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Be open to whatever comes next

2019 basically said, “but did you die tho?

I saw this quote the other day and it made me laugh, not just because I thought it was funny but also because it totally resonated. “But did you die tho?” definitely summed up part of 2019 for me. You see, at the beginning of the year it felt like the rug was pulled out from underneath me. I questioned what and who I thought I knew and of course I questioned myself. While questioning is a good thing, there’s usually one big problem. We’re not really ready for the answer. The truth often isn’t that beautiful and so we consciously and unconsciously choose not to face it. When life becomes too painful, when we’re really hurting, our first inclination is to crawl under a rock, huddle up into a ball and close ourselves off from everyone and everything. I had done this many times in the past, but this time I remembered that when you ask questions, you also have to be ready and willing to receive the answers. You have to do the exact opposite of what comes naturally… you have to stay open. You have to open up even more than before. And so I did. And I didn’t die.

On January 1st 2019 I wrote and sent this message to my friends and family. “This year, not a New Year’s wish but instead a New Year’s reminder: Life doesn’t happen to you but FOR you! I’ve learned that growth lives on top of the hill we usually don’t want to climb and blessings are hidden in every experience, no matter what things look like. If only we are willing to breathe through feelings of unease and see what Life is really showing us. Trust that Life knows best. Your Soul has a plan. Have faith in the journey. So this new year, Let Life Happen For You. Life is always in the right anyway. Happy 2019.”

Now if I ever doubted the power of words, I don’t anymore. I wrote those words and Life, almost immediately, gave me the opportunity to stand in, on and for them. And so when the shit hit the fan, I made a conscious decision to open up completely and actually let life happen for me. I made a conscious decision to trust that whoever and whatever crossed my path was there because it or they were part of my journey. I decided to surrender to life and finally, really, actually trust that every experience and everyone had something to teach me. About life. About me. I decided to see and experience everyone and everything as part of my growth. I decided to consciously question and consciously open myself up to the truth, whatever that truth entailed. And I decided to share it… it’s how this blog page came to be. This is me sharing.

Looking back I can honestly say that I am grateful for it all. The good, the bad, the ugly and the brutal. Was I grateful right away? Hell no! I am way too human and definitely not that enlightened yet. I went through disbelief (like, is this seriously happening, is this for real??), overwhelming pain, anger, rage, grief, premature acceptance (yup, it’s when you think you’re over it but you’re really not), some more anger and disbelief (can’t believe this really happened), then the sadness and then finally true acceptance. But I consciously went through it all. I consciously decided to let myself feel everything. I didn’t act tough, I didn’t act like I wasn’t hurt. I talked about it with friends (thank you for holding space for me to do so) and I talked to God. I didn’t hide my pain from anyone. I screamed and cried when I had to and wasn’t concerned with how it looked or who would think what. And that made all the difference. I was open to fully experiencing (this not so fun part of) life and it enabled me to move through the process without obstacles, delays and detours.

A deep knowing settled. Everything that happened, needed to in order for me to be who and where I am today. My experiences offered me the opportunity to learn and practice self-love with lots of self-compassion. They showed me why, how and where I was holding on to things and people that didn’t serve me. They showed me what I was denying and what I was resisting. Questioning my experiences and myself also brought to light the stories I was telling myself and how they were shaping the life I was living. I gained knowledge and wisdom and grew more into myself. And I now understand deeply that all I’m ever in control of is the energy I bring and how I respond to what and who Life sends my way.

Do the best you can until you know better. And when you know better, do better. ~ Maya Angelou

I know better, so I consciously choose to do better. And because I sometimes wish I had chosen a more graceful way, a less painful way to learn and grow through life, I now seriously pay attention to whatever life is trying to tell me. I no longer choose to ignore what I know. I consciously listen to the whispers, I am aware of the nudges and I pay close attention to my intuition. I no longer talk myself in or out of things. Life leads, I follow.

So what are my reminders for the coming year? To live intentional. To choose consciously. To be more aware. To easily and gracefully release what’s not meant for me. To receive fully and gratefully what is. To love more. To trust in myself. To trust Life. To humbly shine as brightly as I can. To fearlessly or courageously stay open to whatever comes next. To let Life happen FOR me… Always.

 

 

 

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The other half

The other day I met up with an old friend who I hadn’t seen in a couple of years. We live on different continents so when we meet up, there’s a lot to catch up on. We talked about our kids and parenting and life in general in our respective ends of the world. At a certain point the topic of relationships came up. “Aren’t you lonely?”and “Don’t you miss having someone in your life?”, were some of the questions he asked. You see, I’ve been single for a couple of years now and the way society’s set up, that’s something that needs fixing. “Nope, I’m not lonely…like not at all. I’m not missing anyone right now. My life is actually really good”, I answered. He proceeded to ask what I’d want in a partner, so I named a few things and then said, “Oh, one thing that’s a really big turn off for me is a guy who wants me to pamper him. I’m just not the pampering type, you know?! I can’t ‘baby’ a grown man.” He looked at me with a hint of pity and said “You’re almost like a guy, life has made you hard.. you say you don’t need anyone and now you don’t want to take care of your man either?”. The words ‘hard’ and ‘like a guy’ sounded so absurd, I started to laugh but on the other hand I was fascinated about his choice of words. Did not being needy for someone and not wanting to ‘pamper’ a grown man, make me ‘hard’? Was being happy with your life and yourself, by yourself, considered a privilege reserved only for men? As we continued our conversation, he explained it would probably be challenging for me to find someone, because I was too whole and didn’t seem to be in need of another half, and for men it was key to feel wanted and needed.

