Grief is a Mountain

Grief is one of the biggest mountains you’ll ever have to climb.

Not least, because it’s one that you absolutely won’t want to.

And people may talk of ‘getting over it’.

But the truth is,

I don’t think we ever do.

And that’s not to say that we don’t end up on the other side of the mountain. I’m not saying that we’re stuck in one place forever. 

But, rather than getting over it…

Perhaps we find a cave we can walk through which brings us out on the other side. It may be dark and dim and difficult, but we make it through into the light.

Perhaps we find a path around the mountain that leads to the other side. It may take a long time and it might be unsteady and precarious, but we make it round.

Or perhaps we just slowly edge our way past. A little up, a little through, a little round. Step by step.

No, I don’t think we get over it. It is too big, too overwhelming.

Too insurmountable.

So instead we get through it.

Round it.

Or quite possibly, 

we just get by.

~ Becky Hemsley 2022

Loneliness is the Doorway

Loneliness is the doorway to unspecified desire. In the bodily pain of aloneness is the first step to understanding how far we are from a real friendship, from a proper work or a long sought love. 

Loneliness can be a prison, a place from which we look out at a world we cannot inhabit; loneliness can be a bodily ache and a penance, but loneliness fully inhabited also becomes the voice that asks and calls for that great, unknown someone or something else we want to call our own. 

Loneliness is the very state that births the courage to continue calling, and when fully lived can undergo its own beautiful reversal, becoming in its consummation, the far horizon that answers back.

In the grand scale of things, loneliness is a privilege. Human beings may have the ability to feel aloneness as no other creature can; with a power magnified by intelligence and imagination. Animals may feel alone in an instinctual way, moving naturally and affectionately toward others of their kind, but human beings may be the only beings that can articulate, imagine or call for a specific life they feel they might be missing.

Loneliness is the substrate and foundation of belonging, the gravitational field that draws us home and in the beautiful essence of its isolation, the hand reaching out for togetherness. To allow ourselves to feel fully alone is to allow ourselves to understand the particular nature of our solitary incarnation, to make aloneness a friend is to apprentice ourselves to the foundation from which we make our invitation to others. 

To feel alone is to face the truth of our irremediable and unutterable singularity, but a singularity that can kiss, create a conversation, make a vow or forge a shared life. In the world or community, this essential singularity joins with others through vision, intellect and ideas to make a society. 

Loneliness is not a concept, it is the physical body almost constellating: attempting to become proximate and even join with other bodies, through physical touch, through conversation or the mediation of the intellect and the imagination. 

Loneliness is the place from which we pay real attention to voices other than our own; where being alone allows us to appreciate fully, the healing power of an other. The shortest line in the briefest e-mail can heal, embolden, welcome home and enliven the most isolated identity. 

Human beings are made to belong. Loneliness is the single malt taste of the very essentiality that makes conscious belonging possible. The doorway is closer than we think. I feel alone; therefore I belong.

‘LONELINESS’ From 

CONSOLATIONS: 

The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. Revised Edition. 

© David Whyte & Many Rivers Press

When You Are Finished Falling Apart

Beautiful girl, when you are finished falling, after you hit rock bottom and watch yourself come apart into a million pieces, no one is staying to help you collect yourself, no one is sticking around to pick through your pieces to decide which parts of you are worth keeping. That’s for you to decide. So stay down for as long as you need to. This is the most important part. Take your time. Pay attention. You already broke. So the easy part is over. Go slow....I know, you thought the breaking was the most painful chapter. It wasn’t. Turn the page. The next part is much longer. It’s the healing. The rise. The comeback. It’s the birth of the new you. And it’s not easy. But you are strong and brave and worth it. You’ll have to leave a lot of yourself behind, you’ll have to let go of all the parts of you that you’ve outgrown. We’re not making ourselves small anymore. We’re not bending to fit where we don’t belong anymore. Do you hear me? We’re going all in. Count your wounds, every scar ripped open, every drop of blood you bled like a promise, every tear you cried like a bet in the name of crossing your whole heart, your whole soul, was all for this moment. Right here. Right now. You had to hurt like that to get here to this version of you who knows exactly who she is, who she’s not, who she will never be again. Drop the apologies, babe. We’re not sorry anymore for who we are, we’re not sorry for what we had to do to get here, and we’re not sorry for the time it took to learn our worth. Step out of the box of all you were supposed to be, according to everyone who wasn’t you, and walk into the you, who’s comfortable in her own skin. It’s time. You earned it. 

We no longer wear the expectations of anyone else and we no longer let anyone else decide what we’re worth. Because we know now. We finally know. And now it’s time to celebrate it. Get up, babe. It does not hurt anymore. Now go show YOU what you’re made of. 

~ Stephanie Bennett-Henry 

Push Through

I probably don't give myself enough credit for overcoming the things I have.

It has become so engrained in me to push through life.

As a single mom, there are always things that need done and preparation for the next day..

I do my best to relax and unwind..

Turn off the constant go, go, go mode.

It's not easy though.

I constantly worry.

I constantly feel I am not doing enough..

That there's always more to do.

But I do stop and take notice how I love myself more and admire the woman I have become.

