I have been on a journey for the past 7 years. One where I have discovered many, many things about myself, like, I am not dangerous to myself or others, that I am worthy, and how shame was the underlying driver for most of the choices I made throughout my life. You know, the soft easy stuff.
In that time my marriage dissolved and I entered into a new relationship. AND we have broken-up. Not because we don’t love each other, we just realized, I realized, I needed a new place to stand, and it has been intense! Okay what else is new in my life. Here is the difference; I continue to engage, with everything moving inside of me, and with the man in my life, feeling my way through this process, to become MORE!
It has opened the door for a new conversation about what WE means. In an old paradigm, we meant someone had to give up some part of themselves to create a whole. This is not what I am talking about. I’m talking about an invitation to discover what it means to create a new space called WE, all the while knowing I am still ME. To be whole in mySELF and deeply, intimately connected to another. I have opened the door to explore what it means to trust me in US. Noticing in trusting just myself I created a barrier, another layer to the one that had been erected a long time ago. That insight has only just risen to the surface.
Like all things a great quote appeared as I engaged my curiosity:
“I don’t want to be the other half of your soul. I want to be the one that reminds you you’re already whole.” ~G.S.~
One of my favourite lines from the movie Moulin Rouge is ” The greatest thing in life is to love, and be loved!” I recognize I have no idea what that really means, I have been protecting myself, my whole life, from being hurt and disappointed in this area and the brilliant wounded child that I was created a wall where I could be seen but not touched. It was brilliant! And explains a lot of the strategies I put in place throughout my life. WOW I did’t see that one coming.
What I didn’t realize, until now, is I surrounded myself with this wall so that I could not even touch myself. Until I began the journey back to mySELF.
Now that I stand in the present moment, I know I am deeply connected to and aware of my capital S SELF, I am ready to discover the next layer. I have created an invitation to discover what that really feels like to love and be loved in a new paradigm, no strings attached, as long as I choose to continue honour mySELF every step of the way.
Is it possible in this new space of WE there is even more space for me to BE ME and show up 100%? To have the feisty, stubborn, gentle, fierce, soft, vulnerable, warrior me be fully seen and embraced? Am I willing to leap into what I don’t know I don’t know? In this breath the answer is YES!
Until the next time!
Awesome post Lisa. If folks need the Coles notes version all they have to read is the last paragraph. Vulnerability=courage…the courage to show up and be seen, to choose ourselves in the context of all the ‘we’ relationships in our lives.