A number of times this week I’ve picked up on messages about embracing and valuing our uniqueness. When I was listening to a meditation that I hadn’t heard in a few years, there were some words in there that leap out as a great reminder:

“You are a person of value. There is no one else ever like you. Focus on that unique set of qualities that makes you an individual.

You are valuable in so many ways, for example, in how you do things, how you help others, and say things that make people smile. People remember, and when people feel good about you and what you bring, they seek out your uniqueness.

When you are enjoying yourself it makes it so much easier for others to enjoy being with you. Doors open so easily when people like you, the more attractive you feel on the inside the more you attract on the outside.”

It’s too easy, I find, to beat myself up instead of appreciating who I am; especially when I’m fully embracing growth and healing. Like this morning when I was at the local pool, as I was swimming along I could hear myself making all sorts of inane and ridiculous judgments about others’ motives for being there (who I don’t even know) and then started judging myself for being judgy.

So then this idea of judgment and needing to be more compassionate with myself and others started playing on a loop in my head, it was absurd really. Luckily I recognised that, the voice in my head wasn’t even mine (it was my mother’s from long ago) so I decided to go back to enjoying my swim.

Watching the sun dance on the bottom of the pool like healthy neurons firing along the length of a spine, and the light playing through the burst of air bubbles as I turned at the end of each length, was a lot more fun. It brought me back to the present moment and a huge feeling of gratitude.

Earlier in the week I had also been listening to another of Oprah’s SuperSoul Sessions with an exuberant young pastor, John Gray. He was talking about the bridge, an expression that caught my attention as it’s one I use myself. He talked about the bridge as a place to meet and recognise each other as people of equal value regardless of our race, gender, beliefs or anything else, and to embrace and celebrate our unique qualities.

I use the same term to describe those of us who are awakening to the reactions and reverberations that our thoughts and feelings have, and who are consciously and deliberately evolving - thus bridging - to a new, more conscious, world. What we are both talking about though is the same thing described differently; I loved his vision of it.

Valuing my uniqueness, though, means knowing what that is exactly. This gave me pause for thought.

There are lots of articles and books out there to help with this process (try Googling value your uniqueness as a starting point). One that helps me most is the reminder that our uniqueness is almost always a combination of small things that weave together uniquely rather than just one unique quality.

I like this because my young daughter was spontaneously telling me tonight that she can describe her dad easily. Given that I was musing this topic of uniqueness, after she had described my partner, I asked her how she would describe me; her reply “that is a bit trickier”.

She started to give it a go though and I was pleasantly surprised by some of the things she mentioned, like being kind and sometimes funny (huge sigh of relief on the parenting front). As I mentioned above, like a lot of people I can be pretty hard on myself, so it makes good sense to get feedback from others about the qualities they appreciate about you the most.

With the ball rolling I decided to put it out there and ask a couple of close confidantes their views, while also telling them the top two or three things I value about my friendship with them. I was blown away by the positive response I got, also noticing how many of the things we value and admire about each other are the same.

This reminded me of another technique to uncover our value, to list the things you admire and value in others, because you most likely have those qualities also (remember Annette’s Noontil’s advice that we only see in others what we have in ourselves?) It was interesting for me to notice some of the negative self talk in my head playing the feedback down, my “I’m not good enough” voice.

There are also a whole load of other techniques out there like listing the things you are passionate about, your achievements, reflecting on your best traits and qualities. The important thing is to be able to define your uniqueness, own and value it.

As always, simple but not necessarily easy.

One of the tasks I used to hate when I worked for other people was pulling together a resume. However, it was also extremely valuable because it crystallized all my previous efforts, successes and strengths. I think this is the same, writing down my personal uniqueness and validating it with examples, with the same painstaking care I used to take with a resume, is valuable.

It’s valuable because believing that I am valuable or unique is not always easy, so seeing the evidence helps to take it on board. It also breathes life into something that, until now, was more of a vague concept in my mind.

