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.