We must accept the lives we have led, so we can have pride in what is coming; the perception of our lives are drenched in shame, rage, regret, and anger. While life, and also our memory, does not move in a linear fashion–all our memories fall victim to timelines–there is progression; with progression there is more life to be lived. Life is not all trauma, within the bad there is good and within good there is bad–to have your first heartbreak means you have to fall in love; we must accept the events that have taken place in our lives, so we can discover how to bring ourselves back into our bodies. Leaving people quickly, constant over-thinking, failing on keeping commitments, and crying without even knowing why are psychic disturbances of our past imprinting itself on the present. We learn how to maneuver through these disturbances by becoming self-aware; we discover the unity between our finished lives and the lives we are creating. Our entire existence is intertwined within the duality of our own lives and the complexity of the people around us; we give birth to new people through the recognition of the lives we have led. We must let everything we have repressed come out of the shadows by confronting all parts of ourselves with a compassionate love. Truly, I believe, many people confront their “Issues” with such a self-deprecating meanness, but only through a compassionate motherly love can we allow ourselves to be reborn. Our lives are both mother and child, pregnant with our potential, nurturing our development, and providing ourselves with the intimate sacred space to grow; the deeper our light grows, the lonelier we become, and we must accept this rise in darkness and light. Standing between emptiness and fullness, the acceptance of our entire lives carries the torch to sojourn this wonderful opportunity. We must confront our lives with complete compassion and earnest strength; lifting the stones that block our path toward righteousness. Life is a daily battle of attempting to bring yourself to balance; which means we must constantly bring ourselves to discover the beauty within the things we consider ugly.

If we can use language to capture our stories we can find our healing; some write, others sculpt, paint, and many dance to find their peace. Through our art we express our frustrations and discover a deeper appreciation of our love. To express your emotions is a virtue; there is power in saying, “My parents did not love me as I should have been loved”, “I am unfulfilled”, “I am heartbroken”, “ Even though I miss my father I am angry at him”. Pain expresses itself in symbolic and unexpected ways, but through it contains our joy and peace; our dragons are really our princesses and we are truly releasing our peace from its constraints. Our histories follow us around everything we go; there is nowhere we can go where we wont take ourselves with us. We can try to fool ourselves with all the symbolic forms of freedom, but we are forever ourselves; every part of our lives is worth our attention. The world perverted our intuition and told us it was primitive and fantastical to study our dreams, follow our hearts, and treat nature as a messenger. 

We must become our own sacrifice, being a manifestation of divine grace, unwilling to accept our entire lives in disgrace; earth has been around 4.543 billion years, humans have been on this planet for 300,000 years, and created a world of comfortability and ease, but the demand of this age is an acceptance of everything we’ve done. We do not respect how distant we are from one another, or acknowledge the bridge to bring us closer together; if we can not walk our own personal bridge then connecting will be impossible. We ignore so much of ourselves, we ignore thoughts, shun our anxieties, shame our dreams, hold onto perceptions, and fail to recognize everything happening through us is a blessing. Safety, recognition, bravery, and love are the ingredients to creating a safe space for ourselves. All parts of our story are holy, and given that many of us have suffered atrocious events and are currently moving through a traumatic period; we must accept everything happening around us. This acceptance is not passive, but an internal process that cultivates and shapes the dynamics of all our relationships. We are truly given a space of transformation; we must become acquainted with loneliness, so we can develop safe spaces. My story is no one else’s story but mine, it must be accepted.