Seeing what makes me me and you you is quite fun. Doing this exercise with my friends, it’s easy to see our points of similarity, which also makes the differences all the more obvious, and helps me to more deeply appreciate their uniqueness and my own.

As Naomi Arnold says “I believe with every fibre of my being that you are incredibly special. Your mind, body and spirit one-of-a-kind. I know that when you are in tune with the intricacies of this uniqueness that you can best be of service to yourself, your loved ones and the world”. Agreed.

So I challenge you to go ahead and define your uniqueness so you can begin the job of owning it and starting to value it. Remember, when you can enjoy your-self and value your-self, it makes it a whole lot easier for others to do the same. Then you can watch in amazement as you start to attract more opportunities to be celebrated and rewarded for being exactly who you are, just as life intended.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Build a Healthy Self Concept. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

I was watching a SuperSoul Session with Oprah and Gary Zukov and a statement he made jumped out at me “Authentic power is the ability to distinguish within you the difference between love and fear, and choose love no matter what it happening inside of you or outside of you.”
 
But when I respond to an interaction with a friend or colleague, or my child having a meltdown, or a member of staff at a checkout counter, or a situation that has arisen, how do I know when I’m acting out of love and not fear?

This might sound simple at first, but it is far from easy. For example, Brené Brown says “Shame is the most powerful, master (negative) emotion. It’s the fear that we’re not good enough.” This is an inner belief that gets created in childhood in many of us, something I talk about often.
 
We are born into this world as love itself and then, as our caregivers actually have to deal with our needs and desires, we get shaped and molded out of authenticity and into well behaved members of our community (or so the aim is) that don’t make any fuss. As a result this creates trauma within us and we develop fears.
 
Interestingly shame isn’t an emotion I’d have particularly associated with, yet not feeling good enough is. This made me want to dig a little deeper after hearing Gary Zukov’s impactful insight. I listened to Brené’s first TED talk on The Power of Vulnerability. In her research she found the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they are worthy of it.
 
As I wrote about recently, I’ve been tracking my dreams and feelings like fear, not being good enough and not belonging feature frequently. Since the unconscious doesn’t lie, this helps me to really get a grip on some of those less obvious chronic thought patterns that are clearly still playing out in my head.
 
While I’ve deliberately tackled many of the more acutely felt thought patterns, these are like a baseline that has been familiar to me for as long as I can remember. I now recognise this baseline is not one of love, it’s more like a suitcase full of feelings I’ve carried since I was a child that add up to anxiety, anger, rejection and constraint. You might now begin to see why I often tussle with the question "am I doing this out of love or fear?"
 
Recording my dreams was something I started to do a few years ago, then I remembered the other day the reason I’d stopped is that they were often depressing and (I felt at the time) better not remembered. Pushing them away hasn’t helped, of course, they are a wakeup call to what is actually going on inside me whether I choose to face it or not.
 
Learning to wholeheartedly love myself is an essential part of the journey to authenticity. The question I found myself asking was “how do I go about feeling love rather than fear as a predominant emotion? How do I take this suitcase of anxiety, anger, rejection and constraint and turn it into something loving?

As well as the work I described in Awaken to the Gift Your Dreams Offer in Waking Life - focusing consciously on the positive aspects of each day and how those feel - I decided to get even more targeted. Following the advice of Katie Byron, I looked at the opposite of what I was experiencing. I came up with these statements by completely flipping the emotional baggage in my suitcase around:

​I feel calm/at ease
I feel wanted/cherished/loved
I feel like I belong
I feel I have all the time in the world
 
As well as taking the time to look at what has gone well in my day, and how that felt, I’m also looking for evidence to support these statements in particular. I personally write them in a journal so they stick more. 
 
