The weight of me.

I thought with the New Year I would start afresh. An invigorated focus on my goals in life brings me back with a new look for the blog and a refreshed sense of purpose for my writing. But first, a reflection…

The last few months I have had some personal breakthroughs I didn’t even know I was needing. (Sometimes those are the most awe inspiring.) These epiphanies have centered me as never before.

What it comes down to is a knowing myself completely at the deepest levels of my being. Really being good with who that is. This is an all-encompassing knowing; a resting in and embracing of my whole self. This includes recognizing and appreciating my place in the journey of life, loving my body just as it is, and being both contented with and excited about my spiritual path with the wrestling and expanding it involves.

This sounds so corny, really. But it was born of coming the other side of an intense trauma after finally truly healing. In that final emergence from the dark waters of that churning ocean of betrayal, despair, and brokenness I was lost in, with that first step on dry land I felt the weight of me. By that I mean I knew the depth of my courage as well as just how intense and incredible my strength is. That was my “grounding.”

One interesting thing about that ocean: you feel so overwhelmed in the depths of it when you can’t see the shore as the waves are pounding you and threatening to take you under, but the very hardest part is when you finally stand in the shallows of the tide and are taking that long walk to the beaches. Because you feel the sand between your toes as you step, you think you are on land, so the effort is all the more frustrating as you fight to bring your legs forward through the eddying riptides. Never have you worked so hard, yet you don’t realize you really aren’t out of it yet. It’s only on that first step out of the waters that you find that true freedom.

And that’s the moment you know. You know just how fierce you are. You know it’s not an invincibility but an endurance. You feel your strength in every molecule and know… that you can. Who you are is enough – more than enough. Whatever comes next, strenuous and painful or freeing and joyful, will not be beyond you. You can.

Edith Södergran said:

“My self-confidence comes from the fact that I have discovered my own dimensions. It does not behoove me to make myself smaller than I am.”

I know my own dimensions now. In fact, I OWN my own dimensions. I revel in them. So I walk tall. Because I am tall.

Timing is everything.

Hope. That’s what this is. I’d forgotten. Or at least, I’d forgotten the pleasant side of it. This last month, being out of touch, I have been discovering hope again… in the strangest of ways.

I suppose it had been building for a while, leading me to this place of feeling again. Then I had a couple weeks where suddenly I was feeling all the pain of the traumas of the last five years – all at once. It was nearly unbearable, but I knew that if I could feel this pain, if I could find a way to walk along with it, then I could again feel love and have passion and find… hope. I just didn’t want to be numb anymore, but until then didn’t have the tools – the pain and heartbreak – to be free of the anesthesia.

The thing about pain is that without feeling it we can’t feel anything. Not really. Certainly not deeply. Overwhelmed, I had flipped that switch to “off” in order to deal with the fallout of various extreme situations that I was bombarded with in rapid succession. However, by the time I wanted it turned on, I couldn’t reach it. I was so far from it wandering in that darkness, I couldn't even see it.

When I then all these years later unexpectedly backed into it, I was blinded by the light. It was incapacitating to experience so much emotional pain all at once. Now my heart has adjusted. (I’m so grateful.) And I find I have passion again… so much of it! Yet, now it it tempered with wisdom and experience, so it is a fuller and a more beautiful sort of passion.

I’m not saying everything’s perfect, and frankly I hope I never will say so – how boring that would be! I am saying I feel [internally] prepared for what may come. More, I am moving toward it with anticipation while still endeavoring to be present even in these duller moments.

As this hope builds, and more specifically as I complete my few remaining (time consuming) projects, I will be much more consistent with my blog entries… and I would imagine they will be getting more interesting as I enter into the flow of, well, my destiny.

Here’s hoping…

The way here.

I’ve been going through a bit of a transformation lately. It’s been a few years in the process, but the chrysalis is opening, and the view is great!

I think the most recent revelation in this evolution has been in finding that I’m sincerely content to be where I am while at the same time looking forward to all the years yet to come. I’m actually excited for 50, though not wanting to miss a second of all the years in between.

This is in contrast to how I was living. Internally I felt that there just wasn’t time – everything had to be rushed and was eminent because life was in fast forward. While I always was one to “suck the marrow” from life, this frenetic, whirlwind living I think really started after September 11th. Time froze while at the same time I felt like it went into overdrive. I never got out of that gear – not really. Not internally. I was almost in a panic to do and see all that for which I hoped and planned. I knew my mortality and was putting all sorts of energy into racing against it.

Suddenly, though, I feel like I have time. I’m resting in knowing me; knowing I accomplish what I set out to do, so it will happen. In the mean time, I’m here. That’s kind of great. My mortality hasn’t changed, just my perspective on how to be with it.

There’s another level to this, too. It’s the whole thing about feeling and looking (and acting!) younger than I am... This has always been a fantastic thing in my book. (What woman doesn’t want to frequently be taken for 10 years younger than she is??) Now, however, I’m really quite proud and grateful to be my age. Because it took to here to be so grounded and solid in who I am. No thoughts of what others think or how my family might react. My perspectives and beliefs won’t be altered by other’s judgments... no matter how much I might love them.

Considering my world view is so far from my entire, very large and well loved, extended family as well as the community I was so vigorously involved in for my first 35 years of life – the only community I’ve known, in fact - that is an extreme statement. Their disagreements and judgments on my Weltanschauung won’t cause me to waiver from it. If I am very blessed, they might one day understand I haven’t left my faith – only expanded it. But I can’t concern myself with the reactions of others, positively or negatively, when it comes to this subject. I embrace and accept others where they are at... I don’t ask them to do it/think it/feel it my way. I try to meet them where they are at and hopefully I will grow by embracing and understanding them.

Now, to looking young... sure, it gets me in more places and gives me access to more people who wouldn’t normally talk to (or date!) someone my actual age, but I love what those extra years have brought me. Suffering.

Because it’s only when you come out on the other side of deep pain and loss, that engulfing kind of brokenness, that you know your true strength. You know how deep your courage runs. Your footing there is solid and unwavering. You know yourself utterly. And can rest in that.

When you get there, to that place of peace with the ever-present pain, you will find real joy and passion again (likely in fits and starts, but you will find it). In fact, it will be richer because of the freedom taming such a ferocious beast brings. You will be full.

What a miraculous place to be. Hooray for aging!