“Looking for your other half”, referring to your partner as your “better half”, “becoming one” when you get married, are all sayings that perpetuate the idea that we need someone other than ourselves in our lives in order to be okay or to fully matter in society. Remember how Tom Cruise had everybody swooning when Jerry Maguire told Dorothy she completed him? Yesss, everybody including me. Now why is that? It’s because we are conditioned to look and want for someone to complete us. Finding someone and being in a relationship is the story we’re spoon-fed from the time we are born. That is the how-it’s-supposed-to-be-picture for all us. From the time we’re little we hear and read stories about princes coming to the rescue and about sweet innocent girls being swept off their feet and marrying their prince charming so they can live happily ever after. We’re conditioned to look for and find love in another and are taught to believe that without the other, happily ever after isn’t possible nor real, and that feeling complete all by yourself is weird, not normal and off in some way. So we look for love, often times desperately, jumping from one relationship to another. We get into relationships hoping to find love, hoping to be seen and valued, not realising that we can only find in relationships that which we bring to the relationship. This pertains to everything! We have to bring our love, our integrity, our worthiness, our commitment, our hope, our happiness, our dreams, our honesty, our patience, our understanding, our compassion and our responsibility with us, for it to be present in the relationship. Consequently, whatever we are lacking will also be lacking in the relationship. How could it be otherwise?

“I don’t trust people who don’t love themselves and yet tell me, ‘I love you.’ There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.” ~ Maya Angelou

Lets also not forget the fact that we unconsciously attract to us who we are. We attract or draw to us those who we’re energetically aligned with. We attract to us those who are going to mirror to us exactly who we are and where we are in life. Our partners will reflect back to us exactly those parts and aspects of ourselves that need to be made conscious, that need healing. And we, of course, will return the favour. If your issue is with low self-esteem, you will actually draw to you exactly those people and experiences that will bring up that low self-esteem. If your partner has a trust issue, you were attracted to allow him/her to work on that trust issues. The relationships we attract are for this very reason: to make us aware of, and give us an opportunity to work on our issues. Relationships are where we go in order to do the most learning, healing and growing. They are the most important of classrooms.

Now imagine the kinds of relationships we’re creating when we consider ourselves ‘half’ and haven’t taken the time to self-reflect, self-observe, self-question and self-examine. Imagine the kinds of relationships we’re creating when we have no self-awareness, no self-knowledge, no self-esteem, no self-worth, no self-confidence, no self-respect and no self-love. Imagine relationships in which all we seem to do is (unintentionally) hurt each other because we’re unconsciously driven by our wounds, patterns, conditioning, egoic needs, fears, insecurities and what not.

Hurt people, hurt people ~ Sandra D. Wilson

When you read it like that, it might sound gloomy, hopeless and maybe even too pessimistic, but how hard was it actually to imagine? Or was it even hard at all? I mean, isn’t this what we see all around us? Relationships that are in serious trouble? Or can you name a couple you consider to have the perfect relationship? Tell me, how many good, healthy, mature and grounded relationships have you witnessed in your life? For most people the answer would be none. The majority of relationships are unhealthy, dysfunctional and toxic in varying degrees, but because it’s the majority, unhealthy, dysfunctional and toxic have sadly enough become the norm. Let’s take jealousy for instance. It’s considered very normal when a man is jealous of his partner and it often even gets romanticised, because doesn’t it mean he really loves her? In reality, jealousy often has to do with feelings of low self-esteem, insecurity and inadequacy. People hide those feelings and try to control people so they don’t have to feel those feelings by exhibiting jealous behaviour. Another behaviour that’s considered normal is overextending oneself. More often than not this is an issue girls and women deal with. They overextend themselves, they give too much, they do too much, they exhaust themselves and are praised for giving their all, for being so good. In reality people who do this often do so because they struggle with feelings of unworthiness, low self-esteem and no self-love. They do so to please others, they do so in the hope of being seen, valued, loved and to feel like they matter.

Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person ~ Gloria Steinem

So, am I saying you have to be perfect before you think about getting into a relationship? Of course not, there is no such thing as perfect and certain lessons can only be learned within a relationship. But I am definitely saying you shouldn’t expect to experience or have that which wasn’t brought into the relationship in the first place. I am absolutely saying that in order to have a healthy relationship, you as well as your partner would have had to cultivate certain aspects, characteristics and qualities within yourselves first. You can’t expect to relate to another on a deep and intimate level when you don’t know how to relate to yourself. You can’t have a soul connection with someone who isn’t connected to his- or herself. You can’t have a relationship based on trust and honesty when you and/or your partner never took off your masks. Only that which we already have within ourselves, only that which we already are, can we bring with us and are we able to share with others. I’m also saying that maybe we ought to make sure that what get’s reflected back to us is something good. Maybe our best chance of having a conscious and healthy relationship is if we ourselves are as conscious and healthy as we can be, before we enter into a relationship. I’m saying that maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t go looking for your other half because when it comes to relationships, two halves don’t make a whole.

Like I said, we don’t have to be perfect, we don’t have to have it all already figured out, but relationships are the most important classrooms and I think that if we as students are better prepared for class, we might just have a real chance of finally and truly getting it right.

 

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The stories we tell

The stories we tell ourselves shape our lives. They shape who we believe we are, and this belief translates into who we become. ~ John Assaraf

My official job title is Life Coach and although my work concerns most aspects of life, the title never resonated with me. So before I started my practice I decided to call it something different. Awareness Coach is what I came up with. The word “awareness” felt like a better fit to me since I wasn’t actually helping my clients with their life, but rather supported them in becoming aware. Aware of themselves. You see self-awareness is key when it comes to EVERYTHING because like I always say, it’s really all about you. The fact is though that most of us aren’t aware of how we show up. We’re not at all conscious of the fears, beliefs, defences, childhood wounds and patterns that influence, motivate and drive us. We’re unaware of the roles we play, the masks we wear and the stories we tell ourselves. We tell so many stories and in so many different ways, it’s often difficult to know what’s real and what’s not. Let me illustrate this…

Once, after being in a relationship for just over a year, I remember thinking that I wished we could go back to the way things were when we first met. I wanted to go back to the first couple of months when everything was so amazing. Of course I was wishing that because things weren’t amazing anymore, things were actually pretty shitty and so I idealised those first months. I idealised them just like I had idealised the person I was in a relationship with. And when things are idealised, they aren’t real. They’re part of a fantasy, they’re part of the story you’re telling yourself. 

In reality I wanted to go back to a time when most people consciously or unconsciously hide parts of themselves because they’re busy trying to impress you and want to be on their best behaviour. I was wishing to go back to a time when I chose not see certain things and ignore red flags because they didn’t fit the picture in my mind. But eventually we all show up as ourselves. Our flawed, scared, insecure selves. And so did he and when he did, he didn’t fit the fantasy I had built around him. Who he was showing up as did not at all fit in the story of who I saw myself growing old with. But like a lot of you, I resisted the reality of him and kept living the story, not with the real him but with my fantasy about him. I knew that to accept the real him would mean I’d have to let go of the story, I’d have to let go of the relationship and I didn’t want that. So although the real him didn’t fit my story, didn’t fit in with what I wanted and needed, I held on and kept “working on the relationship”. That’s what I told myself anyway. You see, working on relationships can also be part of a story we tell ourselves. We convince ourselves that we’re working on relationships when in reality all we’re trying to do is to get reality to be something different. We’re trying to get people to be someone other than they are, which is one of the reasons why our relationships are the state they’re in. We’re in fantasy relationships with fantasy partners. We hold on to the fantasy of who we want them to be and so they disappoint us and they’ll keep disappointing us because reality can never compete with a fantasy. 

And still we stay and we tell ourselves beautiful stories about why we stay and as the years go by, still more stories arise. You’ll hear yourself telling stories about how you can’t believe some of the things they did. It will always be about what they said, did or are doing wrong because the stories we tell depend on the wrongness of others. Have you ever heard someone share a story with you in which they themselves were the villain? Of course, we’ll admit to being a little wrong but our wrongness can almost always be explained by some bigger wrong someone else did to us. Our wrongdoings are acceptable, excusable, forgivable and often even justified. Yes, in our story we’re the hero, often enough a victimised hero but a hero nonetheless. In our stories we’re always on the right side of things. We’re the good people and for us to be able to be good, the other has to be bad. 

If we were to take a closer look, we would probably see how we’re projecting our own wrongness onto them because more often than not we blame others for exactly that which we’re doing to ourselves. But when you’re good people, when you’re the hero in your story, it’s not you, of course, who should be looking in the mirror. It’s them. Why would you, when you’ve always done your best, when you were always honest and true, when you tried to work things out, when you gave all you got. Or so your story goes. 

The above is just one type of story, but I could go on and on about the stories we tell ourselves and how they become the lives we live. I could write about the I am not (good-smart-strong) enough stories, the I am too much stories, the life is hard stories, the everyone is against me stories, the no one loves/likes/wants me stories, the I can’t do this stories, the I don’t have a choice stories, the I don’t care stories, the someday stories… you name it. We tell stories. It’s what we do. All the time. We don’t just tell stories to ourselves but to others too. And we get them to agree with and validate our stories and they get us to agree with and validate theirs or at least that’s the story they choose to believe.  

