Tag: truth (Page 3 of 5)

Random Thoughts

January 7, 2020 / Tom

Today, a moment in time.

Tomorrow is just a dream.

Yesterday only happened in my mind.

Today is yesterday’s tomorrow and tomorrow’s yesterday. Yesterday, today was just a dream. Tomorrow, today will have happened only in my mind. I realized just now I need to stop wasting time thinking about such things. Today is too important to squander, tomorrow never comes and yesterday cannot be changed.

Cliches…ugh. Sometimes I can’t see the forest for the trees (see what I did there?).

I want to hug you. I feel you beside me but when I turn to touch you my fingertips find only dust. Perhaps this is my mind playing tricks on me, tormenting me for wanting something beyond my control, or teaching me to let go of wants and replace them with reality. What I want is out there, what I have is right beside me.

Now, how to make what I want all that is right here.

Dammit. I’m back to yesterday.

So much I would change. Not because I want to change yesterday but because I want to change today. I wish things were different. I wish life was easier and that I was aware of the luster in the treasures I had found.

Actually, I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ve been blessed with the wisdom of a wild experience and know I can rise above just about any challenge thrown my way. Life does not become easier in the absence of challenge. It becomes easier in surviving them.

Thinking about yesterday creates such confusion. That confusion, however, guides us to a clarity of truth.

There is nothing like knowing someone who is the beautiful mixture of heart, soul and humanness. It’s even better when you love that someone and you get to quickly forgive their imperfections because of how fucking perfect they are. They toil, they quake and they are afraid but mostly they are loving, supportive and more courageous than they will ever likely know.

Treasure those moments when you can just sit back and watch. Those tears clouding your eyes and the joy in your heart are often all you ever will need to know about life. It’s not pride you feel in those moments of clarity; it’s pure admiration.

Use your imagination for a moment.

Imagine you are watching TV. Who do you want next to you keeping you warm? Where are you? That’s the person you should be with and that is the place you should be sharing.

I wrote an entire chapter to my new book while in the shower this morning. I love when that happens, and it’s even better when I finally have the chance to write it down. Someday.

Pride

December 30, 2019 / Tom

Sometimes I am so powerful.

I can stand on my own two feet, and face the storm with fearless abandon. As the inferno burns hot before me, I can stare the flames right in the soul as the world turns to ash all around. I can crawl over boulders and reach heights as the fear grips at my mind. There is much fight within me even as the ground shakes below me.

Sometimes, I am so weak.

I hear their voices and I shrink into my shell. My legs wilt under the weight of the cross I bear, falling to my knees in abject failure. The chorus rains down shards of judgment, shards that pierce my armor and force my heart into hiding. I am a lost child, gone beyond my veils, outside the walls of my kingdom.

What is left to do now but learn? Can I shed the mask of pride? Can I rid myself of the weight I’ve carried with me my entire life?

Pride, that alien being to my soul, that bastard bully hiding in the shadows right behind me! Whisper if you will, but I can hear you. Sing if you must, my ears bleed at the sound of your song. One day I shall turn the torch and burn a hole through your darkness. Pride cannot defeat the lowly man with an empty bowl. He stands, kneels, and bows with equal power, with equal strength.

That warrior knows the only strength he needs is to lift his bowl, give all he has, and accept what others are willing to offer.

A hard fight for me indeed. The hardest battles are often the ones we wage within.

A Conversation

I turn to my god, the Silence I crave in the noise of my mind, and beg of Her to answer me.

The answer is as it’s always been. “Shed your gold and give glory to your heart. Pride is thine enemy.”

So much gold has been cast into the raging torrents, sacrificed to the god of who I am. There lies so much of what I once believed important, so much of what I gave my life to have.

“It’s time to give more of you and less of what you have. It’s time to rise, naked in the snow,and be warmed by what only love can provide. That is what you must learn. It is you the world needs, not your coin. It is love that must fill your pockets. You will fly in the lightness of love, not be drowned by the weight in your purse.”

“I have little left to give,” I answer.

“Wrong. You have yet to scratch the surface of what you offer the world.”

A tear forms. I have heard this all before.

“My child, you have hidden behind the quest for things of the world, seeking to be judged by them as some reward. The gold you seek is waiting for you, and when it ceases to be your quest the truth will open up those waters to raging currents. Where the green light shines within you is that space you should work to fill. The other chest will fill after your treasure chest has opened, and your heart becomes free to beat to its own time.

The chest you’ve tried to fill cannot be filled until the chest that holds the true treasure, your heart, is fully open.”

A tear spills. I know all of what I hear to be true.

A Lesson

“It has been said,” the Silence whispers to my soul, “that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to pass the gates of heaven. A chest of gold cannot fit but the man full of love passes through easily. You will leave your gold behind, my son, but love will go with you forever.”

“Yet I tire of the struggle,” I respond.

“Ah, it is the struggle that keeps you from your truth. You will regain wealth, have no doubt, but first you must stop judging yourself in its presence or its absence. When you love, you will know yourself the same both in wealth and in poverty. Neither will change the man you know yourself to be.”

It is the struggle that I know myself, and it is in the struggle that I judge myself as worthy. What was once so easy has now become so difficult. The river that once flowed has now become a trickle.

“The ice up there is ready to melt again and Spring is ready to appear,” said the Silence. “Love shines warmly. Let it shine, watch the ice pack melt and the river flow again. It is truly that easy. Stop being the struggle and start being the Spring.”

I smile, knowing full well the beauty and truth of this remembering.

“I know it is difficult, my son, but you were not built for the easy things. You were bred to make the difficult things easy. You were born to melt the ice…”

A breath, a moment, an undeniable truth.

“…and to light the way. So, now shine. Love yourself as worthy and watch the river flow.”

The Shack (the Need for Forgiveness)

December 26, 2019 / Tom

I want to be happy, and share my gifts with the world. So, I must be willing to forgive. A lesson well learned in my time.

My love and I watched The Shack last night. It was the first time for her, the second for me.

I will be honest, the first time I saw it I was left numb, with tears streaming down my face (I don’t fear admitting that even masculine energy sheds tears). I wasn’t sure what to make of how I felt, or the fog that I was in as I rose from my seat. All I knew was that I was wiping remnants of tears from my face wondering what the fuck had just happened.

Art can, it seems, expose the deepest parts of our souls. It can expose the cracks in our armor and show us the places where water seeps from the stone.

Despite what appears to be poor ratings in Rotten Tomatoes, I highly suggest you read the book or watch the movie. I won’t spoil the movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but I will describe what wept from my heart as it unfolded.

While pain seems to be the focus of the story, it really isn’t. Forgiveness is the plot line, with pain being the catalyst for the plot to unfold. The story beautifully describes how I see the process of experience. Experience, for me, has always been a series of things known and discovered through contrasts. We know joy from sadness, light from darkness.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. ~Book of Genesis

(Contrast. What good would one be without the other?)

Forgiveness can be one tough cookie, and it is meant to be. We all experience varying levels of emotional trauma in our lives. It seems to me that that more cutting that trauma is the tougher the act of forgiveness. Emotional trauma is like lifting a very heavy weight that we just never seem ready to let go of. Our proverbial limbs quiver, our bodies shake yet we just don’t drop the weight.

Forgiveness is, in its beauty, the act of dropping the weight. Usually, though, it’s not as simple as letting go. We all have a need to share the pain inflicted on us and soon those closest to us begin look like our tormentors in the Id. In the absence of the abuser in our midst, others bear the fury of our pain, of our hopelessness, and of our fear.

Until we forgive our tormentor. Then a miracle happens, and there is no more pain or fear to share. It vanishes like a twilight when the Sun rises, and evaporates like the dew at high noon.

Anger is like drinking poison expecting the other person to die.~Buddha.

During the movie, I felt my mother’s presence. I couldn’t tell if it was around me or in me, but it was there. I could feel the pain in her that caused her behaviors in my childhood.

I uttered for at least the millionth time, “I forgive you.”

I felt my loving hand touching her childhood cheek, telling her it would be alright.

I felt my young hand holding hers. “You will be fine.”

I felt my teenage heart whispering to hers, “I will forgive you one day.”

Then I felt my soul touch hers and say, “I do forgive you. I truly, honestly, with all my heart forgive you.”

More weight fell, and as it did I realized I still am carrying some childhood stones in my pocket. It’s fine, I forgive myself for carrying them.

Our abusers, it seems, can stare at us back in the mirror most times. Until we forgive, we are usually the worst abusers we will ever know in our lives. We abuse others but, mostly, we abuse ourselves.

Something strange then happened as the tears again streamed down my cheek. I thought I heard her say, “Thank you, Tommy. I am sorry, and I am waiting. You are my son, and I am proud of who you have become. I’ve taught you well, although I wish I could have taught you in another way, a way I just did not know.”

Sometimes our paths are the only ones we know, the only ones we can see, the only ones we can find. Especially when we are unable to drop the weight and forgive.

More stones fell. The sound they made as they hit the earth sounded like a symphony. Good music is created by good energy. Sometimes so are tears.

(The book the movie was based on is by Wm Paul Young. Enjoy it!)

The Ghost Beside Me

December 18, 2019 / Tom

A ghost sat beside me, rocking slowly on the small, wooden chair. In the steely silence I could hear only two things; the rhythmic beating of my heart and the creaking of that chair. I hear no breaths, no gusts of wind howling just outside my room nor sounds of discarded leaves being thrown about by autumn’s fury. I can only here Death sitting in that chair, slowly waiting for it to be my time.

My eyes had been blinded by the rage of life, my brain injured by the loss of blood. I needed to see, to stand, to walk among my loved ones again. In my blindness I could hear so many things once forgotten. I could hear the smile of my children. I could hear the laughter that came from deep within them. I could hear the sight of a flower blooming in the sunlight, and I could hear the sounds of winter thawing. I could hear the sound of a smile, of a loving glance, and the rising tide of an ocean a thousand miles away.

My body could no longer steady itself against the invisible strings of gravity. The sense of touch I had taken for granted had now changed and, with it a truth I had always depended. The security of all I had known vanished in a breath, replaced by something I was told was “a new reality”. It was a reality I had never requested but had no choice in accepting.

On an opposite side of the room sat another ghost rocking slowly on another chair. There was a warm light pulsing rhythmically with each movement, and a sweet melody vibrating in a heavenly tempo. I could feel the bliss of Life caressing those parts of me left darkened by the stroke, the want of life pulling me out of the numbness. There was, in this moment, a choice to be made and a path to be taken.

I felt no fear in this choice, only a surrender to the reality, swimming in the knowledge that had no control over my circumstance. In that surrender, though, rose a feeling in the numbness, a truth that shouted to me that while control had been lost, I could regain it. I could control my choices from that moment on. I could choose Death, or I could choose Life, and I could ride the wave toward either end. Death offered me a final surrender. Life offered me the challenge I was born to accept. Death seemed easy. Life seemed all-too-difficult.

I chose life, and in the shadows of that night I found my vision. In that unsteadiness I found true balance. In that challenge I found a love of Life, of living, and asked Death to wait his turn. He seemed to smile in return having played his part in the dance of Life.

Death knows, though, that my choice is a temporary one, and that one day he will extend his hand and I will have no option but to take it. Life, however, knows something too. She knows that circumstances arrive, and within them comes a litany of choices. Life knows that she exists in the choices we make within the experience, and she knows that those choices determine to which degree we can enjoy her company. We can either make choices that have us dancing with Life, of we can make choices that have us existing until the hand of Death grabs us in a grip from which we cannot break free.

I have discovered in my own time that Life offers us liberation in the choices we make. Liberation is born in the struggles of our time, and Life is realized in the sweat and blood of our liberation. True living is liberation, and liberation exposes us to the glory of true living. They go together like yin and yang, important ingredients that cannot be separated and are as necessary for one other as the beating heart is to breath and breath is to the beating heart. Fear is but a shackle we have placed upon ourselves, and love is the key that can set us upon a gratitude spawned from great Living. There is great liberation in appreciating the Sunrise whose memory may be all I have one day. Loss shows us the way to gratitude, and gratitude shows us a way from loss. We can be so liberated in sharing gratitude not just in what we have, but for what we have lost.

So whether it is struggling to keep upright when your brain is unable to keep control, or hiking a trail among the beasts of wild and untamed nature, or just getting out of bed to face another day, the challenge itself offers great opportunity for liberation. We can liberate ourselves from the confines of a bed in our dizziness. We can liberate our bodies from the delusion of safety within our unnatural box. We can liberate ourselves from the dread created in the lack of fulfillment. We are the choosers of our own path.

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The Roles We Play

December 12, 2019 / Tom

The jester says,

You cannot survive this. It’s too much for you to handle. You must surrender, give up, leave the field of battle. Give up the ghost, bend knee to the wicked wind, find shelter from this storm. You are nothing but a shadow meant to hide in the dark corners of the cave. The pain is too much, the risk too great, the mountain too high. Save yourself. Run and hide.

The beast says,

What life is there in running from the rain? I cannot, I must not surrender, for enslavement to the fear is a lifetime spent in death. I will set my feet, tighten my grip upon the sword of my own power and fight until my dying breath. I shall light the torch of my own ferocity and banish the shadows in this cavern. I bear the pain as a symbol of my victory, reap the reward from this refusal to surrender, and climb until the view promised my upon that summit is, at last, seen. I have saved myself in standing firm, and in pressing on beyond my mind’s limitations.

The warrior says,

I may retreat, but just to find more stable footing. I may drop my sword, but only to remove the shackles I have placed upon my soul. I may hide, but only to attack at the time of my own choosing. I may surrender, but only to free the parts of me enslaved. I am the fire that lights the torch that all shadows fear, and the storm that sets the trees to dancing in my wake. I am the hawk who sees and knows when to set upon the voices within, and the wind that carries angels up to heaven. Attack me at your peril, for if I so choose I shall crush your head under my heel and leave your carcass to the whims of the Sun.

Some moments I play the jester. Others, the beast comes out. Yet, I always try to summon the warrior, that wise part of me that always keeps me going. After all, life seems to be one successive act of survival after another, one role followed by another, multiple lessons followed by multiple tests followed by even more lessons. The essence of life seems to be in the way it flows; sometimes fast, sometimes slow but rarely stagnant for long.

Woman

December 10, 2019 / Tom

Mother

I can hear your voice echoing through my caverns,

I can feel your rage building like a storm,

I can see your smile, rare and unforgiving,

I know all I am through your eyes.

I am your son.

Sister

I can hear your cries seeping through the darkness,

I can feel your mind twisting in the wind,

I can see your smile, longing for reality,

I know I am forgotten through the temper of your lies.

I am your brother.

Lover

I can hear your heart beating in my silence,

I can feel your soul afraid in being open,

I can see your smile raising me from my ashes,

I know I am alive through the desire of your embrace.

I am your partner.

Daughter

I can hear your first cries as though they sang but yesterday,

I can feel your hand as it grasps at my one finger,

I can see your life unfolding before my eyes,

I know I have done something right when you simply call me “Dad”.

I am your father.

Woman

There are many things that have shaped me,

That have pulled a sculpture from the roughest, burdened stone,

I’ve been hewn by heaven and hell’s sweet majesty,

A woman’s touch is the discourse of this living.

I can rise, and I can love, and I can be all I’m meant to be.

I am a man.

One Pane of Glass

November 26, 2019 / Tom

Outside, a blizzard rages. Inside, I am comfortable, nestled nicely on a sofa beside her warm body, watching the driven flakes of snow head to meet others that have fallen before them. There is but one pane of glass that separates me from the wilds out there. Just one pane of glass between the me found in this comfortable place and the me begging to be in the place that calls me.

