Love knows no master.
It is the sole sovereign of a heart.
Willingly one becomes its captive
and gladly serves its needs.
No bondage is more sought after.
No chains are more happily received.
James Browning
Lessons learned the hard way
The Hardest Lessons
Things will change:
you won’t feel this way forever.
And anyway, sometimes the hardest lessons
to learn are the ones your soul needs most.
I believe you can’t feel real joy
unless you’ve felt heartache.
You can’t have a sense of victory
unless you know what it means to fail.
Kelly Cutrone
Knowing Yourself
Knowing yourself
is the beginning
of all wisdom.
Aristotle
A Heart Most Longing
The problem when you are a strong, capable, self-confident person, is that more often than not, people think that you don’t really need things like comfort, reassurance, loyalty and guidance. People are more likely to look at you and say, “She (He) doesn’t need this”, “She (He) doesn’t need that”, “She’s (He’s) already all of this and all of that”. But then the truth is that most probably, you are a strong, capable, self-confident person because you built yourself brick-by-brick into that person; because you HAD to BECOME that person; because you had determination enough to make yourself into the image that you knew you needed to become. At the heart of many strong, confident people, is a heart most longing of the things that most others simply take for granted. C. Joybell C.
What You See
The Way You Think About Yourself
“You can’t hate your way into loving yourself” is a line I came across recently. It stopped me in my tracks because I tried that.. a lot. Boy, did I! My self-loathing was long, pervasive and strong. Too much about me I found fault with for far, far too long.
That habit (and it is a habit) is not completely gone, but greatly diminished today. It took gritting my teeth and fighting my own BS over and over and over. But in time I got better. More acceptance of me just the way I am arrived slowly but surely.
For so long I looked outside me to fix what was in. My #1 way of trying to cure myself was through relationships… many of them. I saw their faults and amplified them, while diminishing my own. Finding fault repeatedly, even unnecessarily, within a love relationship will eventually either drive the person away or at the least will wound the love that is shared.
I had to learn:
1. The moment you realize that the person you cared for has nothing intellectually or spiritually to offer you, but a headache.
2. The moment you realize God had greater plans for you that don’t involve crying at night or sad.
3. The moment you stop comparing yourself to others because it undermines your worth, education and your parent’s wisdom.
4. The moment you live your dreams, not because of what it will prove or get you, but because that is all you want to do. People’s opinions don’t matter.
5. The moment you realize that no one is your enemy, except yourself.
6. The moment you realize that you can have everything you want in life. However, it takes timing, the right heart, the right actions, the right passion and a willingness to risk it all. If it is not yours, it is because you really didn’t want it, need it or God prevented it.
7. The moment you realize the ghost of your ancestors stood between you and the person you loved. They really don’t want you mucking up the family line with someone that acts anything less than honorable.
8. The moment you realize that happiness was never about getting a person. They are only a helpmate towards achieving your life mission.
9. The moment you believe that love is not about losing or winning. It is just a few moments in time, followed by an eternity of situations to grow from.
10. The moment you realize that you were always the right person. Only ignorant people walk away from greatness. Shannon L. Alder
In the book “There Is Nothing Wrong with You: Going Beyond Self-Hate” Cheri Huber wrote “If you had a person in your life treating you the way you treat yourself, you would have gotten rid of them a long time ago…” Why it took so long to see that I will never know.
Today I am grateful to have healthy self-esteem. I don’t get on my own case like I used to. Oh, yes the judge and jury in my head is still there, I just keep them out for recess most of the time. I am very grateful for that learned ability.
The way you think about yourself
determines your reality.
You are not being hurt by the way
people think about you.
Many of those people are
a reflection of how
you think about yourself.
Shannon L. Alder
You Have to….
Life will break you.
Nobody can protect you from that,
and living alone won’t either,
for solitude will also break you with its yearning.
You have to love.
You have to feel.
It is the reason you are here on earth.
You are here to risk your heart.
You are here to be swallowed up.
And when it happens that you are broken,
or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near,
let yourself sit by an apple tree
and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps,
wasting their sweetness.
Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.
Louise Edrich “The Painted Drum”
Simple Wisdom
Sometimes the easiest to understand grains of wisdom are the best. I am glad and grateful to read this as I start my new week!
May you live
every day
of your life.
Jonathan Swift
May Wounds Become Wisdom
Through yesterday, goodmorninggratitude.com contains one thousand and three individual posts in Eighty-four categories; some inspired, others filling space and lots in between. One hundred eighty-six thousand thirty-six unique individuals have visited since late April of 2011.
I thought I was tired of writing GMG or had simply run out of material. In recent months I have been guilty the majority of mornings or either avoiding posting or filling space with something borrowed. I lost my way.
After having held back for a while, I realize how much is missing from my daily existence when I don’t share. Certainly there are days when the best thing I can do is wait till the next morning or the one after to share, but to go much longer is not a healthy thing for me.
Since my healing from codependence, childhood trauma and compulsion began in earnest in 2006 (thankfully addiction never spun into my issues), a big part of my recovery has been a Codependence Anonymous twelve step group. There my open sharing of what I had never spoken about before and being accepted without judgment was more than half of mending. And likewise, so has this blog been part of my cure.
Now I see just how important emptying my heart, mind and soul are, not just at my regular CoDA meeting, but here as well. What is shared, is made more bearable. What is shown to the light of day loses most of its force as a monster. It is the bearing of my deepest self that has healed me and keeps me healing.
And so, it is with knowledge that rejuvenation of this blog is not a “can’t not do” I recommit myself. That’s how recovery works: get a little lost sometimes, re-find the way and begin again. Or my CoDA friend Carl likes to say, “Fall down, get up and try again”.
For whatever bit of good my sharing might do I am thankful. But much more of my gratefulness is for other’s acceptance of me as the imperfect being I am.
May Light always surround you;
Hope kindle and rebound you.
May your Hurts turn to Healing;
Your Heart embrace Feeling.
May Wounds become Wisdom;
Every Kindness a Prism.
May Laughter infect you;
Your Passion resurrect you.
May Goodness inspire
your Deepest Desires.
Through all that you Reach For,
May your arms Never Tire.
D. Simone
Out of Your Mind
In order to have a successful relationship
you need to put out of your mind
any lessons learned from previous relationships
because if you carry a sensitivity or fear with you,
you won’t be acting freely
and you won’t let yourself be really known.
In order to have a successful relationship
it is essential that both people
be completely open and honest.
Susan Polis Schutz
Good Morning Gratitude 