When we let go of the stories we tell about ourselves, to ourselves, we free ourselves up to actually act and fail and grow ~ Mark Manson

Now what’s the harm in living inside your own story where you’re good people? Nothing, if the story is based on the truth of who you are. Nothing, if your story serves, empowers and uplifts you and those around you. But unfortunately those are not the stories we usually tell. Most of us tell stories based on our fears, fantasies and the roles we think we have to play. This might look good on the surface and a lot of people live their whole life inside their story – even questioning reality when it comes knocking – but eventually it leads to suffering, silent or otherwise. Sticking to these stories prevents us from being real, from seeing and accepting others for who they truly are and it prevents us from having relationships based on honesty and trust with people we don’t have to perform for. It has us living make-believe lives with pretend me’s and fantasy you’s instead of living in the here and now with all of us showing up as our wonderfully flawed and vulnerable human selves. 

So yes, awareness. Self-awareness. Become aware of the stories you tell and ultimately the stories you live. It’s key, but only if you’re looking to live life true to yourself, only if you want an authentic life built on authentic relationships with people who are authentically themselves.

 

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Let go

We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. ~ Joseph Cambell

My mind and heart were racing while I took out my laptop. I felt disappointed and sad and angry at the same time. I sat on the bed and clicked on compose. I was going to write him an email to explain for the umpteenth time how he had hurt me, how I couldn’t believe he had done it again, how I didn’t understand how someone who claimed to love me repeatedly chose to do exactly those things he knew would hurt me. And I knew he knew it would hurt me, because we had had many talks, conversations, arguments and fights about the very thing he had done yet again. Just as I was about to start typing, something inside of me asked “So, what are you gonna write exactly? What is it that you can say now that you haven’t said a thousand times before? What is it that you think he doesn’t get?”. My hands literally froze and I just sat there for a few minutes staring at the empty new message. WHAT EXACTLY WAS I GOING TO WRITE?? It was in that moment that I finally got it…

Suffering is not holding you. You are holding suffering. When you become good at the art of letting sufferings go, then you’ll come to realize how unnecessary it was for you to drag those burdens around with you. You’ll see that no one else other than you was responsible. ~ Osho

Letting go. We all struggle with it. You’d think that letting go of people and relationships that don’t serve us, sometimes even really hurt us, would be easy. I mean if something or someone isn’t good for you, you let go right?! Just common sense, wouldn’t you say? If only it were that simple, but for most of us it just isn’t. Most of us humans actually have a very hard time letting go and more often than not do the exact opposite … we hold on tighter and eventually hurt ourselves even more. We don’t just hold on to people and relationships that are no good for us, we also hold on to how we think things should’ve been, we hold on to painful pasts, anger, resentment, failure, frustration, unrealistic expectations, and the list goes on and on. Funny thing is that we’re often unaware of the fact that we’re holding on. It’s usually in hindsight that we realize that that’s what we were doing, but while we’re doing it we’re under the illusion that we’re working things out or that we’re working on things. Sound familiar? The question is WHY? Why do we do this?

Of course we can make up as many reasons and excuses as we want. Everybody will have their own story about why, but what I’ve found is that if we’re willing to tell the truth, our stories, our reasons, our excuses will boil down to a few things: 1) in one way or another we get a pay off, 2) it’s familiar and familiar is clear and comfortable, and last but definitely not least 3) our non-acceptance or denial of what is.

So we get a pay off from holding on. Yes really… a pay off. A hard pill to swallow for most at first, but when you get down to the nitty gritty of the matter that’s what you’ll find. We really get something out of holding on to whatever’s not good for us. It can be that we get to be right when they’re wrong, we get to feel justified in our anger, we get to act out, we get to blame others, we get to feel superior or we get to be the victim, we get to ‘save or fix’ people, we get to feel sorry for ourselves, we get to have excuses for why we’re not exactly where we’d want to be in life, we get to not be alone, we get to not be a failure, you name it. By holding on to things that are not good for us, we actually get to not take full responsibility for who we are, for how we’re behaving and the state our life is in. Now don’t get me wrong, this does not at all mean that people don’t lie, cheat, steal, abandon, manipulate, take advantage of and far worse, but if someone gets to do these things more than once, we’ve actually unconsciously given them permission to. And we do this because we get something out of it. It’s a part of ourselves most of us don’t want to acknowledge, but whether we acknowledge it or not, our pay off is a big part of the reason so many of us don’t or can’t let go and are (stuck) in situations and relationships that really, seriously and absolutely do not serve us.