What I’m flushing out each time are my sticking points. For example, deep down I know that I will always have time for the things that are important to me. Yet the end of a school term looms for me like a giant stressful ticking clock; school holidays mean the absence of my little blocks of solitude, which is what I crave in order to feel into myself.
 
However, past experience tells me that I will get enough moments – often unplanned and ad hoc - to nurture that part of me that wants to explore new threads of thought and insight. So that is the evidence I need to draw upon, in enough detail and enough times that I start to tell myself a different story, beat a different drum.
 
It also helps to organize a few things that help me to see the times in the calendar that make that possible. I have to take charge of the self talk, call out anything that wants to sneak back in with the old baggage.
 
The other thing I notice is how my examples can start to lean towards external validation, for example, how others might make me feel loved or feel like I belong. These might be good indicators that I’m making some progress but, if I rely on them alone without feeling and demonstrating evidence of self love and self acceptance, the old thought patterns will soon kick back in the minute I believe someone rejects me.
 
That said, everything that happens, I think, happens in love. Even the things we would all agree are atrocities bring out aspects of people they never knew were in them. Everything lends itself to our growth, prompts us towards our path and – even the choices we make in fear – create opportunities for future choices to be made in love.
 
I know there it’s unlikely I’ll suddenly start making every choice out of love than fear, it will take time and perseverance. In his book The Pilgrimage Paulo Coelho describes a process called The Cruelty Exercise. This involves digging the nail of your index finger into the cuticle of your thumb of the same hand every time a thought comes in your mind that makes you feel bad about yourself. Being cruel to be kind may be a quicker route if you’d like quicker results.
 
It takes focus for me just to figure out if my thoughts are born of love or fear; sometimes it feels like a bit of both. Just the other day I was examining my reaction to a hissy fit one daughter was having because her sister had just got some new sparkly shoes. She was jealous and everything about getting dressed and out the house that morning became difficult.
 
I stayed calm and supportive and I got the kids out the house and on time, win, but did I follow a path of fear or love?
 
I know where these hissy fits can go if I try to work with my daughter to rationalise them rather than just to allow the feelings, they head straight to explosion city; suddenly smoldering embers become thriving wildfires and there is no stopping the meltdown that ensues – often for both her and me. None of that feels good, we all suffer and, inevitably, we are all late. So it is fair to say there is likely some fear around the tact I took.
 
On the other hand, from a loving standpoint, I want my daughter to know it’s okay to feel jealous, it’s okay to want something someone else has got and it’s actually okay that she doesn’t have it right now, she will survive. This is an important lesson in self regulation.
 
Overall, I feel that my decision was based more in love, but it can take thrashing it out in detail like this for me to start to recognise what is happening and to build that confidence. I’m also aware that I’ll just as likely make some decisions in fear for some time, but I’m okay with that as long as I’m becoming more conscious of what is happening and the overall trajectory is going in the right direction.
 
Better than mashing my thumb into a raw state (I shudder at the thought).
 
When you make decisions out of fear, this gets played back to you in frustrations and failures, but when you make decisions based in love, you absolutely know that even if something that might look like a failure initially is just another step along the way to living your best life.
 
If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Do You Need to Cherish Yourself?. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

Aside of the glaringly obvious and well documented health benefits of sleep, this week I’ve been delving deeper into the dreamscape as a way to get me out of my own way; let me explain.

I am here, like each of you, for the joy of the journey and the growth that occurs as a result. As you might know, I’ve spent the last four years specifically focusing on foraging out the fragments of authentic me; the one that lies beneath the decades of experiences that entrenched beliefs I had no choice but to adopt in childhood.

The journey to me will no doubt unfold over my whole lifetime, which is the best part. Without anything to work on, where would the challenge be? But I do like to think of myself as a balloon ready to bob about in the air, contemplating life as one big smorgasbord, so I am on a mission to lighten the load as much as I can.

