Powered By Every Note #200

One of our wants is to feel safe or free from pain and it is not unreasonable to wish for that experience especially when it has the appearance of being the best way to never have to pick weeds again or to feel the things that hurt or climb difficult trails. However, as with the terms of any offer, there is a guarantee that there will always be both moments that we love and ones that we don’t in any kind of life. It’s what we breathe in from those things that determines how long we stay on the rollercoaster that leads to the repeating of the yesterdays or if we step off of our journeys’ in order to just smell our flowers. An important detail of our being secure is found in what the term trust holds for us but what happens when our inability to find safety in people, places and things leads to doubt in our beliefs especially about ourselves? Is that because we are impossible or is it possible that we have been looking in all the wrong places? Or how about whether or not we have fondness for ourselves and the role that it plays in our feeling free from pain? If we don’t carry love for ourselves in all of our moments, then can we ever really trust our safety? And if just those few designations are not clearly defined on the inside where they live in us, then how can we know we are safe with others when their terms of an offer and the value of them might differ from what we actually desire? So if our wish is really to be secure, and not just the hope of an easy life, how can we define being well for ourselves so that showing up in all the ways that we will encounter a so very heavell life will be far more important to us than the quantity of flowers or weeds that we hold or the fact and the opinion that someone else’s definition of beauty doesn’t look like us? During Ryan’s substance use, he felt more secure in the chaos of being lost in that particular hell than he had ever been in the disarray that lived within him and around him. Was that feeling and thought the results of the power of substances, the hiding of his pain, being a mess within a mess of his choosing, a failure to define clearly what being secure felt like, a lack of belief, too many weeds in his life or a combination of all of those things and more? The simplest thing to do would be to pick one, especially the first one, to blame but the real truth is that each and every one of those items is strong enough, separately, to cause falls again and again and together they make a life feel impossible to go through. Why is that? Every small and big thing that we experience in our lives, our behaviors and those of others, accumulates within us. Those particulars, whose values have been determined in the place that needs each of us most, bring fondness, confusion, strength, weakness, laughter that makes our stomachs hurt, tears and pain as it fills in our definitions of not only our words but also our perception of how life is. In other words we are powered by every note that are the results of what we have come up against and yet we often doubt our belief of that personal knowledge because others tell us their view is the only one to see. I am guilty of being that individual and by doing so I, in part, helped Ryan onto that rollercoaster ride with a sense of security, a green truth, that he would only experience it as I said. In the last year and a half of his life he expressed on a daily basis that he was sorry that he had lost his way on the trail, had not heard me sooner and thank you for not having given up on my belief in him. Every time he did that I felt grief because I, again in part, was the one who hadn’t heard him before that loud voice of his pain screamed through his substance use and I had not perceived that an important piece of feeling safe with others and ultimately within ourselves is found in the ability to stand together despite our differing views and feelings as a facilitator of well being i each of us. It’s difficult, though, to recognize that when we ourselves are also searching in the wrong places for the very things that live on the inside. As you go through life powered by every note, be loud in defining what safe, trust, fondness, beauty or whatever means to you and believe in your knowledge of those things. They are what make you the only you and while they will cause you to fall at times, they are also the series of movements that will get you through on any journey. It is all right not to be all right with every note that powers you but if you lean in to hear what you have to say, make sure you keep fondness for yourself as close as you do what hurts because your feeling safe or not is powered by what you believe about you so get comfortable with seeing all of you. Have the best day possible for you. Love Always, Heavell