I have always had a love affair with the written word, they are my escape and I often use words to help me get through lifes harder times. Two particular quotes have remained with me for a long time.
"Ring the bells that can still ring: Forget your perfect offering: There is a crack, a crack in everything: That is how the light gets in" - Leonard Cohen
"Ruin is a gift, Ruin is the path to transformation" - Elizabeth Gilbert
When your own life leads you to a path of ruin and you find yourself shattered into a million different pieces on the floor, this is, I have discovered, your chance to leave behind the past and rebuild yourself. To focus on creating a life that is authentically beautiful to you. But first you need to face yourself.
It is not easy, not even a little bit. It is exhausting, it is hard, it is uncomfortable. It will break you into even more teeny tiny pieces as you start to leave behind negative thoughts, opinions and experiences you have collected along the way. For a while you won't do anything - you will sit in the depths of pain and grieve the loss of your dreams and beliefs. Things that you worked hard for, that you gave everything too, that were just not meant to be.
You will feel as though you are stuck in the midst of raging storm, huddling under a leaky tin roof, unable to see anything except for the sadness, the fear and the loss whirling around you in all its fury, trying with all its might to consume you whole. You must allow it in, all of it.
If you can sit with it and not run away, if you are patient with yourself, and allow the pain to crash over you like waves on the shore, you will begin to find moments of peace and clarity as the storm begins to dissipate. As the heavy, dark clouds clear you will look around you in awe, as you see the world you had once built up around you has disappeared.
Then, as though time has stood still, you will no longer be who you were while at the same time you are not yet who you are going to be either... and this can be one of the most profound, beautiful moments in your life.
In the stillness you begin to find yourself, you begin to hear the whispers of your soul as the little candle inside you begins to flicker. The trees, the flowers, the moon and the stars, they become brighter, bigger, vibrant, more fragrant as you look at the world through fresh eyes, as though you are meeting for the first time. You see beauty everywhere and your heart swells once again with hope and possibility.
It is here, in this moment, that you get to choose. Do you keep moving forward into the unknown, to a place of endless possibility or do you let fear drive you back to the familiar comfort of the past. You now get to decide which pieces of your shattered self you would like to keep and which to let go of.
Can you let go? Can you set your intentions and put your faith and trust in the universe. Can you believe you are worthy and allow space for surprises and miracles. Can you let go and take the first step.
Keeping in mind that the journey is where the magic lesson lies.
I am going to leave you with these beautiful words of wisdom
"Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as hard as spending our lives running away from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky nut not nearly as risky as giving up on love and belonging and joy - the experiences that make us most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light" Brene Brown
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