Having become more consciously aware of the thoughts and feelings within me, regularly meditating and contemplating, and focusing on wheedling out any recurring thought patterns that really aren’t serving me, I’ve come a long way. And yet there are still areas of my life that I know could get a lot lighter, for example, I still have chronic muscle tension in my right shoulder.

There are lots of ways to alleviate muscle tension, but I want to unlock it. And there are so many tools out there that can help, looking at the metaphysical causes of pain and tension or using Applied Kinesiology can provide some big clues, I can also get a deeper understanding from meditative or hypnotic states or using techniques such as Family Constellations, among many others I am sure.

But when I heard Charlie Morley talking about Lucid Dreaming recently, I was reminded about the untapped potential that lies within the time I’m already sleeping each night. In that unconscious state, that we spend around a third of our lives in, our mind is processing through all the interactions of the day. It is completely unhindered by any constraints we place upon our reality in waking life, so there is huge potential to get to the heart of any issues or ongoing themes.

I started keeping a dream diary. If you are a person who rarely remembers their dreams, it’s more about deliberately focusing on their recall. Dreams happen at the end of each sleep cycle throughout the night (typically we have four or five cycles per night, about 90-120 minutes long) at the end of which we are closest to a waking state.  

A friend of mine was asking how I record the dreams, since they happen when I’m asleep. I literally put some paper and a pen next to my bed each night and, having set an intention to capture some details, in a semi-conscious state at the end of the dream I remember to reach out and scribble (with my eyes closed) a brief summary before submerging back into the next cycle.

It then takes me about ten minutes each day to translate these spider-scribbles and record them. Some dreams I remember others I have zero recall of. 

There are a few different components to our dreams that are worth capturing: the plot/actions, feelings, symbols and word play. This helps in the translation. I usually use my intuition when it comes to interpreting them, the key is not to get anxious about it, some I might not be able to make any sense of, others are useful.

Some examples might be: if I was feeling panicked in a dream, I’d look at what was making me anxious in waking life; if there was a distinctive item, character or colour standing out (like the blue velvet shoes I saw in my dream last night), does it have any symbolic significance to me? What about double meanings, if I was being pursued, is there anything in life I’m currently pursuing? Or the overall theme of the dream might represent something I’m working through, like a loss or a failure.

Our dreams are like a virtual reality that depicts what is really going on with our inner life, they don’t lie to us the way we can lie to ourselves when we are awake. If I am unhappy about something, I can deny it and gloss over it when I’m going about my day, but the feelings will haunt me in my dreams.

My best tools for dream interpretation seem to be Google search plus intuition. For example, I keep having recurring dreams that feature lifts/elevators in them. If I Google “Meaning of lifts in dreams” it gives me a variety of options and I just scroll through a few until I find one that fits.

What I found most interesting when I started doing this was the reality check of my overall thought patterns. While awake, it’s easy to address the things that really trigger me and delve into those more, but when I’m asleep the more chronic – less observed – patterns emerge in the dreamscape.

Here’s a snapshot of some of the keywords I’d captured over a five-night period: striving, out of time, worried, being ignored, out of control, failure, unappreciated, outraged, pleasing others, survival, isolated, stressful, up against time, frustrated, harrowing, drowning, and can’t get a grip.

Wow. If I’d have done this exercise five years ago, this would have come as no surprise. Yet the same thought patterns are obviously still playing, albeit at less intensity. They are the white noise of the day, the thoughts in between the ones I’m more conscious of.

After a bit of contemplating and diving into what some of my favourite teachers (Teal Swan, Abraham Hicks and Eckhart Tolle) have to say about dreams, what stuck was something Teal said about being a person who ruminates on the negative aspects of my day.

This is true, I’m a perfectionist in many respects so I’m pretty hard on myself and always striving to do better and be better (particularly when it comes to parenting).

Her advice was to compensate by starting to focus consciously on the positive aspects of the day and how those felt. Now that I’ve started doing this, and writing them down each night, I can see the dreamscape changing from something that felt stressful to something that feels a lot better. As Charlie Morley points out, the more positive our dreamscape the more likely we are to wake up feeling refreshed and revitalized.

