February 15, 2023

In the last several years practicing meditation, I learned how to still my mind. In that silence, I started to observe patterns in me and around me. I noticed repetitive words. I heard messages in people’s silence. I witnessed actions – consistency, contradictions and how we cared and uncared for things around us. I saw the monotonous existence I played daily…how we either live robotically reacting to the world or consciously acting with intention and purpose.

I saw myself.

I saw the little girl who despite being blessed with a loving family, felt neglected, alone and unloved. I saw a young child obsessively clean the house in order to create control in a chaotic home environment. I watched her meticulously pray every night for every person she loved and take turns sleeping with her various stuffed animals, even though her purple rabbit, MaryBlue, was her favorite. I held her as she cried in a cramped little closet and hid inside books at the library, trying to escape the endless bullying that defined the first half of her high school experience. I saw as she won crown after crown, validating her intelligence and beauty – yet still feeling empty. I watched her collapse over a toilet bowl as she manifested that emptiness through an eating disorder that coincided with a deeply spiritual experience in her twenties. I saw how she fell in love with men who matched her childhood wounds – all great but difficult men – one she chose to marry despite her initial fears and depression. She would bear three sons, build businesses and go insanely viral with her unwavering voice and controversial message about self-reflection.

She would wake the world up, just as she woke her own.

She realized she was a trigger. She stepped into center stadium and fought with her whole heart, loved with her whole being and lived with her whole essence because she knew, she wasn’t existing as herself alone…her public exposure and raw vulnerability was shared by every person who has ever felt sad, depressed, stressed, neglected, alone and unloved.

Like those she resonated with, she wanted to feel loved her whole life.

Just as a victim will find her abuser, or a leader who attracts followers, or perhaps a bully who knows exactly who to target….

My lack of self-love sought energy and experiences that enforced that truth.

I normalized unloving behaviors. I accepted not being prioritized. I gave knowing nothing will be reciprocated. I chose difficult, unavailable and challenging energy. I replayed and recreated life cycles that remind me daily that I’m not good enough to be intentionally loved with integrity, sincerity and vulnerability.

I continued to be hurt, distraught and anxious until I woke up, again.

15 months ago, when I sat in the ER with my mother, on our 8^th hour together…I watched as this sickly woman who sought love her whole life, hid her heart’s desires and helped so many people, instantly pass without warning in my presence. When she fell into her deepest slumber into another world, I woke up in this one.

In losing my greatest love, I faced my deepest fears as I lost myself in the abyss of seeking her energy and legacy in the spiritual world. I wrote her a letter the day I decided to let go of my husband. I cried to her as I dealt with anger and sadness symbolized through the weeping eczema on my face. I prayed to her yesterday as I stared blankly at my bedroom walls wondering how a woman with so much love inside and around her still felt so incredibly unloved…

My whole life, the love story I’ve been seeking, is the love I’m finding slowly inside myself. This endless supply to love with all my heart, then get hurt, get up, get hurt, get healed, get hurt and still give without question, hesitation or reciprocation – unconditional, that’s love. And that’s me.

This past year I’ve broken generational cycles. I stepped into unknown territory and am scared yet fearlessly fascinated by all the yet-to-comes.

As I continue my journey, I know I can endure because I was made to endure. I have endured.
I see and forgive others because I see and forgive myself, for we can only see what we feel inside our soul.
I connect with energy that knows my own because it is his own.
And as I awake, everyone will awake around me.

If I still have faith when I exit this world, I know I had lived my purpose.