Love What Resides Within

Somedays I wake up and feel a burst of joy as I open my eyes and feel the awe that I have a being, and that we are on a planet with so much life and abundance. Other days I wake up and there is a grumpy voice in me that wishes to remind me that I didn’t get enough done the day before. Sometimes it feels like there is an entire panel discussion happening inside of me—talking about all of the things I need to work on, or ways that I can improve my life. Wait a second…who are these voices? And what are they trying to tell me? Why is it that some days they seem completely content, while other days they seem to be yelling advice and shouting orders? I’m not sure I know who they are, but I feel that most of the time they are parts of me that are begging to be seen and heard. They are asking for me to give them the microphone and validate what they have to say. It is easy to believe that these voices are telling the truth. However, most of the time they are mimicking what they have perceived to be true. When in truth, they are coming from a place of fear not out of love and expansion. The thing is....at some point in time, they actually did keep me safe. They might have kept me away from troubling circumstances or from experiencing an unneeded trauma. Their intentions were for me to have a safe existence and to remain alive. For this, I am grateful to them. And instead of reacting back to these doubtful thoughts I am practicing sending them love. I am practicing sending them gratitude and grace. "Thank you for the amazing job you did protecting me as a youngster. We had to go through some hard things and I'm grateful I had you there to help me get through it." In the last eight months, it has become an ongoing adventure and practice to send love to the many voices within. This has not been an easy transition. It is hard to love the things that hurt us. It is difficult to trust that sending love will be received instead of rejected. There is no way of knowing how love will be accepted. However, the moments when I am able to center myself in trust and send myself grace for the ways that I have missed the mark or fallen short, I am amazed at the way in which my heart expands. It is vulnerable to open our selves up to love. Even more, it is vulnerable to open ourselves up to trusting that what we give is enough. Trusting that the moment we decide to give love, the universe will be there to accept it. It is a jump off of the edge of reason to trust that as love leaves our being it is no longer ours to carry. Because when we send love out, there is no guarantee that the source to which you sent the love will be ready to send it back to you. The voices inside of us, our family, the earth, and our communities—none of them may be ready to love us back. But maybe that is ok. Maybe our gift for loving ourselves, as well as all that surrounds us, is about letting that love leave us without strings attached. Almost as if letting love flow out of us releases some of the weight it takes to hold it in. Maybe the love that aches to be free from our forms isn’t for us to worry about. Maybe it is meant to be expelled out and given to anything that it comes into contact with—regardless of its return. Maybe if we surrender the need to know exactly how we will receive love in return, we are then freed from the burden of control. I feel, more than ever, that love will always return to us, and we don’t have to worry so much about how. We get to close our eyes and dive into being. No more doing love. Just being love. Met liefde, Amelia