There are growing pains in life that can not be avoided.

There are things that happen to us outside of our control.

But I choose to believe I can overcome whatever life throws at me and not to see myself as a victim.

Life is hard with no easy fixes.

All I can do is do my best everyday and push on through the tough ones. 

Love All Your Flaws

Love your wounds - they reveal what matters most to you, what your deepest soul longing is and what you came to heal in the collective. That is why we chose to incarnate into the families and situations we did, so that we could experience that affliction, and take it on as our own and then rise above it for All...

Love your so-called flaws, they are spiritual jewels that mark our journey and reveal where we let go of the physical to embrace the spiritual fully. It connects us to the deeper soul journey ~ wisdom, maturity, depth and transcendence. We are programmed to see them as flaws, when they are an initiation into the deeper mysteries.

Love your dysfunctions and the things that cause you to lose friends, successes or throw you into life lessons. They help us to find humor, liberation and our inner child and releases us from caring so much about what others think and allows us to find a deeper love of self and rise above the judgements of others.

Love your pain, It teaches forgiveness, tolerance, patience and it gives us the humility we need to unite together in higher consciousness and integrity... It shows us our healing power and how to transform, face our demons and get real with who we truly are and what we need to share and express.

Love your insecurities, they are a part of our genius and higher aspects of self that have just been shut down or unsupported. They show us our gifts and creativity and help us to let go, take risks and be comfortable in our own skin with our own boundaries and standards.

Love your Ego/identity when in crisis, let it be a compass pointed at your higher self, so that all actions, words, decisions and behaviors, reflect the nature of your divine blueprint. It shows us how to remove masks, programmings and ancestral patterns. It teaches us where we abuse free-will and reminds us of how to be authentic, powerful, influential and an example...

Love and honor these things in self and each other and focus on where it can take you and what it truly means, instead of how it makes one look and how it seems. When we see Truth, we see perfection in all things and we know how to find our way home...

~The Return of the Divine Feminine

The Fucked Up Truth About Being a Twin Flame

Most people that experience the twin flame phenomena have never heard about it before it storms into their life. 

Those wishing for it may want to be careful what they wish for.  

It’s like discovering magic and then losing the wand.  

It is your soul ripping you open, laying out every piece of you that you had hoped to never see again, and saying clean up this mess. 

When you have, it rips you open again and says not good enough, do it again.  

It’s love, confusion, heartbreak, and soul aching beauty to the sound of a thousand tears.  

There’s a silent unimaginable connection that will convince you that you’re crazy, synchronicities that appear in such real yet unexplainable ways that you know you’re not crazy.  

Unavoidable perfectly imperfect magnetic energy that will defy any logical reason you may have for not wanting to be with them.

Its lust on crack, and hold the orgasm because their presence is a continual spiritual orgasm aka newly awakened kundalini energy in force - a twin flame always produces a profound awakening.

And they aren’t even a god although for a while you may think they are, they are just this other perfectly imperfect human that may have no idea of the deeper connection, perhaps someone who spends all of five minutes in your life somehow managing to turn it completely upside down, and inside out without actually doing anything much at all before their first disappearing act.   

On the days that you can see all the beauty in the experience and connection you love them.

On the days you can barely look in the mirror and wish you’d never laid eyes on them, you love them.  

How something so beautiful can destroy you, yet somehow create you at the same time, I’m not sure but I imagine that’s the true power of love, its ability to live in everything.  

And you will see the only direction you ever had to look was in yourself.

That’s what it’s for, your awakening to your true self.

The opening of your heart to all that is.

Stop looking out, and start looking in.

Clear up the spaces you swore you would never return to.

Look within, and love who you find.

This is the journey home to you.

~Trudi Jane Poetry, Prose, and Ponderings

You’ll Never Be Happy With Just Half a Love

There was no doubt

She loved him

Her heart torn

Between loving a man

That was present for her

And a man

She met years ago

That reminded her

Of soul love

He was still on her mind

The heart has a hard time 

Of letting go

She did her best 

Not to dwell on the past

So she could

Build a future

With a man

That wanted to love her

And give her everything 

She ever needed or wanted

All she had to do

Was accept

His offer

But the choice

Wasn't that simple

Her heart whispering 

"You'll never be happy with just half a love"

By Midlife

  “By midlife, we're usually aware enough to understand which of our issues most need attention.

We've learned where we're strong, but also where we're weak. 

We know what parts of ourselves to be proud of and what parts of ourselves should change. 

We know what our issues are. It might not be a time when we're learning new things about ourselves so much as understanding more deeply what we already know.

This is not the time to stop working on ourselves; it's the time when we've finally accumulated enough clues to help crack the case and solve the myself why and how we've kept ourselves bound for so long.

Its not the time to give up and say, 'this is who I am, its too late to change.' Quite the opposite- its time to take a stand, once and for all, for your own potential. 

Don't worry that it took you so long to get to this point. It takes everyone this long. 

We know nothing until we know all the ways that we're not who we should be. 

Only then do we have a chance at becoming the people we've wanted to be... from the day we were born.

And for that reason alone, these are sacred years.”

― Marianne Williamson, The Age of Miracles: Embracing the New Midlife