"With Grace and Ease..."

So. Time to start working on this blog, here. I've got a lot to say, and feel like I still haven't wrapped my brain around it enough to really convey it properly.

I went to a women's ceremony (native american medicine circle.. thing.. I don't really know the proper name for it) up north on Tuesday. The day or two before that I was really falling back into my stress and depression again.. still not to the degree that I did before, and I doubt I EVER will to that degree again, because once you've seen "the light" (don't laugh) it's hard to deny it. It would be going against everything I know now to allow myself to fall into that pit.

First of all -- women are AMAZING. we females really need to start to feel and form more of a sense of community and equality with each other. I'm so tired of the competition, back stabbing, etc... this came up in the circle too, that it's so hard to feel comraderie with women these days because it's all a competition, because of our own insecurities.
Let me tell you, in that teepee? Everyone's an equal. The 23 yr old who's never been on her own. The drug addict, the survivor of heinous crimes and witness to horrific pain. Everyone. College girls, motel managers, medicine women.. we're all THE SAME. Some of us are a few ceremonies ahead of each other, but we're all stumbling along on the same path. We've all felt the same pain. In there, masks are off, truth is out, and it's.. purely magic, to be on equal ground. To give and receive absolute love and support from someone who may have been a stranger 5 minutes before.
To hear stories that humble you, that mirror you, that cause you to look into your own soul and see both the things you need to really look at and evaluate, and the things that you should allow to absolutely shine.

What I learned from this? It's hard, so hard to put into words. But I can say that it's .. humbled me. To a place of absolute gratitude for my life, for those who love me in their own stumbling, wonderful ways. For those who have HURT me.. yes, I mean that. For everyone who has played their part in my life exactly the way that I was asking them to through my actions and intentions at the time, to teach me the lessons I had to learn.
I'm honored that my children chose me to be their mother, despite my many flaws... I'm in so much love with the beauty that they are.

I want to stop saying the word "learn" because the fact is that it's really, we have just spent our whole lives burying the truth. With things other people project onto us, say to us... we take all of that on and turn into someone that we maybe never intended to at all. We believe those things, and become them.
It is, perhaps, that we need to UN-learn all the UN-truths that we have come to believe, and that is where we find the truth. Within ourselves. It's already there.

In the words of Osho, "You become that which you think you are. Or, it is not that you become it, but that the idea gets very deeply rooted - and that's what all conditioning is."

As one of the beautiful women there pointed out, why the HELL have we all allowed someone (or many someones) to shape us? Why do we never realize, why aren't we TAUGHT that we can choose exactly who we want to be, what we want to draw into our lives, and how to respond to the lessons that we are blessed with? Why are we so obsessed with 20 years ago, when someone told us we were stupid, or not good enough, or not pretty enough... or a year ago, when someone said I was too messy... or 5 years ago, when someone said I wasn't pretty without makeup.. or WHATEVER. WHY?! It's NOT MY BUSINESS what anyone else thinks of me. It's their business. My business is what I think of me, and what I want to be.

It's sooo incredibly important (and incredible, when I achieve it) to live in the PRESENT, to be my authentic self and to love ME. To stop looking back on the past and mourning it, obsessing over it, letting it be who I am? TODAY is all there really is. And it's so simple. Tomorrow hasn't happened yet. If the last 23 years of my life wasn't what I wanted it to be.. if I wasn't who I wanted to be.. if I fucked things up and I hate who I was, then I can choose to change who I've been, and do things different from this moment on. I can't change anyone else thinks or says, but I can be better, and know that which I am, and honor myself. I am beautiful, I am powerful, and despite my own stumbling, I'm VERY much a valuable person and spirit in this world. I can help people tremendously with gifts I've been blessed with. I have two children who bless me daily. I can be better, do more, learn more, and draw more that I desire into my life every moment.

I must admit that stepping back into the real world after an experience like that is a little bit of a let-down. You remember.. people backstab, people judge.. people are insecure and struggling themselves, and that comes out in ways that hurts everyone involved. But we're all in different places on our journeys, and I have to respect that and try to remember.. it's not my business what they think of me. I can call on those beautiful hours I spent in a tent full of many very different spirits who all came together in understanding, love, and pure non-judgment and try to create that atmosphere in my own family, first, and the rest of my life as well.
"Life just keeps on Life-ing", as someone so aptly spoke. It is only us who can change the way we live it....

With grace, and ease. Aho.