It’s taken a long time for me to recognize that the challenging things that have happened (and continue to happen) in my life are designed for my benefit. For most of my life I could not see them as such, and only in this past decade have I been able to remember this wisdom as I move through challenges.
I spent years in an intimate relationship with someone who wanted to dim my light, who rejected the parts of me that others enjoyed and pushed me to the edges of myself. The pain and suffering that arose from that relationship, the friends that left because I was too much to handle in my pain, and the constant fighting was exhausting.
Yet, that person and relationship have become one of the biggest spiritual teachers of my life. I learned to hold myself and to take care of the things that make me shine. I didn’t learn for external benefits, but for what it provided my emotional health – teaching me that taking care of the things in me that bring me joy and that feel good are important. Without learning that when I did, I would have spent many more years tolerating behavior from others that diminished my sense of worth.
I would have spent years not believing I was worthy of the things that bring enjoyment in my life. That other people’s needs were more important than my own.
My anxiety would have become more constant, I would have struggled with feeling uncomfortable in social situations, and I would have been less likely to try new and avoided uncomfortable opportunities.
I would have given my needs over to others over and over again. I would have felt small, depressed, resentful, bitter, and discontent in my life.
The things in our life that bring us sorrow, that ravage our hearts and destroy our perceptions of ourselves are meant to shake us out of our slumber. They are meant to awaken the spirit within us, to connect us to what is meant to be learned in this lifetime. They’re here to teach us how to be more loving to ourselves and find compassion when rage is taking the front seat.
We will either spend our lives caught feeling like we have to fight for ourselves or that we’re the victims of our lives. It’s not that we aren’t ever victims of unfortunate circumstances, it’s that we have to make a choice every time we experience difficulty, and when we experience immense devastation it may feel impossible to lift ourselves out of it.
Yet, we have to choose not to believe we have to be in a constant state of protection. We have to choose to unpack the lessons we take from the hardships. This however happens with time, not in the darkest part of the experience. Even when those things seem impossible to overcome.
Our freedom is found not by living without consequence, not by being able to do whatever we want or having an endless flow of money. Our freedom is found from the confines of our own pain, when we’re able to heal and take the learnings to make us softer and more expansive. Our freedom gets lost when we allow our pain to diminish our dreams and stop us from experiencing pleasure and joy because we feel like we need to be on the defensive and protect ourselves.
We can’t learn these lessons by preventing the hard stuff from happening, and we can’t learn by protecting ourselves. We must go through the hard things in order to learn the teachings meant for us. There simply is no other way.
Uncertainty isn’t here to teach us to be more controlling or to micromanage the people in our lives or our environment. It’s meant to teach us how to let go, to release our grip on life, to learn to trust that we are capable of picking ourselves up, healing and eventually growing into the next iteration of ourselves.
The world is becoming more unpredictable and unstable; the economy is unsteady and climate change is forcing our hands and teaching us some unbelievably hard lessons. Our job is to learn to flow with and not against, to take the lessons and not forget what’s happening and what has happened.
We cannot hope that others will advocate for our needs, we need to become voices of change, to find ways to not to lead from fear but to heed the lessons and dismantle blame by becoming agents for change.
Whether it’s in small aspects of your life, or in the broader context of community governance or greater government, find ways to heal and use that healing for good. If we show up having learned the lessons, we will move through the world in gentler ways. This is a more expansive way of being that affects those around us.
If we do that, we won’t need tragedy to show each other that we’re there for each other. We’ll be able to use small day-to-day moments to show up.
love, Noelle