This brings me back to the lucid dreams, ones in which we are aware we are dreaming and may even change the dream outcomes; these are the ones we often remember when we wake up without even trying to.

It hadn’t occurred to me the huge opportunity to talk to myself in these dreams. If the dreamscape is our unconscious mind unraveling everything in our psychology and emotions, that means I can get stuck in and ask my unconscious self for answers to questions like “why is my shoulder chronically in pain?” and I’m more likely to get an accurate answer than in a waking state with all my bias and limitations.

The possibilities are endless.  Charlie gives an example of a guy who, while dreaming, became aware he was in a dream. So he asked one of the characters “who are you?” and she replied “your brain”.
He asked his brain about his health and the character said “you’re in perfect health but do us all a favour and stop smoking”. So he asked her to help by making him think of something else every time he felt like a cigarette and she said “Sure, that’s easy”. Since that day he has not smoked another cigarette.

In his book Lucid Dreaming Made Easy, which I’ve just started, Charlie goes on to teach how to have a lucid dream and how to interact with it. I was quite thrilled when his advice to do a reality check worked.

One of the techniques to check you are actually dreaming is to look at your hands then flip them over and back again. The dreaming brain doesn’t have the processing speed to reproduce an identical projection of your hand twice in a row, so you can get some funny variations.

So there I was, in my dream, speeding into a harbor on a boat and I looked down at my hands, then flipped them over and back and the fingers were all misshapen and blurry; I recall feeling pretty pleased in the dream that it worked but was having so much fun I forgot to ask my unconscious mind about my shoulder. Another sleep, another chance will arise.

With a third of our lives spent in slumber, there is so much opportunity to tap in and leverage the wisdom that takes its form in the strange and bizarre landscapes of our dreams, it just take focus. Take out a pad and pen and pop it on your nightstand now, give it a go and see what comes up. Let the dream realm point you in the direction of your best life.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy The Most Honest Feedback You Will Ever Get - Dream Messages. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

When I am in conflict with someone’s ideas or behaviour, I have to remind myself to choose kindness over suffering. In my heart I know that we are all expressions of the one thing, and yet when I start acting as if I’m separate and unconnected, believing that they are the cause of my distress, all I’m doing is blocking my own energy.

A few years back when the kids started regularly fighting, I taught them in words that they deserve kindness. I try to teach this through my actions too of course, as that is what will actually teach, but don’t always succeed. Often if they have friends round and they all start arguing I ask “who here deserves kindness?” and they all put their hands up and instantly get the point.

I was reminded of this quality again when I was watching an interview with Jeff Olsen who had a near-death experience over twenty years ago. He described how his consciousness was wandering through the corridors of the hospital (where his body was lying in the Intensive Care Unit hooked up to umpteen machines), and he was looking at the doctors and nurses and experiencing everything they were feeling.

This is a phenomenon I have heard described before in these circumstances. He expressed how, with one nurse, he somehow knew everything that had happened to her, her abusive childhood, the events that had occurred since and all that she felt about herself and the world. Above all he felt this deep connection to all the people around him and complete unconditional love.

I like to imagine that was him having the experience our source energy has at all times, that we are each just individual points of focus in the broader scheme of things, all connected in the context of that unending unconditional love. As such, I feel it is my goal in life to be a full expression of who I am in this point of focus, while honouring that connection to everything else.

So choosing kindness is essential for my own wellbeing and the health of my relationships with others. That means I also have to be kind and forgive myself when I haven’t been kind to others. Like when I’ve reached some limit of tolerance with the kids and yelled, or been argumentative with friends who have challenged my thinking, or tetchy with my partner for getting in my way in the kitchen.