We’d also rather hold on than let go because however hurtful or painful holding on is, it’s still familiar and familiar is comfortable. We humans love the familiar, we love comfort and we’re comfortable with that which we already know, even when that is hurting us. For some reason it’s hard for us to consider that the unknown might be better than the familiar. For some reason we always go straight to the worst case scenario when we think about the unknown. So we hold on because even if it hurts, the unknown might hurt even worse. People even say things like “you already know what you’ve got, but you don’t know what you’re gonna get”. The unknown, the unfamiliar makes us anxious, uncomfortable and fearful. We want better but we fear change. We fear change because change means loss of what’s familiar. Change is uncertain and risky. We love to think we’re in control and we can’t control uncertainty. Change will also require us to do things we haven’t done and be a version of ourselves we haven’t dared to even think about. So the question then becomes one of how badly do you want better? How badly do you want to get out of that so called familiar but unhappy, unfulfilling and unsatisfying comfort zone and move on and forward? And before you answer, maybe consider that holding on to whatever you’ve got right now, may be the very reason you don’t have something better.

And then there’s our acceptance of what is or rather the lack thereof. We hold on because we can’t accept what is. When we can’t accept the reality of a situation, we hold on to the illusion or the hope of what it might someday be. When we can’t accept who someone truly is, even when they show us who they really are time and time again, we still hold on to the wish they might someday change or better yet, change for us. We can’t, don’t want to or don’t know how to accept what is and so we fight, resist, avoid or deny it by holding on to what we think, feel or want the thing, the relationship or that someone to be. We hold on to the could be’s, should be’s and would be’s instead of the what is. We have pictures in our minds of how we think things are supposed to be, of who we think we’re supposed to be, of where in life we’re supposed to be and we fight to keep those pictures in tact even if that means that we deny ourselves. We engage in all kinds of craziness just to hold on to those beautiful and perfect fantasies. We’d rather argue with reality than accept it. The problem is when arguing with reality, we’re sure to lose.

In the proces of letting go you will lose many things from the past, but you will find yourself. ~ Deepak Chopra

To be honest, letting go of people, dreams, plans, relationships we have a deep emotional attachment to, requires some work of course. It’s an internal process that involves some serious soul-searching, self-observation, self-questioning and self-love. Yes, self-love too because letting go is not something you do out of anger or spite or revenge. True letting go of that which doesn’t serve you is one of the most loving things you can do. Letting go then becomes about figuring out who you are and who you’re not, what you want and don’t want, what’s true for you and what’s not and what exactly you’re actually attached to. It’s only when we’re able to let go of our pictures, projections, expectations, attachments, pay offs, fears, insecurities and egoic needs, that we can truly see ourselves and others. It’s only then that we can have real, authentic and wholesome relationships to begin with.

So if you’ve heard yourself saying or thinking that you sound like a broken record, if you’ve been unhappy with a certain situation for a while now, if you’ve been getting upset about the same things year in year out, if you’ve been disappointed, hurt, betrayed, let down, lied to by the same person/people over and over again, it’s probably time for you to finally get it too. Get that it’s not about the thing, the relationship or the other person. Nope, it’s all about you boo. Ask yourself why and what exactly you’re holding on to? What is your pay off, what are you afraid of and what are you denying, resisting or avoiding? What is that you are not willing to accept? Tough questions I know, but awareness is key and we all need to become more aware of our own stuff, our own bullshit to be exact, in order to let go of the things not meant for us ... It’s the first step towards better.

 

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Love Thyself

“And if I asked you to name all the things you love, how long would it take for you to name yourself?”

I had read quotes about self-love many, many times before. They never spoke to me that much. I remember how in my twenties Louise Hay was always talking about how important it is to love yourself, all of you. I remember the affirmations you were supposed to do in front of the mirror. I usually skipped those and if I did do them, I could never really get into it, if you know what I mean. In my mind loving myself was never a thing I needed to work on. I knew my worth. I had self-respect. I was confident in who I was and what I could do. Surely that meant that I loved myself, so no need to fix anything if nothing was broken.

It was only when depression hit me like a ton of bricks and I was on my knees in the pitch dark bottom of what felt like a bottomless pit, because I’d sink deeper and deeper every time I thought it wasn’t possible to, that one day I realized it. It wasn’t a big aha-moment. It was more of a whisper. My soul whispered it to me so softly. I heard it somewhere in the back of my mind but didn’t pay much attention to it. It did not register until the words came out of my mouth during a conversation I had with a cousin of mine. I said it out loud: “I don’t think I love myself. I honestly think I have no love for myself.” The truth and depth of what this meant were not yet clear to me but I had uncovered a secret so big and so dark even I didn’t know I was keeping it.

In the weeks after it slowly dawned on me. All this time I had confused being self-confident and having self-esteem with self-love. For as long as I can remember I always considered myself smart, strong, and capable. But did I love myself? What did loving myself look like, what did that feel like? The fact that I was asking myself these questions, and the fact that I did not readily know how to answer them, made it obvious I had no clue what self-love even meant. The crazy thing is we all sing along to love songs, watch romantic movies, read stories and poetry about love so we all know about love in relation to others but rarely do songs, movies, novels and poetry cover the concept of love in relation to oneself.

