Tender of Heart and Wild of Spirit

“The bravest are the most tender; the loving are the daring.” ~ Bayard Joseph Taylor

How can we protect our tender hearts, whilst fighting for their freedom? How do we remain soft amongst tall walls and sharp arrows? How do we find the courage to love in a world which tries to keep us small?

It can be disheartening to operate openly and unapologetically, with our hearts on our sleeves, in a world that encourages us to keep barriers up and emotions unavailable.

We are told to suck it up, grow a thick skin and hold our chin up, when all we want to do is let our passions, anxieties, ecstasies, joys and dreams cascade into the world like water tumbling over a waterfall.

For those of us whose complexity of feeling cuts deep like rivers through mountains, I believe that to feel so intensely is, paradoxically, what sets us free. To experience the ecstatic joys and the bitter lows and everything in between is to live from the heart.

To swim in the oceans of our emotions and sensations is to experience all there is to be alive.

Remember that there is so much strength in kindness, courage in connection and bravery in tears; these qualities are the elixir that feeds our wild spirits — the fire that burns brightly in our beating hearts and breathes life into our weary souls.

In order to survive in this world, instead of surrendering to its sharpness, we must stay soft by loving and living, fiercely yet gently. We can’t let others’ swords cut the words from our mouth or extinguish the fires in our heart.

We don’t have to play make-believe or hide behind masks of indifference in order to be seen as strong. We must rise in the warmth of our passions like the phoenix, out of the ashes of discomfort and spread our wild wings in a display of defiance and beauty.

It is the open-hearted, the ones who feel so much, who can heal this world, because they have the strength and courage to heal themselves first.

If we find ourselves in a balancing act between outer strength and inner peace, it is often because we mistake our expressions of emotion for limitations, rather than opportunities for growth. We forget that the fragility of crystal is a fineness, not a weakness.

“I have always appeared to be fragile and delicate but the thing is, I am not fragile and I am not delicate. I am very gentle but I can show you that the gentle also possess a poison. I compare myself to silk. People mistake silk to be weak but a silk handkerchief can protect the wearer from a gunshot.” ~ C Joybell C

Are we not all, really, a little bit in awe of what lies within us? Do we hide away our feelings, not because we’re afraid they make us weak, but because we are afraid of their power? Are we not all alchemists who can transform stone hearts into gold?

If we share the sacred act of feeling openly, by showing others we are capable of, and comfortable with, loving, hurting, grieving, following our passions, breaking and mending, by doing so, we give each other permission to do the same.

Our true freedom, our wildness, lies in our ability to recognize ourselves as perfectly imperfect, wonderfully flawed yet ultimately magic.

It lies in our ability to own our shit, whether that be loving so hard that you think your heart may burst, time and time again, or accepting that you will cry tears of joy or pain, often and unashamedly. Because that’s how you own your emotions.

You aren’t afraid of them, you’re not afraid of your heart and its messy ways, or your ability to recognize your own pain, or your delicious enthusiasm for wanting to make the world better and brighter and more real, somehow. That’s what you bring to the world. And it’s beautiful.

The moment we let go of our fear of being seen for who we really are, in all our glory, we give ourselves permission to step into our strength, and let our hearts open just that little bit more each day.

To me, the most beautiful thing you can own in this world, and the most faithful ally, is an open heart. An open heart allows total freedom and wildness of spirit because it is comfortable with its expression. There is no fear, only love.

And we all know what happens when we are in a state of love; magic happens,  dreams become realized, synchronicities abound, and life unfolds effortlessly.

If the only way out is through, then the real journey of life is one of the soul; to navigate the depths of our deepest longings, desires, pains and fears and listen to their wisdom, to feel them deeply and express them confidently; to not be afraid of where they will lead us because where they will lead us is where we’re destined to be.

It is possible to be both tender and wild, soft and strong, full of passion and full of peace. We simply need to give ourselves permission to be this way — a beautiful mix of yin and yang, of masculine and feminine, of light and dark.

We can weave ourselves between softness and fierceness, remaining kindhearted and gentle, whilst our spirits soar wild and free like birds, finding their way home.

Tender Heart

My tender heart, it feels so much.

It fills and flows and leaps and jumps

It surges and pounds and aches and breaks

It determines decisions that I must make

My tender heart, my precious source

My sweet serenity, my deep remorse

It answers questions not yet asked

A house of truth, it wears no mask.

My tender heart, it beats and bleeds

To satisfy the soul it feeds

It loves so much, I’m sure it’ll burst:

An overflowing cup, to quench infinite thirst.

My tender heart I give you peace

On days when hurt appears not to cease.

