I am enough

Oh 2012. What a bitch of a year. The best and the worst of times. My very foundation shaken. Yet here I am, still standing, stronger, wiser, happier. I could reflect on the year and focus on the pain, the heartache or I could look back and say, thank you, thank you Universe for reminding me that playing it safe is not rewarded. Safe may not be the right word for you but it's what works for me. I was playing it safe in many areas of my life. I wasn't saying how I felt to those who mattered, I wasn't admitting my relationships with many close to me had been for some time dysfunctional. I was isolating, shutting down slowly. I felt disconnected from myself and others and I was. I wasn't truly loving or living. Becoming a parent for the first time can do this to you, though I recognize now some of the patterns that came up had been played out before, but they were simply brought to full view as a parent. When you become a parent, you become the most vulnerable you have ever been. You can decide to do two things with this. Shut down. Try to perfect your child, your life to make it completely safe - or presumably safe. Or you can embrace this vulnerability. You can live and love fully and find gratitude for this gift of your child, that yes, has been given to you. YOU. I don't believe Josh nor I knew how vulnerable having a child would make us. How can you? It's impossible to know until it happens. And for us we were unable to be vulnerable together, which is what we needed to coexist. So I became vulnerable alone. Very very vulnerable. And very very alone. And what I found was the greatest strength I have ever known and the greatest support system of friends and community near and far - a lot of which I never knew existed. I step into 2013 building a new foundation. I am not trying to fix anything as there's nothing to fix. I do get caught up in where am I going sometimes, not so much in relationships but in my work and life as I see so many around me doing such great things. I remind myself that teaching my 6 or classes a week, connecting whole heartedly with my students and loved ones and friends, and most importantly, being a wholehearted present grounded mother to Julian is very important work. From this place only love and light can follow. I've learned from my mistakes that it's very important to build a foundation - a strong sense of self - so that I can be a good parent, and if another relationship comes along, I can merge into that one already happy and whole. I am getting a lot of messages about where my focus needs to go. For a number of years now, I've seen the talk by Brene Brown on vulnerability from TED circling around but I never watched it. Saturday I was teaching speaking into what I've been learning and trying to live and a student after class said do you know Brene Browns book Daring Greatly? You should check it out. She was only in class for that Sat - just passing through - she gave me what I needed. Another regular student that day gave me a book on being Fearless. Last night I checked out the Brene Brown talk, another friend posted another longer interview with her last night when I shared the 20 min TED talk, and the baby and I listened to that this morning. I am hooked. I want to listen to these talks, every day of my life moving forward. For so many of us this year was a year of great change. Challenging often painful change. And such sad world events like the recent Newtown tragedy and the rape and murder of an Indian woman on a Delhi bus. The Universe is screaming for us to listen and as I can see from my own journey and the journey of those around me - we are listening. A higher spiritual consciousness is being born and I'm on board. I truly believe the foundation of our world is shifting and for those on board - we're going to be creating and doing amazing things. For those not on board, they will struggle, and we're going to have to watch them struggle. Perhaps I'm a bit presumptious, but it's what has been presented before me already. Back to Brene Brown - I wish I could quote her word for word because she eloquently states what I feel to be true but here it is in a nutshell - vulnerability is our birthright. A close friend of mine actually said that one but it's true - an infant is completely vulnerable. As Brene Brown would state - hardwired for struggle. Struggle comes in, mistakes may happen, and somehow somewhere we start to believe this false truth that we are no longer enough. We no longer deserve happiness and love and belonging. That is the farthest thing from the truth. We internalize this rather than rationalize it because our rational mind would say, that's crazy, I don't believe it. Yet deep down we do. We accumulate things, people, this, that anything to hide those feelings of being not enough - our shame as Brene Brown would call it, and I admit I have a hard time with that word, but I do believe we all have shame. Brene describes it well when she said it's shame, not ashamed. Big difference. We keep making the same mistakes playing out the same or similar patterns pushing down our own birthright of vulnerability, our ability to see and be seen, to know and be known. When all we want truly is that - to see and be seen, to known and be known, to feel that spark, that aliveness when we look in another's eyes and to feel it in our own hearts. I like you perhaps was a nonbeliever in many ways. I thought you open yourself up this much, but you certainly keep something hidden. You show it all you can get hurt! Whomever may not like it. My child is a good teacher that this is not the case. I show him it all - the sad, the angry, the silly, the happy, the many sides of mommy and he loves them all. I don't have to try to earn his love. My friend Pat Donaher posted on his blog Peace and Be Wild this beautiful quote by Ram Dass "You are loved just for being who you are, just for existing. You don't have to do anything to earn it. Your shortcomings, your lack of self-esteem, physical perfection, or social and economic status - none of that matters. This love is actually a part of you, it is always flowing through you. It's a subatomic texture of the Universe, the dark matter that connects you to everything. When you tune into that flow, you will feel it in your own heart. If I go to the place in myself that is love, and you go to the place in yourself that is love, we are together in love. The state of being love." I am enough. And so are you. I haven't believed this fully. I'm working on it. A recent comment by someone close to me when they said I can see exactly why Josh left you really struck a cord. It hurt. A lot. I think it was a mean comment, but more than that, it struck at this fundamental feeling within me of not being enough - of the girl who lost her man, the girl who couldn't keep a man. This deeply ingrained falsehood on how love is attained. Brene Brown spoke in a longer interview on the site On Being about vulnerability and the differences between men and women and how we play out dysfunction in our relationships to avoid stepping into vulnerability. She told this story of how after one of her book tours a couple came up afterward to have them sign her book. The woman went to leave but the man lingered and he asked Brene why her study at that time had focused on women. He said that men have shame too. He said that as women we want men to be vulnerable but we want them to stay up on their white horse. He asked Brene what would you really think if we fell off that white horse? That hit home for me. I want that vulnerability with a man but I also want strength. And for a long time I did not equate vulnerability with strength. That is no longer true. There's a difference between being a door mat and someone who is truly seen - that person is the source of their own power. Brene goes on to talk about these roles we play in a relationship that hold us back from being fully seen. One that resonated with me was the save me, or fix you syndrome. Seeking out someone to save you, to make you happy or whole, to tell you you are enough, or fixing another to make you feel happy whole and enough. Both of these leave us without our power. We essentially give our power to another - either by being saved, or by fixing. I've played both these roles numerous times - trying so hard to be perfect, to fit exactly what another person wanted, letting them fix me, and trying so hard to save another, to shape them into the man I knew they could be which is essentially just manipulating the person so that I'd have them under my thumb, have them as I wanted them to be, but not really letting them be who they were. Both are destructive patterns and leave both people unhappy. The pattern keeps playing out till one person says, I'm not happy. The pattern is either then realized through some time alone or played out again in another relationship. We don't need to be saved because we already are enough. We don't need to fix another because it's the work of realizing our own strength and showcasing our own vulnerability that will make us attractive. Fixing that in another or someone fixing it in us just isn't possible. I am in my own power these days. I am building my foundation. And I know one thing for whatever lies in the future. I want to see and be seen. I want to know and be known. And this does not mean perfecting anything - this means in simplest terms, letting it all hang out. Imperfections are what join us. Let's share ours together in 2013! I feel blessed to go into the New Year with some things to look forward to. Watching Julian grow, my new tattoo, skydiving for a friends birthday... and I know there will be so many more experiences and things to come which I don't even know about, and can't even fathom yet, and for those, I am MOST excited. Happy New Year and thanks for all the love and support this year my friends! xoxoxo