This Saturday marks three decades and six years of revolutions around the Sun.
Thirty-six winters weathered in good ol’ New England. (Hopefully that will change after graduation)
In the bittersweet melodrama that has been my life, every page tells a story of perseverance, growth, creative expression, pursuing authenticity, and the challenges of achieving personal liberation. Embarking on the completion of higher education in adulthood, I’ve navigated the challenges of my undergraduate degree. A testament to my unwavering commitment to knowledge and growth. Amidst career shifts and financial uncertainties, I’ve sculpted a narrative of tenacity and have cultivated the foundations of financial literacy to stabilize my future. The complex patterns of my experiences extend beyond professional pursuits to encompass the delicate art of building meaningful connections, surviving heartbreak, and confronting familial struggles with a profound sense of introspection and a deepening awareness. I have weathered chapters of health issues, accepted the complicated process of healing C PTSD to regulate a chaotic and exhausted nervous system, discovered and digested a late diagnosis of ADHD, and embraced the convergence of personal spiritual beliefs and wisdom.
This is a reflection through the ebbs and flows of thirty-six years of life in a world on fire.
Being here at this time has taught me a few things:
1. The blood of the convent is thicker than the water of the womb.
Which means the exact opposite of the common shortened misquote!
2. You can’t save everyone, in fact, it’s best to endeavor to “save” no one but yourself.
Especially when it comes to personal liberation. You must walk over the threshold first, and recognize that not everyone was meant to come with you.
3. What we tend to conceive as “helping others” is often actually interfering with a person’s life lessons and saving them only from their own personal growth.
Choose wisely. Use discernment.
4. Before you attempt to guide someone, ask if they are even prepared to receive your wisdom and have the capacity to act upon it.
Otherwise you will waste precious time and energy on someone who merely wanted validation and not honest guidance.
5. Socrates was correct: The secret to real change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old but on building the new.
Starve what you do not want of your attention as best you can, and give all of your energy to what you do wish for, while taking decisive action in that direction!
6. I was born to tell epic stories and create from a boundless imagination.
Ignore the input of those who have no capacity in storytelling, do not appreciate fantasy, and have no imagination to speak of – they have no creativity themselves and no place in the arena.
7. I was designed to make all life decisions from a place on intuition.
And intuition is not bound by logic or reason and is under no obligation to make sense to anyone else!
8. Pay attention to patterns of behavior, they speak far more than words ever could.
Words are who one claims to be, patterns and habits enforce who one truly is.
9. If a person claims to love you, they will not make you feel like you are a second or third option.
Nor will they treat you like a dirty little secret!
10. People who are at war with themselves will always cause collateral damage in the lives of those around them.
Those are the people to steer clear of whenever possible.
11. A “mistake” that is repeated continuously with no attempt at change or rectify the behavior is a DECISION.
Don’t let them gaslight you into believing otherwise.
12. NO is a full sentence.
It does not require explanation nor justification.
13. Anxiety and fear are cousins, not twins.
Fear sees the threat. Anxiety imagines many.
14. Don’t blame a clown for behaving like a clown; ask yourself why you keep going to the circus.
If you don’t like how an environment feels or how a person is treating you (even after you’ve spoken up to address it), then remove yourself in any way possible.
15. Truth does not mind being questioned or prodded; but a lie does not like to be challenged.
Read that again.
16. Stress is fighting what is and suffering is contorting yourself into the box of who you think you should be.
Peace is accepting what is and who you are in the moment with grace.
17. Men who demand a woman be soft and feminine for them without providing safe containment, met needs, unconditional love, and acceptance of the ugly and dark parts of the feminine are walking Red Flags.
I said what I said.
18. Home is not where you were born, it is where all of your attempts to escape have ceased.
I felt that in my bones. And I am still searching for that feeling of “home”.
19. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it Fate.
A quote by Carl Jung, and it has rung of truth throughout the last decade.
20. Not wanting children after decades of trauma and parentification does not make me a bad person or less of a woman.
And people who coerce or shame women into having children or judge them as less than or selfish for wanting other things in life are genuinely toxic and draconian.
22. The world is changed by example, not by opinions.
Especially in a world run by mob mentality and cancel culture. Literally Ew.
23. Pain and suffering travels down family lines until someone is strong enough to feel the pain and heal the suffering.
Facing generational wounds and generational curse breaking takes enormous strength of character, will power, awareness, and dedication.
24. Fitting in requires you to change who you are to be accepted into a group, “belonging” requires you to BE who are truly are to attract your true tribe.
A concept I learned from Brene Brown, and I have recognized this truth for myself.
25. Don’t offer a condescending or patronizing lecture to someone who needs a hug.
This one nearly broke me, as someone who suffered endless lectures and rarely received any hugs.
26. Make more moves, and less announcements. Work in silence, let success by the noise.
Speaks for itself.
27. The more you love and trust your own decisions, the less you need others to love them.
The less external validation required to function, the better.
28. Accountability feels like an attack if one is not ready to acknowledge toxic behavior and take full responsibility for one’s impact.
The very definition of the dysfunctional family I grew up in.
29. There is a huge difference between supporting someone in times of need, and taking responsibility for the problems of others.
Be a mentor, not a martyr.
30. If you were absent or an obstacle during my struggles, do not expect to be present for my success.
The train of my royal mantel only has enough room to carry me, the one who did the work.
31. I was not born to “take care of” my parents or other relatives. I was born to live out a destiny set forth by my soul, not dictated by other people on a whim.
If that triggers you, keep your entitled demons leashed 🙂 I don’t owe anyone for existing. Everything I do is of my own volition and is intrinsically motivated.
32. Healing can be a painful and lonely journey.
But it’s worth it. You are the one you must live with for the rest of your life.
33. Enoughness is a decision, not an amount.
I decide what is enough for me, and that I am enough as I am. That is not up for discussion, debate, or negotiation.
34. Don’t put out your fire, merely because someone does not understand nor value your flame.
It wasn’t meant for them, anyway.
35. Souls do not have religions, races, genders, or nationalities. They are beyond artificial divisions.
Consciousness is consciousness, and lies beyond all the crap labels cooked up by the human mind.
36. You are a multi-dimensional consciousness driving a skeleton wrapped in a skin suit made of star dust walking around on a massive rock covered in water hurtling through space around a flaming ball of plasma and gas.
Fear nothing. Also, don’t take yourself so seriously, none of us are getting out of this alive.
That last one was a bit of quirky humor.
However, as this life continues to unfold with more lessons learned, the good and bad experienced, struggles overcome and triumphs savored (hopefully for at least another three or four decades), I stand at personal crossroad. Another four years to heal, grow, work, create, and reflect upon what my 40s might look like. Each passing moment, a brushstroke on the canvas of my soul, has contributed to the poignant masterpiece that is my current existence. As I begin to write the next chapter, I carry with me the wisdom etched into the fiber of my being, ready to embrace the unknown of what is to come.
May the chapters that await be written with the ink of courage and creativity, the prose of gratitude and grace, and the poetry of limitless possibilities.