The Next Chapter

The beauty of this Chapter is simple. I have found myself again. The work that has gone into where I am was like crawling on my hands and knees up a mountain. I know I am no where near the top, but I am much higher than where I started. Standing on my own two feet seemed so daunting. I thought I needed a partner, someone to carry the troubles of this world with me. I have learned standing on my own isn’t as hard as I thought. Yes being married for 21 years and knowing you had someone who had your back was a blessing. Yet knowing that I can do life alone has brought this feeling of being powerful and in control of my own destiny.

So this chapter is all about being alone. Learning to accept me for who I am. Learning how to embrace living on my own, not having a person to come home and take care of. It has taken me months to adjust, to learn how to fight that anxiety of not focusing my attention on someone else. It has turned into me learning how to take care of me. It was so shocking to realize that I didn’t find myself worthy of that attention. Instead I wanted that love and attention to come from a man. When the reality is it has to come from me first. That was the hardest lesson learned yet, a lesson that is still in progress. Learning how to sit alone with my thoughts even though it feels so uncomfortable. It’s odd really to have the opposite problem of others. I love meditation, turning off thoughts and just breathing, yet that is not facing and healing the wounds that I need to. If I do not heal those wounds, I will forever be stuck in a place I don’t want to be. I want to grow, to learn to be authentically myself.

THE POWER OF SELFCARE……..

Self care was not what I thought it would be. I thought it was things like hygiene, getting your nails done, or buying yourself nice things. It isn’t that at all. Self care starts within. It is looking at ones self and accepting the good, the bad, and the ugly, and still loving who you are. That is self care. It’s going to therapy and not complaining about others but finding out why you react the way you do and if it seems extreme finding out why that is the reaction and just maybe fixing it. It is first connecting to yourself on a deeper level so that you can connect to others that way.

So this chapter is one I am ready to write, in my real voice, with my authentic self and feelings. Time to truly work on self love, and acceptance of my own inner beauty, because if I don’t believe and see it, then no one else will. One night while battling insomnia I came across this beautiful documentary about yoga. It was the story of how a famous photographer had surgery and woke up to the loss of the use of his hand. He was told that he would never use it again. He started the journey of learning about self healing and that lead him to yoga. He not only healed his hand, he began a multi year project taking some of the most breathtaking pictures of the many different practices of yoga. This one documentary has changed my life. It really is where my journey begins, at the end of his. It started my practice of yoga and meditation but also it has influenced my writing. I want my writing to connect to souls, to show that if we truly let go and let God, we can connect to our true beings in a much more meaningful way.

STEP ONE…GET OUT OF COMFORT ZONE

This is my first and biggest challenge. This weekend I am doing exactly that. There is this amazing event on Saturday that I am going to, and I have invited someone I hardly know to go along with me. She is someone I went to school with, someone I was not friends with. We will be going to a local state park to learn to take pictures of our beautiful night sky. I am nervous and excited, and all I have to remember is to be my authentic self. I also have to remember that I know nothing about taking night photos and most likely her camera will be much better than mine and in the end none of that matters. Because I am not in competition with her, I’m simply there to learn a new skill and be in the moment. Ever since I read about this event I feel connected to it. As if something really special is going to happen. Even if I don’t take the worlds most breathtaking photos, I just have a feeling it is going to be amazing. The old me would think that if it is going to be such an incredible event I would want people who I know and deeply love there. The truth is I am tired of the same old, my soul longs for new and to continue to grow. My soul doesn’t yearn for acceptance it longs for learning from others to deepen my understanding of humans. I believe that if we understand human souls then we can understand more about ourselves.