March 13, 2006

This past weekend was my sister, Christine’s 24th birthday. It was a great celebration to be close to my family once again..the way we were when we were little children. I come from a very beautiful, tight knit family. My sister’s are two of the most beautiful women I know.and that humbles me. It humbled me as the eldest sister growing up in a family full of head strong, confident, outspoken girls and it humbles me today as a young woman in a family rich with internal beauty and life.

All of us have grown up with different flaws in our personalities – as the eldest girl, naturally I developed a more controlling personality. The obvious controlling factor is my passion for fitness. While passion is communicated as ‘love’ for an object – it is also internally communicated as a ‘pain’ for that same object. While it appears that I care very much about fitness, health and maintaining a ‘strong’ physique, in truth. who I’ve become, how I project myself, and the actions I take, are all physical manifestations of a deeper, burning, spiritual energy inside my soul.

I am admittedly sensitive to the control I have over my body and other physical elements in my life. But this weekend I was reminded the spiritual lesson that sometimes when people are upset about things or in love with certain things – it is only because that thing ‘represents’ or ‘symbolizes’ an emotional need of the soul. In the past, when I experienced binging episodes when I ate, or trained intensely for a competition, I was really trying to fill an emptiness, trying to feel like ‘something.’ All of these needs are originally genetic and were further exposed during my childhood environment.

I strongly believe ‘that feeling’ to be ‘something’ and feel ‘full’ is manifested in how people consume food, alcohol, drugs, jewelry, clothes, shoes…whatever it may be- all these physical things ‘represent’ a metaphysical need of the personal energy that created the force to want to attain those things.

In many ways, being around my family this weekend reminded me of the childhood insecurities I had when I was part of a family that yearned for connection but was forced to disconnect in order to emotionally survive. We became private warriors in our own way – and we are all facing battles today in our own lives.

Recently I been feeling challenged. A few weeks ago I mustered the courage to write down what I wanted out of life in the next 5 years – when I did that, I began turning the wheels of desire, this desiring energy created a ‘thirst’ for something that will take a long time to achieve. The only way to achieve these professional, personal and physical goals is to continuously create short term challenges, and execute with faith, discipline, focus and consistency.

In the next 5 years I want to become stronger. Asking God for strength is a double edged sword – for the only way to be stronger is to feel pain. Pain not only exists in the physical world, but more intimately in the mental world. Each day is a challenge to accurately measure short term progress by creating short term, achievable goals, if the balance to accomplish these feats are too great, my internal confidence becomes even more challenged. And right now it is. And right now while I feel weaker, I am simultaneously also getting stronger. When I wake tomorrow and choose to continue living, I know in choosing to get up and take action: whether it be manifested in what I eat, who I communicate with, when I get up – I unknowingly already won again.