I offer you strength, a place of calm

A gentle wisdom, amid the storm.

My tender heart, please speak your truth

Your knowledge from within the ego’s sheath.

I’ll offer you sweetly with trust and grace;

So that I may know eternal solace.

Poem “Tender Heart”, written by Zoe, was originally published in Journey of the Heart: Spiritual Poetry by Women

Write Your Own Path to Happy

You are the sum of your experiences.

So they say.

We are told that we are a part-nurtured, part-natured walking product of everything we’ve been through and everything we believe to be true within and without of ourselves. We are a collection of memories, subconscious influences and belief systems which gradually mold us into the folks we are today.

We are warned that we carry the burden of all the unkind words and unfair judgments that we have ever received, that we harbor all our previous moments of personal anguish, and that we embody all the false hopes and misguided truths which we have learned and which we must un-learn in order to find true happiness.

However…

… are we not, therefore, the product of all of our positive experiences too? Are we not carrying around the satisfaction of every heartfelt compliment and word of encouragement?

Are we not resonating with every kind smile, every yet-to-be-realized dream and every moment of pure joy which linger inside of us, waiting to be recalled and re-lived to remind us of how amazing we really are?

I believe that for every breakdown, there is a breakthrough. For every put-down, there is a great big hoist-up, and for every thunderstorm, there is a rainbow that follows.

In essence, we are strong, we are determined and we are hopeful. At our core, we believe that there is always something to aim for, be that true love, contentment… success… or heaven. We are unified in our common pursuit for more, for better, for what we feel we deserve.

For every insult you endured, I can bet you have received a compliment. For every rejection you survived, you have achieved some form of success, and for every time you forgot how to believe in yourself, you were shocked by the realization that you had more faith than you ever gave yourself credit for. For every time you have been lost… you have also been found.

You always picked yourself up and carried on. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here now.

We dwell on the times we fell, we lost and we were hurt. We hold on to our wounds like battered reminders of our failings — anti-trophies of our battles and defeats. But what of all the many times we smiled, we won and we saved ourselves, over and over again?

Where are our proud medals of personal success and gold-starred acknowledgements of our sweet victories and triumphs?

We are resilient and strong, and it’s about time we remembered this. We should be laying wreaths at the altars of the beautiful days we have lived.

I choose to let myself be the person I am, and the person I am proud of becoming. I choose to remember the sheer number of times my breath has been stolen by sunsets and sunrises, the oceans and mountains.

I choose to be influenced by the kindness of strangers who have continuously shined out to me like a beacon of hope in the chaos of humanity.

I choose not to be broken by the words which went against me, but instead choose to be strengthened by thepower of those which lifted me up and filled my heart with hope and my soul with joy.

I have decided to be carried by the river of love which runs through me, not by the fickle breeze of judgment and contempt which, at some stage, blows amongst us all.

Our whole lives are based on choice, it is what set us apart from other animals. We all have souls that need to survive but the difference is, we have a choice; we don’t have to just survive, we can live, we can thrive and we can be inspired.

We can choose what to leave behind and what no longer serves us. We have a privilege and, therefore, a right to be able to carry with us only that which benefits us — be it memories, friends, lovers or experiences.

“How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depends directly on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences. Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe.”

~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Why should we carry the responsibility of the burden of our pasts when we can choose to leave it behind?

Let’s try to take only with us the softness, the warmth and the kindness that each of us has and will continue to experience, and be  more selective with the past we choose to carry; therefore, the life we choose to live.

If I am the sum of my experiences, then I choose to be built out of the multitudes of dreams that reside inside my heart and the many sunny days that I have woken up to.

I choose to be a product of all the magical times that my soul has connected with another’s, and the plethora of smiles I have received from strangers. I choose to be a grand medley of the times I have loved others and been loved myself.

I choose to embody the sum of the parts of me constructed from perseverance, determination and hope, rather than an amalgamation of my memories of fear and shame.

My self-confidence is more reliant on how I choose to see myself, than how others choose to see me.

My self-belief is dependent on the importance I place on my own dreams, not the willingness of others to support them.

The love I have for myself is home-grown and self-appointed and is based  on the gradual collection of experiences in which I have taken growth and strength as an outcome, not self-pity.

{Photo via pinterest.com}

We have two options in this short and sweet life of ours: We can blame others for who or where we are today, or we can take responsibility for our own happiness. We are the lead character in the story of our lives… Select the plot you want, drop what you don’t. The rest is fantasy.

It’s true that we are the sum of our experiences… but only those we choose to cherish. Remember the good and forget the rest.

Life’s too short not to.

