Everything can be solved.
Let me answer. Let me share. Let me help.
I refuse to live life as I should, by a rule book created to control.
Let me live for love and beauty, for excellence.
Let God show up in me, as me, through me…
Let my light so shine… for You.
You deserve to be loved the way you love others. You deserve to feel seen.
You deserve to sleep beside someone who does not try to quiet your heartbeat, or your passion, or the way you show up in this world. You deserve to be with the kind of person who makes you their favorite thing, the kind of person who loves all of your twists and does not try to untie them.
You deserve to love someone who does not judge you. You deserve to love someone who sees you for all of you and seeks to understand you. You deserve someone who supports your direction, who motivates, encourages and inspires you, always encouraging you to keep going. You deserve someone who appreciates you. You deserve someone who loves you whole-heartedly and with conviction. You deserve to love someone who sees you are powerful beyond measure, jagged edges and all. You deserve someone who sees your flaws and scars and chooses to stand beside you, fighting with you and for you. You deserve someone who is sure of you. You deserve someone who believes in you. You deserve someone who wants to see you happy.
However, you also deserve to be this person for yourself. Your capacity to love yourself, to be alone and be your own foundation is going to directly reflect the way you love these people when they come into your life. When you know yourself, when you stand up for your heart, you do not bankrupt who you are just to keep half loves in your life. When you love yourself, finding love becomes less about filling a void. Love is not about possession, obsession and dependence. Love transforms into something that can be fully, and deeply appreciated and felt, because you are not afraid that it’s loss will destroy you. You are not afraid of being without it, because you will always have yourself.
Appreciation is the highest form of prayer. It acknowledges the presence of good wherever you shine the light of your thankful thoughts.
We have all experienced the power of appreciation to inspire, restore, reassure and heal; of being lifted out of the depths of darkness and despair by the light of acknowledgement and appreciation as it illuminates a diminished spirit. When one is separated from a sense of their true amazing nature, appreciation can be a mighty antidote.
When we express gratitude and high regard, acknowledge something or someone’s intrinsic value, or convey how much we treasure, cherish and love, the healing presence is summoned forth.
In Handle with Prayer, author Alan Cohen states the inspired action of gratitude is the greatest power at our command. It opens our heart to all the incredible blessings around and within us.
This week I decided to express my gratitude and appreciate 5 new things every morning. I’ve noticed that this small action – that is completely in my control – has had the greatest impact on my life.
I’ve also noticed that I’ve become accustomed to communicating in expedient ways, via emails, texts, status updates and cryptic memos. I want to consider offering the gift of time in sending personal correspondence, making a phone call, arranging a visit, pausing to offer a kind word, a smile, a moment of deep listening, an acknowledgement of someone’s existence.
These were values I learnt at Maji Mazuri… to appreciate others, and look to the core to really see the other person – their intelligent, creative, brilliant, beautiful self.
In the hustle and bustle of life, I forget that when we give thanks, we have more to be thankful for. According to Linda Watson, quantum physics explains that paying attention to something increases the possibility that it will continue to occur.
What we appreciate, appreciates.
Today is a brand new day. A fresh start. An opportunity to replace any negativity with positivity, think happy thoughts, exercise, go for a run or do some sit ups, drink lots of water, fill the body with fuel, sip a latte, take a picture, enjoy the morning.
Today is a day to inspire, create, learn, (more…)
My dear best friend,
Thank you for loving me more fiercely than anyone I know.
Thank you for being you and for letting me be me. Thank you for not making me wear any masks and put on fronts.
Thank you for sharing in my happiest moments and listening to my saddest stories. Thank you for being the only person I ever want to confide in. Thank you for radiating compassion and empathy from wherever you happened to be. Thank you for being my rock, my anchor; for keeping me grounded when I feel like I might otherwise blow away.
Thank you for all of the things you do, big and small. Thank you for being the most beautiful person, inside and out. Thank you for making my world a better place, by being in it.
Thank you for the laughs, the cries, and everything in between. Thank you for knowing my favorite ice cream flavor and the music that makes me leap to my feet. Thank you for always knowing what to say, for being blunt and being kind. Thank you for making fun of me when I deserve it, and for loving me when I don’t. Thank you for staying constant in a world full of change, and keeping some normalcy in a world full of chaos.
Thank you for making me hurt when I miss you, but for taking the hurt away when I see you. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for having my back, even when I don’t deserve it. Thank you for the absolute privilege and honor of being able to call you my best friend.
Thank you for giving me these reasons, and a million more, to be thankful for.
Forever and Always,
Your Best Friend
Don’t you see the beautiful battlefield you are?
You come to me with your failed relationship, your stinging regrets, your broken heart cupped within your hands, offered to me like an apology.
