My questions…
Am I still armored?
Are my masks still in place?
Am I continuing to view/feel the light of living through the cracks or in measured doses?
You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human…what it feels like to be human without domination over others…without rotating, rehearsing and reinventing the hatreds you learned in the sandbox…you could create it. Toni Morrison
The axis of friendship is always along the frontier between what you think is you and what you think is not you. David Whyte
I am a toddler …learning to befriend myself, leaving behind patterns that no longer serve me, creating space for my authentic self to emerge and allowing the ghosts of former roles and responsibilities to be there: keeping the fire of experiences and not the ashes.I know I am writing about my emergence often; however, the pace of change has allowed me to re-member and to think: what is costume and what is bone structure?
The two faces of Janus: for me, one face is labelled Other and the other Self. The more familiar ‘Other’: fear has played a huge part in creating my appearance in the world/ outer reality. Spiraled patterned living, connections with others whose desires and scripts often constrained my own, unexpressed emotion- costumes and role play defined success for me.Work was/is fuel; however, Self was there in the adventures and creative compositions- I learned more about myself then.
As I age, Self has become more evident. As I continue my inner journey, I acknowledge I will care for her and allow dormant and unacknowledged gifts to blossom and light my life with joy and understanding as I blossom into my identity.Other: friends old and new support remind me I am not alone as old energies slowly transform into newer ideas- bone structure, like trees in winter: foundational.
I am aware that these two faces are aspects of my single being. I will have compassion for ME as I negotiate my new realities, blending, letting go, risking and learning to express emotions in the context of new and remembered experiences. I am feeling more powerful as I develop my own routine for living; incorporating what I have learned, integrating new and newly alive parts of my self and dreaming of the possibilities in sharing my own ideas with the world. Aligning inner and outer realities towards wholeness- my heart and soul wouldn’t have it any other way. Self and other- companions, co-creating- belonging….in and out of my comfort zone as the game of life plays on in the context of:
Forgiveness- of self and other who did the best they could given the circumstances…ongoing
Vulnerability- rather than shielding me from the world, I am allowing myself to be vulnerable: open to whatever happens
Gratitude- for all of my life’s experiences to date and the teaching and learning embedded in them
Aspirational:
Maturity beckons also, asking us to be larger, more fluid, more elemental, less cornered, less unilateral, a living conversational intuition between the inherited story, the one we are privileged to inhabit and the one, if we are large enough and broad enough, moveable enough and even here enough, just astonishingly, about to occur. D.W.
Pat's Journey 