Life is not a progression of successes but rather a series of moments filled with spaces, shapes and emotions where there is an expectation that we will move forward regardless of any areas that weigh us down and prevent the growth that we are seeking.
But being close to what did and didn’t happen keeps us living in all that we have lost and the reasons why we can’t believe in ourselves, enhancing our clinging to past places and feelings of unhappiness.
After all, our suffering surely is an indication that there is something wrong with us and yet life not going as we had hoped isn’t the evidence of failure just as having achievements isn’t proof that we are at home within ourselves.
Five years ago on May 31, my son, Ryan, lost his life after complications from a three week battle to survive an illness.
Even with the passage of time and being muddied by tears, I am able to relive every single detail of those previous pages as it’s that easy to breathe in what’s been marked in our hearts.
The outcome is a very painful loss to me but the light in that dark place of mine is the efforts that were made to succeed without the promise of a win or that different would have been better.
Prior to that, we battled for years, side by side with Ryan against the dragons known as mental health issues and addiction.
We had an idea of how our triumph should look and feel and there were so many times that it felt within reach as well as others that made it feel completely impossible to attain.
There were also a lot of regretful mistakes but with each try and fail that came upon us, our performance was able to grow, even in the moments that we walked in circles for long periods of time.
If we could go back with the hard earned knowledge that we have today, it still wouldn’t assure us that we would have been successful in helping Ryan but the achievements from all of that suffering is that we are getting better at being home within ourselves as well as for each other.
This is a story that is filled with what love and sadness feel like to me as well as a lot of other things that just happen to be mine.
It is not a progression of goals but a series of moments that also hold encounters that I didn’t want to learn how to live through on my pages.
The details are what make it my story but those particulars are also what makes it hard for me to move forward.
The best way to keep improving my performance is in treating all of my feels the same without being caught up in re-reading the storyline that I already know by heart.
I am always going to be sad over my losses but I am also always going to smile because this is a story that is helping me to come home in ways that I never imagined I needed especially in how I previously detailed what I thought triumphs should look like in my life.
Have the best day POSSIBLE for you. Love Always, Heavell
Replacing what’s going nowhere is the magic that dreams are made of but our wishes will never get that close to us if our accomplices are able to once again bring the feelings that something isn’t right with who we are.
After all, dreams don’t distance us from the things that have happened in the yesterdays nor do they release us from the marks of what didn’t occur there either.
They don’t take the familiar beliefs that have bent our reality and expand those positions to remind us to meet ourselves where we are in this moment.
They don’t encourage us to respond to our prior mistakes as being a part of the actions that are leading us to finding what will work.
They don’t help us to alter how we speak to ourselves especially about all of the emotions that we find ourselves lost in.
They don’t tell us how or when to implement different into our lives and yet pull at us to take the steps to do so anyways.
They don’t assist us in co-existing with the pages of fear that have prevented us from standing out all along.
They don’t provide proof that our movements will lead to the kind of happiness that we desire as we also have to imagine that they will.
And they don’t remind us that within the struggles that there have also been moments in which the right lighting, at times, has also been present in the darkness.
The more rooted that we can be with what we would do again, regardless of where we have been, the more we are able to let go of what is preventing us from creating space to untangle our hearts to feel the feels and to be happy as well.
Our travel companions make all the difference in whether or not our dreams feel out of reach so making sure that our stories contain the kind of allies that cultivate backing ourselves ensures that we are enough in the nowhere and the somewhere that exists along every one of our journeys.
Have the best day POSSIBLE for you. Love Always, Heavell
Our hearts argue that it doesn’t matter what place we find ourselves as long as we progress through the emotions that are stored within them but our desire for something different colors the language that our thoughts spend time speaking with.
In essence, as one part pulls us towards leaving, the other simultaneously needs us to stay, adding to the uncertainty that already exists in the type of stories where the messages have been that to be accurate in our lives we should be able to choose particular paths.
Existing in the kind of belief that we ought to know what to do with the debris makes us think that there is something flawed about ourselves, however it’s the perception of what we have defined as being right versus wrong on the inside that needs to be adjusted.
In our determination to get to some new location, we wouldn’t pay much attention to what we passed along the way but in a story about a forest, the value is in the details of every single tree including their struggles to flourish in both the darkness and light as a part of that woodland.
And for us, the immobility that we often experience cannot prevent the courage that keeps us going minute by minute just as our happiness cannot exclude the attention that sadness demands because those energies flow through our stories at their own speed, modifying the lighting as they go.
So, how would those exhausting emotions feel in this moment if our limiting ideas of them were to expand to allow the clarity that sometimes the most powerful that we are, exists in spaces that have been and still are difficult?
Don’t hold out for the things that are around the bend but instead reach now for relief from the discomfort that encourages us to believe that the particulars of what feels wrong can’t eventually become a part of the new details of what’s right in the place that we call home.
On ordinary days, trees fall down, change enfolds us despite our inability to know what to do and sometime warriors find new weeds to lay in, but then epic tales have never just been about what happens when we finally arrive at the flowers.
Have the best day POSSIBLE for you. Love Always, Heavell
Beneath the surface of our artwork is the disarray of the items that we grieve for and mixed in with those hues is the sorrow that we have lost the ability to make those previous events right.
Continuing to exist in the moments that we don’t want to look at and yet can’t help but get lost in is like closing our eyes and hoping that the past will just let us go even though it is our attachment that is standing in the way of its leaving.
But when did those troubling pieces begin overplaying their part so much so that the rains of the yesterdays have been able to collapse time in order to flow into today and also threaten to be the passion that overwhelms us in the tomorrows?
When did we stop poring over all of our details to become the kind of artists that don’t allow space for us to define for ourselves the different ways that happiness can co-occur with sadness along our un-chartered trails?
When did we forget that sometime warriors always move but don’t necessarily win every battle and dragons aren’t always the reason why fear is such a familiar term to us?
So many of us find ourselves interpreting our weight of the world as a reflection of failure since we don’t know how to validate the things that haven’t unfolded within the standards that we mistakenly believe success should show up as.
The intimate relationship that we have with our own stories, however, can’t be depicted nor judged through someone else’s journey simply because being brave in places where the light is limited is not the same as being courageous in the areas where the lighting options can be too bright.
Different doesn’t guarantee better just as the burden of being blue doesn’t mean that happiness has let go of us so if it were possible for our sadness to be gone, what do we think we would have more of?
On a day of rain and sun, leave space for what has been packed to flow through but also consent to there being room for that darkness to inspire getting to know how our own specific successes are also living within the very home that we do.
May is Mental Health Awareness month and while it isn’t always easy to ask others how they are truly doing, we can be aware that individual definitions of bravery encompass existing moment to moment in stories that don’t sound the same on the outside as they feel on the inside.
Have the best day POSSIBLE for you. Love Always, Heavell
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