take the path of least resistance and work with what it knows.  It will work with how we are feeling in the moment and impulsively decide what to do, it will create walls or doors depending on what’s needed.  That makes it easy to mistake the desire for control with the desire for peace—like I said above, we think control will give us peace.  There is nothing in this entire universe we can control.  Yes, we can control our actions and decisions, we can hope to get the results we are looking for—but we never know 100% what that result will be.  We try to mitigate the factors that impact our choices and we can become proficient at getting a certain result but the only 100% certain thing is that the universe will do what it takes to keep divine order.  Sometimes we don’t know the reasons behind it, we just have to accept it—and we learn to become comfortable with where we do have power.  We don’t need to have power over anything to be content or feel safe.  We just need to have power and awareness of ourselves. 

A tough lesson I’m working on lately is accepting if it all falls apart, let it implode. Observing the situations objectively, the question becomes What happens if it all implodes?  If we can’t stop it anyway, then we really only have one option: We find a way to begin again.  No, destruction isn’t fun—it can be down right terrifying and disorienting to what we know of the world.  Sometimes the destruction we face is a result of our own actions, sometimes it isn’t.  We fear it and are afraid of it, try to control it, but when we reach the point of total acceptance that destruction is inevitable, we understand that certain things in our lives are meant to fall, not to destroy us, but so we can build again.  There is purpose in destruction.  We all know it’s unpleasant (especially when it’s unexpected) but it’s no reason to avoid it.  The saying you can’t make an omelet without scrambling a few eggs seems fitting here: sometimes to get something new, you have to break something old.  The past can teach us a lot and there are certain elements of it that need to be revered, but if we don’t learn to let certain pieces lie, to break a few things to make something new, we end up carrying around mountains of baggage that serve no purpose, treading on eggshells our whole lives and then that past becomes a burden.  We don’t need to drag around the broken pieces, the pieces that don’t work to prove a point, that we were right.  Sometimes we have to recognize when we’re trying to make a bad thing work and know when to walk away.

As a recovering/perhaps present control freak, letting go is a real struggle for me—especially in the midst of large change and some of those changes will require my decision—so I will have to know when to detonate those facets of my life.  I want to know the future and it’s one thing to have to pivot to change, it’s another to know your entire world is going to change and have to be the one to do it.  I want to know what choices I will have as a result of the choices I make now.  I want to know what everyone thinks and feels and what they will do.  I always prided myself on my ability to read people pretty well and know what they would do in any given situation and I got pretty good at it—but there are people around me who I thought I knew like the back of my hand who have pulled some stunts so out of left field I’m not sure I ever knew them at all.  I worked really hard to keep them in the definitions I created for them, as the person I knew them as and I made excuses and allowances for all the behaviors toward me and others that I would never tolerate—or I never thought I would—and I know I never said I would.  So much for predicting behavior of others if I couldn’t even predict my own.  It was a crash course in learning not everything works as we predict it.  We can only band-aid so much and there are only so many cracks we can fill before the foundation starts to crumble like sand and the entire thing falls apart.  Trying to hold the foundation together is impossible, it falls through our fingers like sand and holding the weight of what we built without a foundation will only bury us.  And we can’t stop it from falling anyway.

Life does what life does—it IS.  There doesn’t have to be a reason for anything, and no, our human hands aren’t strong enough to make people do what we want them to or force anything to happen any more than we can prevent a mountain from coming down or a hurricane.  We know that’s logical but when we have an emotional attachment to an idea we had, a vision of what we thought life would look like, it’s hard to let it go.  It’s hard to work on something and have a particular image in mind—the time and effort we put into it.  We really want it to work out so we know it was worth it.  We’re all waiting for that “worth it” moment because if we can make it through all the crap and arrive where we wanted to be, that satisfaction means something.  To near the finish line and not be able to cross, to have to run back to the start, is exhausting and disheartening.  It doesn’t have to be but I’d be lying if I said human nature is anything but disappointed in those moments.  I can’t pretend I know that type of disappointment will be worth it.  I know it isn’t easy to get back up after that type of fall, where everything built is just gone.  But I know on some level that there has to be a reason for it—and it makes life a lot easier to go with what IS versus trying to change the course of the river.  I would be remiss if I said that I can’t see some light ahead in the things that are falling apart.  I’m seeing the structure I thought supported me was merely an obstacle even if there was a certain familiarity and comfort in it.  But letting it explode is far easier than holding it in or holding up the mountain that’s crumbling.  And in that destruction is creation—and entire new universe borne of bits and pieces all forming something new.