It’s deeper than just a commitment to being kind to others, as with everything it starts within. When I find that I haven’t been kind, I look within myself to what that points to. My patience with the kids may be endless if I had endless patience with myself, or I may have reacted to my friends’ viewpoints as an opportunity to expand my thinking or my partner’s intrusion as an opportunity for connection.

As always, it points to our early experiences in life. I could say that if I’d experienced endless patience as a child I’d be patient with myself and others, if I’d experienced more interest and respect in my ideas as a child I’d be more open to hearing others’ views, and if I’d felt more welcomed into the personal space of those I was closest to as a child, I would likely be more welcoming to others.

It is easy to see how these thought patterns and behaviours perpetuate generation after generation; until we become aware of them. This is precisely where kindness is required, those people who were responsible for me had their own experiences as kids that shaped their behaviours, they were likely doing the best they could and living in a state of unconscious awareness of the connection that now seem so obvious to me.

Instead I look at these examples as the fertile fields of the lessons I’ve come to learn, the areas I want to expand in. It doesn’t mean I’m obligated to follow through on any of it, I might decide I like my personal space as it is, but that I do want to be more patient with myself and others, and more open to others’ ideas.

I also know that the neurophysiology inside me won’t change overnight. My experiences over a lifetime will have created strong neural pathways, so my reactions will require conscious awareness and practice to create new wiring. I have to choose kindness in this process as I learn to have patience.

One of the kindest people I knew was my grandmother. She died when I was fourteen, but the visceral memory of her kindness lives on inside me. That kindness showed in her features and was expressed through her heartfelt generosity. It is not hard for me to call upon that memory when I want to be reminded of how kindness feels.

And I know I must be making progress. After writing an advocacy paper recently about an education system, one of the recipients invited me to discuss any concerns with him about the specific experiences we are having at the children’s school. Previously I’d have felt myself rallying in response, ready to go in fully loaded with all my grievances.

In this case, I felt called to an entirely different approach, one I always yearn for but have often felt too rushed to ask for. People want to express and address concerns, but there is a wider context – always. That wider context is who those people are, their unique cocktail of genetic expression and experiences; their story.

So invited to express my concerns, instead I said I’d love to hear their story; what was it that had drawn them to this system of education, what their experience of the journey had been like and why he was still involved in its ongoing story. I said I’d then share our experiences and leave it to him to decide whether that gave any cause for concern.

At the end of the day I am at a point in my life journey where I realise my opinion is only that, and I’m comfortable that I don’t need to persuade others to agree if it doesn’t resonate for them. I can choose kindness and stand in my own truth, whether that means making choices that differ from others or running with the pack.

And because I’ve given myself permission to be who I am, I generally feel more comfortable with who others are in their differences too – including my kids. It’s an absolute wonder to watch them knowing they are born of me and yet so unique.  When they challenge me I recognise that – on some level – I have invited that challenge.

So kindness remains the thing I must choose towards myself and others in this unending journey of growth and evolution, integrating all the pieces of me that separated from the love that I am in the quest to become one with all.

​What about you? Will you choose to continue suffering or will you choose kindness?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Nurture Yourself, The Path to Unconditional Love and Change Unhealthy Reactions. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

In Abby Wombach’s Wolfpack she talks about her memory of a new coach getting out a guitar and singing Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a Changin’ at their first meeting. The players thought this was weird at first, then uncomfortable, then finally they felt moved. The new coach didn’t want them to just win games, she wanted them to win beautifully, to move people. Rather than just saying the words, she expressed this through her actions.

This prompted me to listen to Bob Dylan, it’s been a while since I have heard The Times They Are a Changin’ which then led to me listening to many other of those old folk rock songs of the era that ushered in a period of radical social change.

As I thought about some of those revolutionaries, I realised that I feel more called be an evolutionary.
A revolutionary is someone who creates radical political or social change in a relatively short time, through a process of resistance to the status quo, and it creates a lot of unrest that often doesn’t end well for many. Whereas an evolutionary, I think, is someone who expresses the change they want to see through the way they are living their life, they more quietly stand in their own truth in the way Abby Wombach’s coach did.