So how does one love oneself? How was I supposed to love myself? How?? The only way I could think of to get closer to the answer was to examine the way I loved others. My two children immediately came to mind. I knew I loved them. For them I felt that pure, unconditional and forever kind of love that wasn’t just a feeling but rather a verb, it was a way of being, a way of doing. I loved them by being as patient, kind, compassionate, understanding, uplifting, and nurturing as I could possibly be. Loving them meant keeping them in check when necessary and giving them the opportunity to do better. It meant accepting who they are without wanting them to be different, supporting them in their growth, guiding them, holding them, being proud of them, showing up, being there and doing my best. It also meant always staying open to learning new ways of parenting and becoming better for them and last but not least making sure they knew that nothing they ever did could make me stop loving them. Love was what I did. Love was who I was with and for them.

This beautiful awareness made it utterly and painfully clear that I wasn’t loving towards myself at all, and I couldn’t remember if I ever had been. In all honesty I had actually been pretty hard on myself. I was never satisfied with what I did or who I was. I always felt I could do more or be better, and so I never patted myself on the back or told myself I’d done a good job. Pride in my accomplishments was never there because whatever I did, it wasn’t that extraordinary, and therefor no need to make a fuss about nothing. I held myself to mistakes I made and found it hard to be understanding and kind and compassionate towards myself. Oooh yes, I was in dire need of some serious self-lovin!

But if you know what depression looks like, what it actually means… you know that having insights doesn’t do the job right away. Even though I intellectually grasped that for life to be good again I needed to (among other things) learn to love myself, it still took that fake bottom of the bottomless pit I was in to collapse even further before I eventually made a real and serious attempt to give myself that love I so freely and effortlessly gave to my children. To be honest, I did it when I had no other choice. Literally. The depression had to suck almost all the life energy out of me for me to succumb to the fact that learning to love myself for myself was the only way out.

And that’s also the thing, you see loving yourself has nothing to do with anyone but you. You don’t do it for your children, you don’t do it for your partner or your family, you do it for you. You do it because you are worthy of your own love.

You do it by choosing you. And so I chose me. All of me. And I get to choose me over and over again. I choose to forgive myself but also hold myself accountable. I choose to take responsibility for me. I choose to use discernment in all areas of my life, to trust and honour my intuition, to set boundaries and guard them. I choose to consciously live by my own standards and values, to be intentional about the choices I make. I choose to do my best to be OK when everything’s not OK, to give myself permission to feel whatever I am feeling and then give myself permission to feel better. I choose to hold space for myself when the going gets tough, to take time to relax, to make healthier choices. I choose to say yes when I mean yes and no when I mean no. I choose to let go of that which is not mine to carry and to release beliefs, thoughts, things and people that do not serve me.

Now just to be clear, self-love and choosing you isn’t about putting yourself first at the expense of others. It’s not about being selfish and arrogant. It’s not about thinking you’re better than anybody else or putting others down and it’s not about ‘only looking out for number one’. To me self-love is about seeing yourself for who you truly are. It’s about accepting your dark sides while embracing your light. It’s about being committed to growth, about knowing your worth regardless of status, achievements or material possessions. It’s about knowing who you are regardless of what anybody else thinks. It’s about valuing yourself even when others don’t. It’s about teaching people how to treat you by how you treat yourself. It’s about being kind and compassionate with yourself. It’s about the ability to receive as well as to give and doing both equally.

It’s not easy. It’s not. It really isn’t. It’s an every-single-day-never-ending-kinda-process because it just doesn’t come naturally to me. I have to keep choosing myself even when it’s hard and I’m scared and don’t have the strength and energy to, and even when I know that choosing me, that loving me, will cost me relationships and spaces and circles. Like I said, it’s not easy but Self-Love is the foundation for one of the most important relationships you will ever have… the relationship with yourself. And the relationship you have with yourself is the foundation for all other relationships. So maybe give it a try. You’re worth it!

 

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Embrace the glorious mess that you are

 

Why does life test us like this? Why do shitty things happen? When am I going to be done? Haven’t I learned enough lessons? When am I finally gonna be in control of my life? Am I ever gonna get to the end of the tunnel?

If you and your friends talk about life, some of these questions must’ve surely come up. I too used to wonder when the time would come when I’d have it all under control. I used to believe that if only I overcame such and such obstacles, if I only learned so and so, I’d get to that place where life would just be peachy. I was okay with “knowing” that there would always be minor upsets because that was just life. The main thing was that someday, somehow, if I did the work and passed all my tests, I would finally get to live my happily ever after.

