Tag: growth

Infusion

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A piece started almost a year ago, and finished tonight: 

Love. I have written as I was falling in love. I have written as I deepened in love. I have written when I expanded in love. I have written when I contracted in love. I have written when I hated love. I have written when I didn’t know what love wanted from me; why it wanted me to be tortured. I have written when love healed the edges but couldn’t reach the center. I have written when I was released from love. When I diverged from love. When I surfaced from love. When I detached from love and forgot love’s name.

I think when I detached from my ex, I left love behind. So much of love and him and us and fate were intertwined. I couldn’t release myself from just one. I had to walk away from everything, just to save my life.

But in the process, I forgot about the brilliance of love. I forgot about the tenderness of intimacy. Of familiarity. Of safety. Of being known. Of being seen. Of taking someone else in. There is something so soft about love, isn’t there? Something so…unknowable. Something incredible. Something stirring.

I miss love. It was a friend of mine once ago. It took care of me. It brought fire. It brought clarity. It brought joy, I think. There was a lot of joy. A lot of laughter. I miss all of it…

***

These days I write of self-love. Of finding the roots that cultivate good-for-the-soul love for yourself. I write of finding love in nature and its magnificence. I write of finding love for one’s body, one’s mind, and one’s spirit. I write of love cultivated in friendships: love that shows up for you, again and again. I write of family love: a love that endures the waves of growing up. I write of searching for love that makes you feel whole. I write of love for one’s hobbies that become passions. I write of love that doesn’t require shrinking but expanding. Love that brings calmness and sweetness to you. Love that feels easy. Love that creates space for you and others to thrive. Love that is filled with belly laughs and quiet understanding. Love that isn’t necessarily attached to one person but is infused into all the elements of this life.

Maybe love didn’t leave me like I thought it had. Maybe it reshaped and ventured out. Maybe it was always here, asking me to expand to find it.

Embracing love has been the greatest journey of my life. I hope I keep searching for it…

 

“Nobody but nobody makes it out here alone. What really matters now is love. I mean, that condition in the human spirit that is so profound it allows us to rise. Strength, love, courage, love, kindness, love, that is really what matters.”

 – Dr. Maya Angelou

28 Intentions: Unfold

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In less than 3 hours, I’ll be 28. I don’t have any particularly strong feelings about it, surprisingly. With Hurricane Irma just days away, I don’t even fully feel like it’s almost my birthday. I barely remember it’s almost the 7th.

A year ago, on the night before my 27th birthday, I wrote 27 Intentions. It felt right, needed, triumphant, and appreciative. I was so ready to welcome a new year into my world. But it felt like immediately after I pressed “publish”, my life began to unravel.

Since then, I’ve stopped writing. Stopped yoga-ing. Stopped documenting for my 3-second-a-day video project. Stopped feeling so solid and brave. I don’t really know why. I just…lost the drive. I lost…something. And since, I’ve felt endlessly adrift.

I’m trying to find it again.

I’m trying to find my place in this world. A place that feels somewhat solid and wholly my own. I don’t have many deep lessons from my 27th year around the Sun – I suppose they’re all still in the process of unfolding. In the meantime, I try to remind myself that the person I was one year ago was exactly who I needed to be to survive this past year. That pressing “publish” was a call to arms of sorts, a way to remind myself of how strong I was and how far I had come.

I try to be patient with myself and to savor the sweeter moments in my life. They are plentiful and deeply needed, even when I forgot to record them.

The last words before my 27th birthday was: “I imagine my 27th year around the sun will be an ongoing exercise in assessing the contours of resilience and growth. My intention for this year is to continue to cultivate a deeper happiness, and to find every way possible to bring happiness to others.”

I was right about resilience and growth. I almost wish I wasn’t haha.

For my 28th year around the sun, I hope to unfold. By that I mean, I want to acknowledge and understand that nothing is a fixed point. Happy days. Shitty days. Days when we feel overlooked at work and forgotten. Days when our dog is well-behaved and snuggly. Days when friends disappoint us to our core. Days filled with hospital beeps and medications I can’t pronounce. Days filled with dazzling ocean blues. Days filled with missed emails. Days filled with the best conch chowder you’ve ever had. And days when hurricanes postpone birthdays.

None of it lasts forever. And that’s a good thing. It’s all unfolding into a beautiful, messy, painful, belly-laughter-filled, tear-soaked, journey called growing up.

Unfold, brilliantly.

 

“How wild it was, to let it be.” – Cheryl Strayed

 

27 Intentions

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This last year has been the most difficult and dislodging one of my life.