But, the thing is, you don’t have to apologize for the way the world broke you. You don’t have to ask me to forgive you for having scars, or doubts, or fears. You think you aren’t enough, that your experiences took from you and left you lacking, but that couldn’t be more wrong. You have a past but it never reduced you, it never spoiled your potential — it only ever added to it. It made you stronger, more deserving of a love that loves you back.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Sometimes my chest sinks into my stomach when I realize you truly don’t see yourself the way I see you. See, I don’t see your broken home, or your despair. I don’t see anguish stamped along your skin. I don’t notice the tremble in your vulnerable words.
When I see you, I see beauty, just budding from your face, your spirit,
your limbs… When I see you I see courage; I see someone who is loving despite being afraid. I see someone who is fighting despite feeling weak. When I see you I see a strength that inspires me.
I see a woman that makes me want to stay.
Shame is a feeling of being inadequate or unworthy of connection, love, and belonging.
We often bury the feelings of shame inside us. One of the characteristics of shame is it makes us want to hide and remain unseen. Shame can be physically uncomfortable and difficult to speak about openly so often we learn to hold onto it, tucking it away into our deepest parts instead of treating it like an emotion that deserves to be aired out and heard. Its often by sharing our feelings of shame and airing them to people we trust, that we’re finally able to face our shame, be with it and overcome it.
A good friend of mine recently had a business failure and it was a rather public one. He experienced damage to his self-worth that left him feeling wounded and isolated. I learned that he had been avoiding friends and family and until a conversation with me, he hadn’t opened up about his experience or the shame surrounding it. As he confided in me, I could almost see the weight lifting from his shoulders and hear the relief in his voice.
I’ve noticed that the inclination to hide the shame from ourselves and others often produces more shame. It’s only when we take the risk, sharing our hidden uncomfortable feelings of shame, that we might be rewarded with the most precious thing of all: Acceptance.
So the next time you identify feelings of shame tucked away in your body and mind, see if it’s possible to find someone you trust to confide in.
As we begin to bravely share our experience with others, shame can actually be a connector that decreases our isolation. We can discover that we’re not alone, feeling inadequate or broken. As we recognize this together, it allows us to heal and make peace with all our parts.
Profound thoughts from Tamara Levitt. Listen to her lovely meditation on Calm.
The paradox of our time in history is that:
- We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less.
- We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.
- We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time.
- We have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints.
- We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, less judgment.
- We have more medicine, but less wellness.
We talk too much, listen too seldom, and love to hate. We spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, drink too much, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, binge watch TV and seldom pray.
We’ve done bigger, but not better things.
We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life. We’ve added years to life, not life to years. We’ve been to the moon, but can’t cross the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not our inner selves.
We have more experts, yet more problems. We’ve found ways to clean up the air, but polluted the soul. We’ve conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We’ve learned to rush, but not to wait. We have quick trips, disposable diapers, one night stands, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill.
These are the days of big men and small character, steep profits and stagnant wages, thousands of friends and shallow relationships. There are two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses and broken homes. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. It is a time when technology brings noise or insight, and we often choose to just hit delete rather than decide which is which. We have powerful pocket computers, but communicate less.
Give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is a treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn’t cost a cent.
Listen, speak and share the precious thoughts in your mind.
Reach out and touch the heart of someone who looks up to you in awe.
Spend some time with your loved ones. They may not be around forever.
Say, ‘I love you’ to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. An embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.
Hold hands and cherish the moment.
Give love.
If you don’t send this to other people, who cares?… Just remember, it is more rewarding to SHARE.
Cheers!
Trust me when I say — you will miss out on beautiful things if you continue to stay rooted in all of the ways you were wronged, if you continue to let your past pull you from experiencing what the present has to offer you.
Do not lose touch of what you have, chasing what you don’t. Do not close yourself off to your potential.
Instead, open yourself to the world. Allow for it to fill that space with the kinds of experiences that exhilarate you. Find the people that compel you. Fill your time – and mind – with moments that make you love yourself, and your life, and what you have to offer, more and more each day.
What could you choose to be grateful for right NOW if you wanted to?
We can look for what’s missing, OR we can consciously direct our focus to find JOY and FULFILLMENT in what we already have.
Remember, the CHOICE is always ours!
To Do. Today!
Most of us begin our days with a continuous list of things we need to do to keep our lives running smoothly, but we rarely take time to note all the things we don’t need to do.
For example, we don’t need to figure out how to breathe. We don’t need to concentrate to ensure that our heart beats and our cells regenerate. We don’t need to find a way to make sure the earth continues to revolve around the sun. All of these things, and many more, take care of themselves without our having to think or do anything at all.
This is the miracle of life on earth.
Today I will acknowledge the goodness in my life. There’s so much to be grateful for, I just might not have the time to do anything else;).