2011 Status

In a strange headspace lately. This year has been more than crazy... surreal... very, very surreal. Is all this really happening? Trying to wrap my head around everything I have on my plate... how to pursue my passion while maintaining my health and balance, along with carrying a very demanding role at a company that has challenged every atom of my being for over seven years now. It has shoved and smushed my past in my face and has forced me to crash into the reality I ran from my entire life. It has helped me, through many obstacles and hurdles, to accept, appreciate and love the person I am today because of what I experienced yesterday. Because whether or not I believe it, or feel it, or even recognize it every waking moment, I know I'm bigger, better and stronger than I ever thought I could be. Because I kept fighting, somehow, despite how many times I wanted to give up. And the biggest, trying moment of all began last year - a harassment issue I'm now at the tail end of. A situation that rooted itself in my life without my knowledge or consent. My company made all the choices for me when I was out sick for six weeks. I had no choice. AGAIN. No way to avoid it. No rewind button. No pause. By the time I knew what was done, what I was blindly thrown in the middle of, when my company told me the actions they took... it already had a life of it's own. It was beyond my control... I just had to grab a life jacket and ride out the storm.

Perhaps that is why I find my myself struggling unknowingly lately. Feeling out of sorts when I haven't felt more solid, whole and at peace with my life in it's entirety, and myself as a human being actually living in this world - not just surviving it. Maybe this is why I'm doubting people in my life that make me happy... people that my heart trusts, but my head fears a different reality. It knows a different story in a book that I can't put down... because I'm still learning the language it's written in.

So... I have to write a new book.

I AM writing a new book.

Literally.

I'm learning the language of my past.

But that doesn't mean that I haven't moved on from it.

It just means that there are parts of my past that I will always reflect on, refer to and remember because they have challenged my heart and soul to such great lengths and depths that, without certain, specific, sacred and scary experiences, there would still be parts of me that would be missing, lost and damaged.

Without the reflection and memories, all I have is emptiness.

The more I reflect, the more I fill up those empty spaces to a higher level of understanding, acceptance and forgiveness.

And I'm pretty full these days... happily full. :)

But I'm beginning to feel like I need to make room... somehow... in some areas of my life...

I need to expand.

I can feel myself expanding.

My heart... my soul... they're getting bigger...

Is this the source of all my new growing pains?

It hurts to expand. Just as it hurts to retract... to reduce and shrink...

Minimizing what once held real and honest substance in your life hurts. How can it not? You adapted it into your life, and now you must un-adapt.

Just as it hurts to let go and walk away, it hurts to hang on tight and walk closer...

Moving forward is just as scary, painful and testing.

Whether it's a new person, a new situation, a new idea or a new possibility... any and all foreign territory is, well... foreign.

You are forced to learn a new land, a new language, a new system... there are new rules you don't know yet, but you know you must learn if you wish to grow and succeed.

Success and growth comes from one of two places:

1) Your willingness to recognize it exists.

2) Your willingness to recognize you have the power to make it possible.

Once you are fully aware of the existence and possibility of potential, you have to make a choice:

Walk towards? Or walk away?

BUT...

Both choices come with a cost.

YET...

Both choices come with a guarantee.

Whichever choice you make, it guarantees you will learn something about yourself, how you live your life, what makes you happy, and how you (continue to) pursue your ulimate happiness.

This is a guarantee: The fact that you have a choice in maintaining your happiness, despite who or what comes and goes.

But life?

Life is NOT guaranteed.

It can be here today, gone tomorrow...

So when you make a choice, when you feel the pain of a decision your head and heart are fighting, know this:

Happiness is your God given right.

But how happy you want to be is your choice.

Despite the sadness you didn't chose, your pursuit for happiness is what should, and will, lead you to infinite amounts of pleasure that will surely make your cup runneth over.

Maybe that's all that's happening lately.

My cup runneth over.

That's why it hurts.

Because, although loved ones are gone, and certain experiences I cannot erase, I can feel my heart and soul expanding and stretching and growing... and while it's all good in the hood, any change is uncomfortable until you learn how to adapt.

One of my favorite mantras, courtesy of a Client from my last job:

"Our hearts grow stronger in the broken places."

The more life we live, the bigger the chamber we need to hold it all within.

Life is fleeting... "FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH CARE"...

Experience is trying...

Lessons are inevitable...

I just have to remember that the lessons are always going to be coming. Whether it comes in the form of my rapist reappearing in my life, or a dear, old friend passing away unexpectedly, or even my health on the brink of ultimate disaster... the lessons are always going to be present.

And that's exactly what they are.

Presents.

Life just has them packaged and wrapped up a little more incognito so we receive them as they were meant to be received... for the sake of the lesson's purpose, and for the purpose of our ultimate happiness.

You've knocked me out, 2011.

But... like the old Japanese proverb goes:

"Fall seven times and stand up eight."

So cheers to not only standing up, but dancing all the way to 2012...