My best friend recently told me, “Susie, you are so serious”.  This struck me in the side like an 18-wheeler truck.  I began to think about myself in a new light.

Laughing in fun with myself is a lesson I have recently been taught through my own actions.  My frame of reference has been for such a long time, being the ‘good girl’, saying and doing the ‘right thing’.  With all of my recent transitions I’m seeing that I’m not always that ‘angel in white’, nor do I want to be.  My life has been filled with dramas, emotions, darkness, anger, fear…just like everyone else, despite my not liking or wanting this.

Juxtapose ‘clarity’ and ‘distance’ for a moment, as antonyms. Clarity brings clearness, lucidity, precision, transparency, while distance conveys coldness, detachment, reserve, and remoteness.  My practice recently has been one of giving things up, releasing, letting go of my identity as it has been for many years.  With that, the distance from myself is being renovated into more warmth, acceptance and laughter.  This is something I have been ‘working on’ for years, and now that I listen more with my heart rather than my ego, clarity is showing up.

Last week, I harvested onions from the garden. I felt a deep connection as I cleaned the soil from the nutrition rounds of deep purples, whites and yellows.  As I lay them in the sun to cure, I remembered a dream that I had several months ago about onions and a quiet sage-like man wearing a sunhat. “Onions are very complex, much like their many layers. You must really notice them to appreciate their beauty”, he shared.  Today I am peeling back my layers; what I’m learning is that I really like myself.  Hmmm!  All of those years of ‘trying to be a good person’ has taken me into a regime of mismanagement of myself, in some ways.  I’m not being hard on myself here…I’m just telling the truth, without judgment.  While on the outside I have seemed calm, cool, collective and grounded, on the inside I’ve gotten myself “into a real ‘mell of a hess’”, as my mom used to say.

The other thing that happened to me last week was that I found myself only wanting to clean, to clean my home, clean out my clothes, my closest, deeply dust, vacuum and wash the windows.  I couldn’t think of anything else.  Luckily, I gave myself permission to do these time-consuming tasks without fear of ‘not being productive’.

I cannot say that these last few weeks have been like a picnic on the beach.  The time has felt surreal.  What I have found in my noticing and following my urges, is that I am doing the ‘right’ thing.  My process has been comical when I think about it.

Letting go more and laughing with myself is becoming more comfortable.  I am only human and I do make mistakes. Now, I can say with a smile on my face that I do find it hard sometimes to admit my own slip-ups, but that gives me another opportunity to notice my ego at play against my heart.

Today, for the first time in awhile, I feel clearer, like I am beginning anew.  As I let go, clean, and laugh, I’m accepting myself more fully and I’ve decided to no longer ‘hide’ from the world.  Invisibility has taken me to this point in life and now, it is time to be visible!  The time is here for all of us…to…wake up…smell the coffee…feel the warmness of the sun on your back…let go of the theatre performance…and see the majestic mountain in yourself!

“High on the mountain, standing all alone, wondering where the years of my life have gone”…   🙂 Susie