Are we are afraid to say with frank earnestness, honesty and humility that our actions are selfish? They are filled with our needs of expression, acceptance, love, reassurance, respect, contribution and any of the other unnamed needs we have.

Each act is us asking for and our offering of the fulfillment of needs.

The fear that we will be seen as selfish and that our asking or our offering will meet with rejection, keeps us afraid of seeing the people we are.

When we accept our selfishness and no longer label it, our earnestness, honesty and humility are displayed.

photo credit: Alex E. Proimos

I was thinking about something, important. And instead of writing it down, I chose to finish honoring my vanity with libations and attention and potions.

I find beauty in the facets of my being, yet because I chose to honor vanity instead of my thoughts, I have lost the trail of the important thing I was thinking to share.

I meant and intended to write it down, when I finished with vanity, of course.

And maybe that’s what I needed instead, to submit that while vanity still exists it exits via lines drawn where smiles are held until bellies burst and eyes cry with laughter.

It exits around the eyes, just under the indentation of the nose, at the upper lips corners and creases into a neck no longer a tightly laced thing.

It exits even though I try to tempt it into staying with with ministrations of potions designed to replace and replenish what is daily, hourly lost.

Maybe that’s enough of vanity and it’s time for her to leave.

Yes I fear being without her. She is my outer facing self. Keeping me safe from true connection. She impresses you. Hopes you remember her, while another facet of myself is securing the means to buy into the reinvigorating reinvented serum my inner cells need to for remembrance.

Vanity gave me false power and ego usurped it, realizing it could move us to greater heights through a simulacra of unabashed youthfulness.

Aging lies in wait, with regrets, resignation and hardness, a callous disregard or it can be made fun and held lightly.

The message originally being woven in my thoughts is gone. Where is my vanity?

photo credit: angrylambie1

To do a scary thing, if it’s hard, takes all our imaginative, creative and disciplined will power, plus most of our emotional strength. Not to mention the physical toll.

And if we’re willing to do that hard thing for even five minutes day after day, we’ll find that the five minutes becomes five hours before we know it.

And that five hours will begin to happen in a single day in the blink of an eye. Well maybe not a blink, but faster than you believe right now.

Yet it’s the first five seconds which are the hardest of all.

Because, before we’ve started and just after we’ve committed, we imagine the first few seconds are going to be painfully, excruciatingly hard. The worst of the scary.

If we stick with doing the hard for five minutes, we’ll find that even though the scary doesn’t go away, it’s not so concentrated, when we spread it out over time.

At least that’s what I’m finding.

I’m also finding that doing something which is easy afterwards, like washing the dishes or folding the clothes, helps me process the feelings I had while doing the five minutes of scary. I didn’t say fun exactly but who has to think about how to wash a dish or fold a towel.

It’s what moves the five minutes up to the five hours, over time, if we’ll, I’ll,  just keep doing it.

photo credit: Menage a Moi

Money doesn’t equal success unless you say, specifically – yeah you reading right now, unless you specifically say money equals success AND you believe it.

And you have a definite amount defined and can say, “I made the amount I set out to make. I am now a success.” After which you’ll say, “Hmm what’s the next success I’d like to achieve?”

So if you haven’t said it and you don’t believe it, who has defined your success for you?

Have you defined it? Or is it more likely you’ve defaulted to happenstance, accepting the definitions of success others have?

If you have defined it, is it a large amorphous, ever changing definition? One you’ll never reach?

Or maybe it’s vague and uncertain, hazy and shoved in the back corner of the farthest reaches of your mind while you strive to keep the lights on in a house and gas in the cars other people believe you should have?

Who will think you’re not being successful if you don’t have what you’re supposed have? You, them or both of you because you’ve accepted something that isn’t exactly true for or fulfilling to you?

Who defined what your success for you?

How are you going to reach the vague hazy and uncertain success you’re striving for? And how are you know when you achieve it?

Define your success for yourself. Design the actions you need to take to reach your success.

If you won’t do it, the following people will gladly do it for you.

Your boss. Your spouse. Your children. Your parents. Your friends.

If you believe they are more capable of defining and designing your success, they’ll be happy to do it for you.

photo credit: jason_shipps

I’m waking up.

I’m remembering how much of a good girl I was.

Good girls don’t tell tall tales.
Good girls keep their secrets.
Good girls deal with their shame and pain in silence.
Good girls feel are less than when others learn about it.
Good girls believe if they’d only been better good girls it wouldn’t have happened.
Good girls forget and forgive and forget until they die or kill themselves with food, sex, drugs, religion.
Good girls take what is given to them.
Good girls don’t ask for what they need or want.
Good girls don’t get angry.
Good girls don’t rage.
Good girls don’t seethe.
Good girls don’t back talk.
Good girls do as they are told.
Good girls listen to everyone else except themselves.
Good girls live and die good girls, lost and troubled unless they wake up.

And I’m waking up. I’m forgiving myself.

For so long I believed if I had been a better good girl, that I needed to be a better good girl and I’d be okay.

I wasn’t.

I’m working on forgiving myself for believing I caused the abuse and the abuse is my shame, because it is not my shame.

Even if I never remember all the aspects of the abuse at the age of 3 or 7 or 12 or 16 because remembering it then was too much for my psyche and remembering it now makes me feel deeply into emotional reservoirs overflowing their banks, I can still choose.

And I choose to be me. I choose as I chose then, to do whatever is necessary for all of the parts of me to continue learning, growing, experiencing and being alive.

Then it meant forgetting, pretending. living behind a mask. And I needed that, then. I didn’t know about the other choices, until I did.

I knew then I needed to stay alive.

I know now I need the joy inherent in finding solutions, uncovering paths, showing people their power. Showing it to myself. I find peace and pieces of myself in seeing a way and exploring possibilities.

I find self validation through being who I am as a unique individual, who is valid just like you are in this crazy mixed up world we live in.

I can no longer pretend. I can no longer hide behind being scared and ashamed of who I am and who I was and will be. I can no longer tell the story I’ve been telling and use it to hide my light, shed my power.

I’m smart, funny, sometimes a little raw and most definitely intense. I love sex. I doubt myself. I cry. I smile easily. I am beautiful. I listen with my ears, my knowing, my heart and my soul.

Sometimes I don’t listen at all.

I rage and I seethe when I need to do so. I will no longer hold it in, although if I’m raging and seething and you can see me, know you are trusted.

I rage on behalf of the good little girl who has yet to realize how much rage she wasn’t allowed to release. We’re learning.

I seethe for the time we lost together then and now.

And each time, after I’m on the other side of raging and seething, I find more release from the shame I was conditioned to cling to and claim as my own.

It’s an ongoing process and each release brings me back to my power, my dreams and hopes and aspirations, my compassion and an even stronger desire to be alive completely.

And I find I have to learn again, how to interact with that power, with my dreams, with my hopes, with my desires, my compassion, with a more complete me, even as I sense the parts of me still in hiding.

When I acknowledge the act of shielding those parts of me as a necessary action and I forgive myself for hiding away and keeping myself safe then, I am awed.

Even then the power coursed through me. I didn’t know what it was.

I’ve always been complete.

You’ve always been complete.

We don’t always remember yet in our head, heart and body. Our soul always remembers.

What really happens when we forget in our head? In our heart? In our body?

photo credit: jenny downing