NOW

I am convinced that the rapture of heaven can be found in the breathtaking simplicity of this moment. Laced into the essence of awareness is the presence of our Creator. My journey is to experience this knowing in every second as I step into the expansion of presence and the soul’s ascension through love.

Soul Hunting

I am on a soul retrieval mission.  An expedition to retrieve pieces of myself that were lent, gifted, or lost along the way.  I come armed with peace and understanding.  Sister’s Strength and Humility got my back while Grace and Awareness take my side.

Not all of these soul parts were consciously handed over and certainly not all of the consequences of doing so were understood.  It is a survival technique taught to us as children, socially accepted, and encouraged throughout life.  As I grow into myself I am horrified at how damaging this practice is and how it negates us from living a whole and authentic experience. 

What I gave away has haunted me for years and most of it was done in the name of love.  I didn’t know how to validate myself, so indirectly I asked others to do it for me.  Was I good enough, smart enough, pretty enough?  You tell me.  Please, tell me… and sweet Lord please, please say, yes?  I felt out of control, because I was.  I had given up rights to who I was and placed them in someone else’s hands, which meant all validation had to come from an external source.  I felt separated, overridden with anxiety and my world became a very dark and scary place. 

 I had just come out of an incredibly hard relationship where over the course of a few years my confidence was chiseled away.  The chipping happened slowly, and little by little I was dwindled down to a nub of self worth.  It started with a few snide marks here and there which moved into mockery.   There was always joking and the punch lines were always at my expense. His rebuttal was I just too sensitive and to lighten up.  So, I tried to laugh along and play it off.

After a year or so, the mockery turned into bitter cynicism and outright disapproval.  I was no longer laughing and his comments were most certainly not in jest.  During evenings of drunken rage the cynicism turned to words screamed with burning hatred and the verbal abuse previously thrown at me now came in physical punches.  This was sooooo not who I was and I knew the already bad relationship was getting scary, and fast.

After leaving and tentatively foraging out a new life for myself I felt tender and innocent.  I was unsure of who I was but I had hope in the person I could be.  I knew that this fledgling of captured courage, tucked gently in hope, was capable of great possibilities.  It was here, in this state of burgeoning self love that I attracted a wonderful, wonderful man with whom I fell desperately in love with. 

My new suitor was smart and handsome and radiated with charisma.  He was so full of everything that my last relationship was lacking that he glowed.  I remember one of our first dates underneath the stars; we laid on a blanket gazing into the night.  It was so vast and my love for him so potent it enveloped me as the darkness did the sky.  There were three shooting stars seen that evening and in them were the whispering Fates that my heart was about to break.

 We dated for a year and each time we were together I felt myself fall further into him.  The more I gave, the less he wanted.  It wasn’t that he was wrong in doing so, for the things that I gave him were not his to carry.  All of my self worth and identity was wrapped up in who this man thought I was.  If I was pretty, or smart, or classy, or quirky I only felt it when he saw me as that, and if that was his vision of me, than that is who I must portrait, and perfectly. 

 I wanted to be all women because I wasn’t sure which one he would prefer.  Did he prefer sweet or sassy?  The maiden or the witch ?  The yuppie or the hippy?  Dammit, was I to be the Virgin Mary or the whore?  In this flurried desperation I could feel my new found independence slipping away and when he left, he took the glimmer of my new self with him.  I left all that I knew in my previous relationship and the parts that I was discovering I had given away for someone else to take care of.

Post heartbreak, the sharpness of the pain dulled but the hollow aching was still there. I searched for ways to fill up the empty space and thought maybe if I could prove myself worthy or prove myself loveable I would find that thing that was missing.  If I could just control my life a little more I wouldn’t feel that feeling of being left behind.  If only I was a little bit prettier, or thinner, or sexier, or smarter than somebody wonderful might love me again; and this time that somebody might stay.   I was filled with if only’s. 

In my journey of saving myself I found that the only thing that could fill that gaping hole was me, and the only way to do it was to take back the very things that I had given up, myself.  But how, dangit?  Everyone says crap like that.  How do you go about claiming back the parts of yourself that were lost along the way?  It begins with a soul retrieval.