i welcome its unfolding

On this beautiful summer day my heart is thawing even more.

I am remembering the side of the road, the gas station, the black ice.

I am remembering the sadness filling up the car as she filled up the tank

the state of shock having full hold on my mind.

She (my sister) had been widowed only a few days and she said to me

“The only person you can really count on being there for you in this lifetime is yourself”.

She, being the closest person to me didn’t mean that we weren’t going to be there for each other.  My life at that moment was all about being there for her.

But the reality is that as long as we are alive, we’d better be our own best friends, as that is the only person that we can truly know for sure will be there our whole lives. 

I’ve held that statement as a truth ever since. 

These days I’m feeling challenged in negotiating leaving a place of existence where I lived that statement (in the best possible ways).  I’ve learned in the last few years to put myself first, to listen to my gut and most importantly to learn to be my own best friend and find joy in my own company.  But I’ve come to the point where it is becoming clear that it isn’t enough.  It is enough to survive but not to thrive.  I’m at the transition point between this past and a future that grasps on to the connectedness of the universe, the energetics that don’t separate the me from the you.  I have filled up the well of love in my heart as much as I can do alone.  Now I need to open up to the giving and receiving of love that connects us all.

The friends I let closest to my heart live geographically far away. 

Others I hold at arms length.

I ache to have a sense of family in my every day existence. 

its not that there is not love in my life.  i observe it and soak it in daily.  but to let it deep into my heart, that is the tough part. i'm a pretty positive and optimistic person generally...but this is what lies beneath.  we are all tender souls, aren't we.

I’m at a threshold.  I can’t do it all alone anymore.  I can’t live for a statement made in a point of the clarity we find in crisis.  I need to welcome back the naievity that lives in the daily existence when we forget that one day it will all end. 

I need to welcome back love into my life.

To not be on guard all the time, telling myself stories that re-instate walls.

I want to melt the loneliness

To discover what love exists in my present connections

To nurture the ones that have always been there for me.

I don’t abandon that statement, that the only person you can truly know will be there for you in this lifetime is yourself.  Its so true.  But I think the period needs to leave and be replaced by a comma, continuing to say that you need a circle of love around you to, to help you rise to that strength within yourself.

That is my new truth. 

I welcome its unfolding.