Beautiful when naked: revealing our inner selves

We wear masks. 

We are afraid of who we really are and what people will think of us. We often walk around with painted faces and disguised truths so that we may be accepted. So that the world might think we are normal, just like everyone else. So that we fit in

We have become so adept at cunning deceptions, that we are living in a fantasy land of characters, all dressed up and script written. People see what we let them see. We show people the sides of us we think they will like, the personality traits we think will make us accepted.

We are afraid of reality, vulnerability and ‘weakness’. But real strength comes from knowing yourself truly, in all your perfect imperfection; your flawed glory, and being OK with that.  

I can’t play make believe with a society who deems it unacceptable to stand out from the crowd, and by this, I don’t mean wearing bright clothes, or being eccentric. By this I mean from feeling and showing emotions and questioning things, expressing myself fully and openly.

To love yourself in all your aspects is to accept yourself for everything you really are; your shadows and your light, your strengths and your weaknesses. Awareness of who you are is the most beautiful aspect of human life.

Awareness and vulnerability is the real strength of character and says more about a person than the symmetry of their face or the clothes they wear.

Reality is sexy and truth is an aphrodisiac; Taking off your clothes is one thing, but to take off your mask and show your true self is the most erotic strip tease; the soul shines and is more desirable than the flesh that is exposed.

Let’s take off our masks and reveal our naked truth, in all its gorgeous glory.

Own Your Shadow

“The brightest flame casts the darkest shadow.”

~ George RR Martin

In a world that bombards us with numerous ways to ‘find happiness’ whilst simultaneously prescribing and sedating us with antidotes to depression, anxiety and other such modern and mindful problems, we are left in a perpetual state of flux.

We want to be happy, more than anything, and why not? But we are consistently encouraged to chase happiness yet reject and medicate our suffering.

We are encouraged to seek the light yet avoid and ignore the rumbles of heart ache, the painful whispers from the depths of our souls.

But what of this darkness that lurks within each one of us? What becomes of that?

Within each one of us lies our inner source, our peace and what I believe to be our highest self; this ‘light within’ holds our wisdom, our capacity to love fully, with vulnerability, our power and our truth. I like to think of it as a beautiful rose, which we nurture and grow so that it blooms and blossoms and the fuller the flower, the closest to our true self we our becoming.

“In Light there is Dark, and in Dark there is Light.” ~ Kami Garcia

But what of our shadows? There can be no light without its counterpart; A Shadow only forms when the sun shines bright.

We hold in each of us the remnants of old wounds from childhood or the aching emergence of adolescence where our hearts and heads are at war with our bodies and we’re peering at the world, blinking and blushing with awkward innocence. We hold in us fears and failures, shame and regret.

For some these shadows lurk silently, emerging only very sporadically, in the heat of a raging argument with a loved one, or perhaps allowed to bubble unwittingly to the surface after too many glasses of wine.

For others they are as present as a heart beat or the blink of an eye. The merkyness lingers and weaves between the everyday exchanges with friends, families, lovers, strangers – it coils itself around the heart and the throat – a persistent reminder of its loitering presence.

In the pursuit of happiness we cover and consume and suffocate these fears in the hope that once the embers are extinguished, our light will shine bright and nirvana will be reached – we grapple and fight with our shadows, our innermost pain, we shove it away and muffle its voice – we deny its very presence in the hope that that it won’t one day engulf us and diminish our chances of contentment.

“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.” ~ Mark Twain

 But what if we stand up to our shadows and name them out loud, completely and utterly acknowledge them and own them? We must call their existence into being and accept their presence – look deep into their dark eyes and say ‘I know you, you’re real, you’re within me.’

The miraculous thing is that when we acknowledge our darkness it takes away its power. Fear only has power when you resist it, when there is a struggle. The resistance is the power you give your shadow in order for the menacing darkness to become overwhelming.

There is a beautiful release about realising the qualities of your shadow self and showing no judgement, and offering unconditional love and acceptance towards its presence. We cherish our most attractive and positive qualities and the lightness we show the world, but we are encouraged to cover our failings and our innermost depths.

These are the things that make us vulnerable – these are the things that make us real. These qualities that exist from hurt or trauma or grief are what make us whole – they are the shadows to our light, the darkness to our brightness, and they need to be recognised and cherished and nurtured and shown love and compassion and understanding.

Shadows may seem scary when you’re afraid of the dark but in reality they are just by-products of light. Our most powerful transformation takes place after periods of pain or suffering – the brighter we shine, the darker our shadows have been or still are.

We need to own our shadows, show them love and respect and that way they will become subtle trajectories towards our peace.

 “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” ~ Rumi