I've made no secret of my personal struggles with life circumstances and where I am with that. I went through a very difficult few years that felt like I was laying on the damp floor of a dark hole and I could not see the way out. I could surface for moments, to be there for my kids and to do my work but truly, I was faking it. I'm a sensitive girl in a world that I don't understand and I processed my truth as being broken....And broken became where I lived for what felt like too long. I don't know what I was waiting for, probably some kind of answer, truth, pain relieving change...I didn't know at all. I had some friends who saw the truth of my despair and simply stayed with me. They didn't try to fix or push me, they just stayed, sitting there with me on the ground until I was ready to sit up and there we stayed for a while longer, just sitting in the dark. And I am grateful for their love, even when I couldn't say so. I sort of intuitively knew this darkness , the brokenness and the despair, it had an important purpose but goodness I wanted to rush on through and be done with it. Because pain sucks and pain for along time starts to feel normal. and I didn't want that to be my life. I didn't know how I was going to do it but, I decided to unbreak myself....I decided to invite the pain to sit down and have some real conversations with me. And it did...So I sat at the table with my pain and what I thought were my shattered pieces because I thought it would be good to put them back together not realizing they didn't fit anymore...I spent a whole lot of time with the pain, trying to learn everything I could in the dark and figure out how to stand up and leave the table. But not before pain and I had to hash out a whole lot of messy stuff.
Then two things happened..
.1 Pain was there to say to me in no uncertain term, that until I loved me enough to trust myself, listen to myself and BE MYSELF fully and completely, I would allow myself to put my own best interests last and take care of the rest of the world. It isn't the job of the rest of the world to look out for me. That was my job. To love and honor myself....in order to love and honor what mattered to me. Pain told me that my sensitive, intuitive self was just the way I am wired, not wrong, not broken not in need of fixing. That was my greatest gift even though it had never felt that way. My knowing and feeling and truth telling...it didn't need to be hidden and for sure shouldn't ever be given away. This world that is hard for me, needs what I bring because I am loved...I am love. I listened to pain and it gave me the greatest bit of knowledge I've ever gotten...Pain did not lie, pain was a teacher. Pain stayed until I got it right....
2. I started moving my body. That simple. I started the day after Christmas, thinking it was going to be a simple bit of walking the treadmill a few times a week and my excess pounds would fall off, I would be cuter and thinner and everything would just happen like that. It didn't The first night I fell off the treadmill in an amazing and frightening display of no body awareness at all. I still have the scar where I deeply skinned my knee. My sons picked me up and took me under their very strong arms and told me that they would work with me. And I started lifting weights. They went with me to the gym, we are doing this together. They gently guided me out of my comfort zone so far, I couldn't even see where my comfort zone was. they taught me and let me take on the gaining of strength. My older children became sounding boards for fitness and cheered every single thing I gained rather than asked how much I was losing. I stopped weighing myself and trusted the life long process that is taking care of me, this impatient girl has discovered patience and how good the hard work feels without expecting anything else. Trusting good changes would come but first I had to surrender to the process and have come to love it.. I cannot say this enough. If you want to change your life, move your body. This is what I know for certain about that...Mind, Body and Spirit are connected and you CANNOT fix one with out the rest coming along for the ride. .
The other day a friend said I looked like I was in the middle of becoming who I was meant to be. Maybe because I pierced my nose or maybe because I committed to doing a hard physical event or maybe because I am excited about recommitting to the success of my little company. Maybe these are outer signs of what's been inside all along. Maybe it just feels good to to take off the fear of what anyone else will think or say. I told her that I was just uncovering who I always was. Revealing and becoming. Because I get a voice in all this, how my story goes and how it all feels to be me. Because I have sat at the table with pain and lay on the damp ground with despair, I know what they offer. A chance to be unbroken. To decide that I am more than what hurts, so much more and the hurt has no power when I love and honor myself so hard that the rest just fades out of focus. Love is the thing. it's everything. LOVE changed me, it saved me and gave me myself in a way I have never had. I am unbroken, I am strong. . I can love what is real and good more than ever and I can walk away without anger from what doesn't serve that love. This is my story. And that is where fearlessness, strength and peace live....where pain used to hang out. At my table of love...about damned time.......
"Well I have no fear
I have only love"
~Stevie Nicks, Gypsy
BRING IT ON 59.....We are going to be just fine....
<3 Barbara
No comments:
Post a Comment