Here is a brilliant podcast with Elizabeth Gilbert that will resonate with so many!
The conversation literally transformed the way I saw my "hard" journey of being estranged from my family. AND, how it does't mean I am a hard person. While I know how difficult so many encounters and relationship endings have been, I think I have held myself accountable. And, in doing that, I subconsciously was a very hard person.
While my soul cried.
Perhaps my biggest fear is that I do have a cold cold heart.
That, the very reason there is space between us, is that I have done something wrong.
This, I believe has come from being the person to walk gently as to not ruffle feathers, to be the 'kind' person in dysfunction.
As I walked softly with them, my truth was held in - deeply.
So, as I now let my truth out, and I am seen as cold. I believed it. I believed it due to the fact of all my years in dysfunction, where I did so much to be seen as one with a soft warm heart.
For them to see my soft warm heart.
Waiting for them to feel me - when I myself wasn't completely convinced I was nice.
Kind.
Soft.
We were somehow taught that doing what is right is hard...and that we have to be hard, or tough, to do it.
But, what Elizabeth and Amy Purdy were saying is that we can bring our vulnerability to something hard. Or, as Penelope said, she would dance from her heart.
Sadly, ever so sadly for me, is that speaking my truth, isn't to be hard or mean. Nor does it mean I have no heart.
What I guess hurts the most with my last estrangement and, probably with all, was that it was because I cared, that I had a soft heart, that I have spoken what is true.
How the sorrow drips because, as I had said before, I wasn't an asshole.
I wasn't the one who was distant or disengaged or unplugged from family. I was the one in the mix. My inner nature was/is a soft hearted caring person.
I saw a little girl today pushing her younger sibling...or two. She was small. She was bright. She was smiling with a gap-toothed grin. She waves like we are best friends. She pushes her siblings. She herself is so small. Tears came to my eyes and a lump in my throat that she is me. There are quite a few children in her home, and I see her in a role that was once Me. We are one.
I have to acknowledge to myself that the image I saw today is who I am.
Innocently in my childhood picking up the slack, carrying, walking, helping my siblings that I loved.
That still stands today.
I know, that my absence for 12 years isn't seen as love; but hate. Not soft but hard.
What is the softest but hardest thing you can do when it comes to abuse?
As they see me now and in years to come, will I always be remembered as the hard one. Not the soft one. Will even my last estrangement forget the million conversations that were not hard hearted but soft. Hard to sometimes speak - but my heart was always open. Vulnerable until the last conversation was I - in my truth.
This is the key I was looking for.
The image of the blonde little girl pushing so joyfully her siblings.
She wasn't hitting them.
Neglecting them.
But being a second mom.
A child/second mom, who was innocent; until abused.
And who broken that silence; which was her hardest walk.
Knowing, as she was doing it, it would be the very thing, that would change their hearts.
Change Their hearts.
Not mine.
I am still the little girl inside of me, doing the heavy lifting, that is much too big for me.
And, it is much harder to be estranged with a soft heart.
Thanks Elizabeth Gilbert and your magic lessons. How powerful they are!
Moksha means - "Release from the cycle of rebirth impelled by the law of karma.
the transcendent state attained as a result of being released from the cycle of rebirth.
Released from my dysfunctional belief that I was born with a hard heart.
My soft heart cries...