But as my birthday approaches, I’ve been reflecting on where I am today. Truthfully, I’ve been surprised at how full I feel these days. At peace, whole, resolved, fierce. I have prayed, traveled, laughed, stretched, run, lifted, yoga’d, sung, dressed, raged, danced, meditated, explored, let go, written, cried, listened, whispered, begged, filmed, and read. Somewhere along the way, happiness was spoken back into my life.

And it is a different kind of happy.

Because it is mine.

It isn’t rooted in the past or in a soulmate, like it used to be. It isn’t predicated on being seen or accepted by others.

It isn’t wedded to fate or feeling like I have to fulfill some destiny.

It isn’t dependent on a job (or more often that not, the lack thereof), or in being in DC.

It is mine because I have worked on it. It’s mine because there were days when I didn’t work on it and I simply fell apart. It is mine because I have experienced belly laughs on my worst days. It is mine because I have experienced utter despair on my best days. And yet, I continued. I felt like the biggest failure. All of my worst fears were realized. I experienced so many setbacks. And yet, I continued.

This isn’t meant to be boastful; only reflective. I look back on this past year – which was the most difficult rebuilding process of my life – and I am proud of myself. I’m proud I dug deep. I rebuilt a shattered foundation. I did it on my own. But also with the help of others.

I feel full. I feel wholehearted. Brave. Loving. Excitable. Strong. Maybe not completely open, but I’m on my way. I’m excited for a future of exploration, aspirations and becoming wild.

I imagine my 27th year around the sun will be an ongoing exercise in assessing the contours of resilience and growth. My intention for this year is to continue to cultivate a deeper happiness, and to find every way possible to bring happiness to others.

“I was entering. I was leaving. California streamed behind me like a long silk veil. I didn’t feel like a big fat idiot anymore. And I didn’t feel like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen. I felt fierce and humble and gathered up inside, like I was safe in this world too.” – Cheryl Strayed, Wild

Taking Stock

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I had a great conversation with Marie-Eve a few weeks back. I am so grateful for the friendship we have cultivated. She is a best friend and family in so many ways. As we were talking she offhandedly praised me for really making the best of my time at home. For doing all the things I said I wanted to do: eating better, yoga, making a blog, my video journal, and going natural. It made my heart smile with gratitude. She said I was doing so much better and I looked happy.

That moment was unexpected but so deeply needed.

Truthfully, I’m working my way to happy, but I’m not there yet. I want to be joyful not in spite of anyone or anything, but simply because I am.

I cut my hair off because I needed to feel like I was walking towards change instead of being dragged, for once.

I started yoga because it touches a part of me that needs healing and strength.

I started a video journal because my spirit needs to remember the sweet moments and days as much as my tear ducts remember the hard ones.

I write because the writings of others have literally carried me to salvation.

I want to be a fuller version of myself. For too long I lay broken and shattered across the eastern seaboard, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from monuments to sand dollars. I left shards everywhere I went and I picked up new splinters along the way. Now I’m back in harbour, picking up the pieces, molding a new figure, and breathing life and light to that being. I want to love the person I will become. I want to love her fiercely. I want her to forgive me. And I want to forgive. I want her to set boundaries, healthy ones, and live true. I want her to feel powerful and worthy of all the sweetness this world has to offer. I want her to be imbued with strength, vulnerability, and most importantly, wholeness.

And I want the same for you, whoever you are reading this.

“Don’t let anyone take your magic away. Not even you.” – M 

Becoming

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Be easy.
Take your time.
You are coming
Home.
To yourself

 

– “the becoming | wing” by Nayyirah Waheed

 

Growth can feel tedious, exhausting and unfair at times. Especially when it is punctuated by loss. As I’ve talked about before, no one warns you about the amount of mourning there is in growth. And maybe no one has to…

This poem gives me hope more than anything else. The idea is that as difficult and soul-crushing as growth and change can be, try to be easy on yourself. Treat yourself as kindly as you wished the universe would sometimes. Be compassionate and soothing to yourself in ways you haven’t received from those you trusted. Just know: no amount of warning can change what needs to be experienced.

Know that taking your time is elemental to happiness. Because movement is happening. Even if you feel despairingly stuck. Even if you feel like you’ve diverged from the dream you had for yourself, for love, for your career, for communion with friends. Movement is there, always. You are coming home. And home: home is the purest form of who you need to be in this world and who the world needs you to be. Home is protective and empowering. Home is love that endures.

Home is you.