It’s perhaps the story of the tortoise and the hare because being an evolutionary is likely to create a gradual change that takes place from within. Don’t get me wrong, I want change now, but the change I want to see needs focus, patience, resilience and love and that starts inside me. 

When I was born, only seven years after Bob Dylan’s song of social and political change, The New Seekers were at number one in the UK music charts with I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing. It was a time of hope and feels completely in tune with my own mission to be who I am and help others be who they are:

I’d like to see the world for once
All standing hand in hand
And hear them echo through the hills
For peace throughout the land

While many things have changed tremendously in the last half century, I believe what hasn’t changed dramatically is the root of our discord. It’s my belief that the discord between humans comes from the discord within humans.

Let me share my reasoning. Right from the early months of our lives it seems that the vast majority of us are taught right and wrong, good and bad, by our family, community and society. This results in feelings of anxiety or shame about our own desires if they are not aligned with those to whom we have been born. In short, we become encultured into a world that tends not to allow us the freedom to be who we are.

And by the time we are independent enough to think these things through for ourselves, we are already so shrouded in others’ beliefs that most of us buy into that neural and emotional wiring (that took place within us in those early stages) as our guide to what is good and bad in life.

We think if we feel anxiety or shame we must be doing something wrong, yet in reality all we are experiencing is the anxiety or shame of not living up to our early caregivers’ beliefs and expectations of us, regardless of whether they are truly aligned with our own.

To sum up, we lose sight of who we are and what we truly feel about anything.

Christian Morgenstern said "Don't let the mouth say what the heart doesn't feel." I realised some years ago that I was no longer sure of who I was and what I actually felt. There was a dull pain that I felt in my own discord, a tugging, nagging, persistent pain. To speak my truth I knew I’d have to undertake a journey of discovery to figure out who I am.

Even though I’m now much clearer about who that authentic me is, I still feel that pain sometimes, a teacher returning to its student. It is like a hopelessness that descends every now and again, an amplification of all that discord that existed and those parts that still persist; I call this my black mood.

When this pain descends, I know it is waiting to be felt, to be acknowledged, to be experienced without being pushed away. I did spend many years pushing it away, pushing it down; being too busy to contemplate any of it. Then I became a parent.

What I deeply desired for my children is the freedom to be who they are. I failed in this spectacularly, and continue to at times, not for a lack of love for them but a lack of love for myself. It is not my intention, but there was a lack of knowing myself and being able to stand in my own truth. So what to do?

I took the journey to me. I got still, I listened to the thoughts and feelings within me and I keep listening, over and over. Through it come insights, clues to my true nature. I started to respond to things differently, more authentically, did I want to participate in this/that/the next thing?

​Slowly I became more aware of my truth, and that it is only my truth. I am realizing we each have our own truth; because we are each such a unique cocktail that what is right for one is not necessarily right for another. Slowly I am becoming a better parent, allowing my kids to be who they are and blossom in their truth.

So you see, allowed to be who we are, standing hand in hand with those across the world that – in our judgments of old we might have despised and hated – is not an overnight thing, it’s a journey that begins with the self. To figure out what stems from beliefs placed in our heads rather than felt in our hearts.

Because in our hearts we would know that the person who seems like a wimp is actually just strong in other ways that we can’t yet appreciate. We would know that the person who seems overbearing is actually just scared. We would know that the colour of a person’s skin, their socio economic status, their circumstances are not right or wrong, good or bad, they are just different experiences. We would hold their hand and see that hand as an extension of our own.

The communities, societies and structures would begin to honour and reflect the individual. This evolution starts with evolutionaries, like you and me, standing in our own truth and becoming who we truly are.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Become You, What You Give Your Attention to Is Your Greatest Contribution and Stand in Your Own Truth. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog