My He(ART)-Full Life



Monday, January 28, 2013

heroes of our own lives

For most of my life I have lived in the past and the future...rarely in the present. Heartbroken about my childhood and worried and fearful of my future. Slipping through the cracks and waiting for someone else...something else...to save me. Never once thinking that I could be my own hero! Are you like that? So many of us are. Living anywhere but the now and putting our hopes on someone else. 
  These days...I really try to be mindful of each step...this is life right here! Believing in ourSELVES, trusting in our possibility and potential takes work. I set an intention...at the start of each day, before I paint or write. I don't always succeed...but I try. It's a practice. I am here. now.



Poetry
By
Mary Oliver
"The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save 
the only life you could save."
                                     -Mary Oliver 

 Tara's 4th birthday is coming up in a few days and it has made me very emotional and nostalgic. Full of the smells and memories of pregnancy, birth and a love so wide it swallowed me up whole. My sweet girl...she conquered me.


"There's courage involved if you want
to become truth. 
There is a broken- open place in a lover. 
Where are those qualities of bravery and
sharp compassion in this group? What's the
use of old and frozen thought? 
I want a howling hurt. This is not a treasury
where gold is stored; this is for copper.
We alchemists look for talent that
can heat up and change. 
Lukewarm won't do. Halfhearted holding back,
well-enough getting by? Not here."
                                                     - Rumi
 
And so it is that we all are the heroes of our own lives. We have to be. And every step leads us to here...this place of NOW.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh wow! thank you!

laurie said...

you are a hero - for showing up, for speaking out, for moving forward. for loving and noticing and appreciating. life doesn't ask us for anything else. :-)

Jen @Sadie Inspired said...

Beautiful words and beautiful self portrait. Thank you always for your sweet words of encouragement. They go straight to the heart!