Here’s the thing. You can blame other people or certain events for your unhappiness and bitterness, or you can decide right now (if you didn’t a long time ago), that your life is yours. I’m not speaking to people who’ve weathered the pain of losing a loved one too soon. I believe that’s the kind of pain that lives in your heart forever, but I do believe it’s possible to live again. To live for those people we’ve lost, to soak in all the beauty of life on their behalf, and our own.
I’m speaking more to the people who are caught in the cycle of rage and rationalization. It’s your work to heal yourself, your business to be responsible for what you say and do, and your life to love or to wreck. Whatever may have happened in your past does not have to define you. It may shape you but it does not have to ruin you, or your chances for peace. The power is yours. I say this understanding the experiences of heartache and pain in this life are not the same for everyone. That for some people what I’m suggesting will be easier, simply because their path has not been as full of the sharp edge of mourning, even the mourning for your own innocence if you were robbed of it. And often, self-esteem is a huge part of the puzzle. Sometimes we’re taught that we aren’t of value, that we aren’t lovable, and that how we feel or what we have to say is not important. But those are lies, and they can be unlearned. Sometimes things happen, like we’re abandoned, and we take the experience to heart, and run ourselves ragged trying to be loved.
It’s my belief that almost everyone who gets serious about healing can do it. It’s not easy, and most people need some help. It’s not what I would call “a fun time.” But it’s a lot better to have some acute pain for a relatively short period, than it is to have a lifetime of misery where you are either hurting yourself or other people, or frequently both. When you don’t conquer those places within you that are full of the rage of why, you’ll just keep acting out unconsciously, fighting the battle as if it’s happening outside yourself.
I get fired up about this topic because I believe the only way to a more loving and peaceful world is for everyone in it to journey inward, and examine the catalog of their losses, their shame, their guilt, their fear, doubt, confusion, desperation, loneliness, insecurity, rage, and just face that sh&t down. It doesn’t have to own you. And the blame game is a huge cop-out. Today belongs to you. You get to decide how you’re going to show up. You can be angry, or you can dig deeper and figure out what that anger is about, because I guarantee you if you dig, you’re going to find pain. The part of this thing that requires courage is the part that demands your vulnerability. Being soft in this world takes courage. I highly recommend softness. That’s where love lives. And joy, and unguarded laughter, and innocence and kindness and gratitude. Be courageous so you can be soft, so you can open, so you can become the you of you, and get back to the business of saying yes to life. Because the rest of it is a waste of time, and time is precious, and wasting it is such a shame. Sending you so much love, and feeling very grateful to be on this whizzing, spinning rock with you, Ally Hamilton