I knew from early on that I was responsible for me. If I wanted something I never asked for it, instead I worked for it. I remember in my teens gaining a few pounds I wasn’t happy with, so I started dieting and working out in my room daily. I decided I needed to constantly “see” where I was headed so I glued pictures of girls that looked the way I wanted to on the walls in my room. Looking back that was me using visualisation to create a new reality for myself when I didn’t even know the word existed. I started watching the Oprah Winfrey show every day from the time I was eighteen and took notes (yup, seriously). I started on the self help/spiritual path in my early twenties beginning with the affirmations of miss Louise Hay. The books followed quickly and soon I was reading Napoleon Hill, Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Neale Donald Walsh, Gary Zukav, Gregg Braden, Caroline Myss, Eckhart Tolle and so on. Those books opened me up to a whole new way of thinking, a whole new view on life and I loved it. So much so that in my early thirties I decided to share all that good stuff with others by opening a cute little bookstore with only 2 sections: Self-help/Psychology and Spirituality/Religion. I knew all the books so I was your go to person if you needed something helpful or inspiring to read. The store became a meeting place for like minded souls where also talks and workshops were held. I was doing the work and sharing what I learned. But just like there was always some new book coming out so I’d have more to read, more knowledge to absorb, more depth to dive in to, life also always seemed to throw more lessons at me. New tests and lessons were never far up the road. I took my tests in stride though. Always asking myself in every situation what it was I needed to learn from it. Always holding up a mirror, reflecting on what my contribution was to whatever had manifested. This, I believed, was the path towards a life void of the big ugly stuff and mostly filled with joy, laughter and happiness.

For years I accepted that I was a student and I enjoyed being one. Nothing fulfilled me more than soaking up all that knowledge and wisdom. I learned and unlearned a lot. My view of God evolved into a totally different one over the years. Growing up going to an all girls Catholic school with a nunnery still on the premises and going to church regularly had left me with a great fear of this big white man somewhere up above the clouds. Instead I got to know a God of love, not judgement. A God that did not punish. God was Love. Period. All of this did not mean my life was all roses, but I was doing OK professionally, was financially independent, had a cute little apartment and a beautiful little boy and everything else I went through I took as a lesson I needed to learn.

And then in my mid thirties my happily ever after finally came. Life was finally perfect. Or so I thought. The thing is that I, like a lot of you, had not really taken into account that “And the they lived happily ever after. The End.” was actually the beginning. Whatever the case, I eagerly started my happily ever after with glittery rose coloured glasses on, high on life and looking forward to every new day. But as we all now know high’s don’t last. And neither did mine. I fairly quickly got smashed into the hard concrete below my fluffy pink cloud and I just layed there not understanding why and what was happening. Had I not done the work? Had I not done everything I was supposed to? My ego felt scammed and cheated on by life itself. All of a sudden nothing made sense, absolutely nothing and life continued to not make sense for a while. Confusion, hurt, anger, sadness, shame and blame were all I knew. Shame especially had me wearing masks. Those masks that say you’re fine and keep you keeping on when you’re actually wishing you could crawl into a deep dark hole and not come out. Eventually that deep dark hole became my reality and so did my wish to not come out. Burnout. Depression. High blood pressure. Stress related seizures. The stuff that was going inside my mind was showing up in real life. I was living my thoughts.

You know how they say happiness is a choice? That no one and no-thing can make you happy unless you decide to be happy? Yeah, well it’s true. And the same goes for healing your life. It’s a choice, it really is a decision you make. It’s a simple one but not an easy one because it takes work, it takes willingness, readiness and commitment. It requires the ability to see and tell the truth of who and what you are being. One day I finally remembered that and I made the choice to do whatever it took to grow through what I was going through. I decided I was done with the craziness, I was ready to let the light in and slowly but surely I started to remember it all. I remembered I was the ONLY one responsible for whatever was going on in my life. I remembered that whatever the present moment contained, I had to accept it as if I had chosen it. I remembered that in life I would experience whatever was most helpful for the evolution of my consciousness. I remembered to ask again and again what it was that this was here to teach me. I remembered that I could lose what I had but never who I was. I remembered that my soul knew how to heal itself and that all I had to do was quiet my mind. I remembered …

And so I set out on a new journey. Inward. A journey during which I went from broken to broken open. Open to again learn and unlearn even more than ever before. A journey I now understand will not end until it’s the end. So I remind myself often that there is no graduation. That this is happily ever after. That there will always be heartaches and headaches and bumps in the road and stumbles and setbacks and defeats and disappointments, big and small. I remind myself again and again, and again that this is life and life can and will and does get messy and ugly and even brutal sometimes, all in order for us to peel off the layers to un-become all but our essence. LOVE. And because no one goes through this journey feeling like a rockstar all the time or looking like one for that matter, I remind myself to just lovingly embrace the big glorious mess I am.

 

 

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Do what you fear

 

We need to talk about our fears. We really have to. We all have fears, but we rarely feel comfortable admitting we do. We’re so clever at hiding them even from ourselves, that most of us often don’t even know when it’s fear talking. Did you know that fear more often than not dictates our decisions?

Although fear is a powerful and primitive emotion that was critical to the survival of our ancestors, it now seems like fear is affecting modern day (wo)man more than it did our cave(wo)man ancestors. The fears most of us are now experiencing are not life threatening, but left denied, hidden and unattended to, they can have an extremely negative impact on the way we live our lives. I’m talking about the fear of failure, the fear of disappointing others or being disappointed by others, of not being (good) enough, of being alone, of not being liked, of being judged, and so on. The problem is that these fears are easily hidden by the masks we put on and can go unrecognised for a very long time. I see it all around me, I see it in my clients, not only because it’s my job to but because I once found only fear right where I thought I was….

It was November and for most of my life that meant going to work in cold, rainy and windy weather, cozy evenings at home, watching the trees become bare and hearing the raindrops against the window. Living in South America, November has been warm and sunny with the occasional rain shower, not much unlike the rest of the year. It was weird at first to live in a place where the seasons don’t change.

It had been a few Novembers living in South America and even though the weather doesn’t change, my life here had gone through many seasons already. The end of the year was near and that, naturally, had me reflecting. So much had happened that past year and if I were to write a book about it, the title would be “inward” or “the work” or something along those lines.

Without planning it that way, that year had been a giant mirror, a non-stop journey into self, a deep fall into pitiless darkness where light is not found at the end of the tunnel, but rather buried deep within. At the same time it was a lesson in letting go, an exercise in forgiveness and an education in love.

While reflecting on all the inner-work I had done, the thing that struck me the most was the realisation that FEAR had recently played a way more significant role in my life than I would’ve ever wanted to admit to. And not just that year, but the past couple of years. Fear? Me? Moi? The girl, the woman who had always lived by “better an oops than a what if”? Yes, that one. Me! It still gives me an uneasy feeling to write this because I never pictured myself that way, but it is the truth and you know what they say about the truth: it will set you free. And it has.

Fear was everywhere though; it had found it’s way into my bloodstream and infected most areas of my life. The thing is fear hides itself well in stories, reasons and excuses. All very logical and acceptable but stories and reasons and excuses nonetheless. You see I had built a wall around my heart because I was not about to be anybody’s fool; that’s the story I told myself anyway. The truth was I was so afraid to feel like a fool, so terrified of being hurt, I couldn’t allow love in. Professionally I was the biggest perfectionist; I would always overdo it, spend way too much time on the smallest details and drive myself crazy. Read: I was scared of not being good enough, I was scared of failure. I could go on and on and on. Fear had snuck it’s way into my story and unbeknownst to me had become the main character. It snuck in so quietly I didn’t even notice that the “me” I knew was no longer calling the shots. I was never fearless, but I had always been brave. I’d be scared to jump just like everybody else, but I would do it anyway. I believed I’d either fly, land on solid ground or check off another lesson learned. That’s how I had always lived my life. And then all of a sudden all there was left was a me that didn’t even know how to put one foot in front of the other.

You see fear keeps us stuck. Fear only lets us see the downside. It doesn’t let us think things through. It makes us avoid things. When fear consumes us, we don’t actually choose our paths, our paths are chosen for us. Fear constricts rather than expands who we are. When fear is present, there is no room for that small still voice inside. All we can hear are the spiraling thoughts racing through our minds so gut feelings are impossible to recognise.

The great thing is one can only fool oneself for so long, because there’s another beautiful element to the truth and that is it always comes to light. Even though I wasn’t conscious of fear’s overtake for a while, my soul knew and rebelled until I had no choice but to look fear in the eyes. And that’s really the only way to do it. We break the chains that bind by doing everything in spite of our fears. The path was intense and gruelling at times, but it was mine and I chose to walk it.

The work is never done so some fear will always be present but it no longer plays the lead role in this story. The “me” I once knew slowly but surely started to re-emerge. And with a better and deeper awareness of who I am I decided to be brave again. I made myself a promise back then to face life like the spiritually grounded badass warrior I am. So every now and then I jump, because who knows… I just might fly.

Moral of this true story: be willing in spite of your fears, be ready to let the truth of who you are being come to light, take ownership, do the work required, do it some more, and some more and before you know it, you are living life like the badass you really are!

 

 

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A Story not Shared does not Serve

 

I can’t tell you how many times someone shared their story with me or how many times I’ve read a book, an article, a social media post, or a quote that exactly put into words what I was feeling or going through at the time. Whether it was related to love, work, family, friendships, motherhood, it was comforting to know that someone somewhere had dealt with the same issue or problem, and had gotten through it. And now, by them sharing their story, their experience, their insights, I could more easily process, learn, gain and grow from mine.

So this is me returning the favour by sharing some of the good, the bad, the ugly, the deep and the beautiful. This is me sharing what I’ve learned. Because remember, my story is yours and yours is mine. It’s ours, because we’re all in this together. This human experience. This journey. This becoming.

My hope is that these stories make you think, make you feel, help you see things form a different perspective, inspire you, motivate you and if not, I hope they at least leave you feeling comforted knowing that you too are not alone. My hope is that these stories serve you in whatever way you need.

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