I did not cry. I only breathed. Horribly. Intentionally. And then forgot to breathe.
This is not the moment to wilt into the underbrush of your insecurities. You’ve earned the right to grow.
To use our individual good or bad luck as a litmus test to determine whether or not God exists constructs an illogical dichotomy that reduces our capacity for true compassion. It implies a pious quid pro quo that defies history, reality, ethics, and reason. It fails to acknowledge that the other half of rising – the very half that makes rising necessary – is having first been nailed to the cross.
I have breathed my way through so many people I felt wronged by; through so many situations I couldn’t change. Sometimes while doing this I have breathed in acceptance and breathed out love. Sometimes I’ve breathed in gratitude and out forgiveness. Sometimes I haven’t been able to muster anything beyond the breath itself, my mind forced blank with nothing but the desire to be free of sorrow and rage.
What if I forgave myself? What if I forgave myself even though I’d done some things I shouldn’t have? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn’t do anything different from what I’d done? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if all those things I shouldn’t have done were what got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?
Our most meaningful relationships are often those that continued beyond the juncture at which they came closest to ending.
Strategic and coy are for jackasses. Be brave. Be authentic.
Transformation isn’t a butterfly. It’s the thing before you get to be a pretty bug flying away. It’s huddling in the dark cocoon and then pushing your way out. It’s the messy work of making sense of your fortunes and misfortunes, desires and doubts, hang-ups and sorrows, actions and accidents, mistakes and successes, so you can go on and become the person you must next become.
Or just close your eyes and remember everything you already know. Let whatever mysterious starlight that guided you this far guide you onward into whatever crazy beauty awaits.
Run toward the darkness, sweet peas, and shine.
That place of true healing is a fierce place. It’s a giant place. It’s a place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light. And you have to work really, really, really hard to get there, but you can do it.
At a certain point we get to decide who it is we allow to influence us.
And if there’s one thing I believe more than I believe anything else, it’s that you can’t fake the core. The truth that lives there will eventually win out.
Transformation doesn’t ask that you stop being you. It demands that you find a way back to the authenticity and strength that’s already inside of you. You only have to bloom.
Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me. Insisting on this story was a form of mind control, but for the most part, it worked. Every time I heard a sound of unknown origin or felt something horrible cohering in my imagination, I pushed it away. I simply did not let myself become afraid. Fear begets fear. Power begets power.
Grief doesn’t have a face.
The whole deal about loving truly and for real and with all you’ve got has everything to do with letting those we love see what made us.
I considered my options. There were only two and they were essentially the same. I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go.
Accept that someday what pains you now will surely pain you less.
One of the worst things about losing my mother at the age I did was how very much there was to regret.