The slow drum and dribbles of the washing machine fills this space, a rhythmic, modern tune hummed inside while the wild, ancient song of winter whips outside. Still, in this comfort and safety my mind wonders out there, to the place where deep snow has buried the earth, where the winter winds blow hard in autumn, where the parts of me that existed well before my flesh was formed once played. I can feel the discomfort of the cold air on my skin. I can feel the challenge of moving in deep snow. I can feel the desire for survival well up inside me. It is a fire I’ve known well, built in the moments of darkness where no light was assured, kindled in those times when I was frozen to the bone.

The wild part of me wants to be challenged. The hunter in me wants to stalk his prey. The hunted in me wants to dare the hunter out from behind his tree. The beast in me wants to prove I can survive. The coward in me wants to push the beast out of his cave. Nothing brings me to life like answering the call of the wild, and nothing says home to me like the wilds themselves.

I once believed I had surrendered to fear. That was a lie told by fear itself. I had but given myself pause to regroup so that I could move forward a little bit more. Sometimes victories are not measured in miles but in inches, and sometimes victory looks like defeat. Defeat cannot, however, stain the soul that moves past the fear within him. Defeat cannot pierce the heart of the warrior who stands firm against the onslaught of the demonic hoards born inside his mind.

I fear heights, so I’ve climbed tall ladders to protect my brothers facing fire below. I’ve feared death, so life brought me to its doorstep to show me a truth. I feared sharing myself with others, so I tore off my veils and became a naked warrior ready to just be me. More fear comes, and I challenge it, often discovering what I will do and won’t do now has little to do with fear, but more with desire. While I fear skydiving, I answer less to that fear and more to the fact that I simply have little desire to jump out of an airplane.

If that desire grows, I will jump with a wild yell. That truth I learned, the one I mentioned before, was that a fear of death is a fear of life. I choose life, living as fully as I can in any moment even in those times when victory looks exactly like defeat. I will not let panes of glass get in my way, instead honoring the oath sworn on my lifebed. I will splinter any walls that get in my way, and step over the shards of windows shattered in answering the calls within.

I wonder if there are others, those intrepid souls who hear the calls of life lived before this one, and answer with all the might their hearts can muster. I wonder if there are souls out there now trudging through the deepest snow just for the challenge of it. I wonder if there are warriors out there who hear the call of hunter and prey, beast and coward, sinner and saint simultaneously and who, like me, feel at home in the forests that echo those calls. I wonder if we speak one voice, hear one song, and peer at hope through the same, lonely pane of glass.

Life is what we are given as a promise of our birth. Love helps us overcome the obstacles to life we are blessed to have fallen across our path. Truth is what binds life and love to a single, simple calling. Find life, discover love. Discover love, know truth. Love life in truth and never die again. Even as your final breath is drawn, it is the one who has discovered life who can never truly die.

You

November 13, 2019 / Tom

I see you.

I see that wonderful mix of courage and fear, and I marvel at your intricacies. I see the way you rise to the challenge of your own mind, and how you answer the call that is born deep within. I see the way you care, the way your heart spills out over the canvas of your life. I love how you leave you brushstrokes all over the place, and how I can touch the lines you’ve left on my soul. I see you, my artist, my muse, my living love.

I wonder about you.

I wonder about the Divine magic that made you, and the wonderful truth you’ve been born to be. I wonder what good I must have done to have you cross over into my life, and though I never can quite tell what it was I know I’d do it all over again just for the chance to kiss you. I think about the tears I’ve shed in utter darkness, and wonder which one watered the flower whose fragrance now fills my soul. I wonder about you, my love, and how you were born within me before I even knew I was alive.

I know you.

I know the bumps on my skin raised in the thought of you; Braille from my soul the Angels wrote with hope when sky burned with fire. I know the truth of your name whispered in the very beat of my heart, a promise of life eternal beyond the mortality of one man’s mind. I know you from lives past, those vestiges of things left behind but never quite forgotten. I know you as surely as I breathe, and I know you as a certainty gifted to a man not quite deserving of the honor.

I love you.

I love you along the clear creeks I see in solitude, and in the deep snow I fight alone to touch the depths of Nature’s breast. I love you in the songs that birth tears in my eyes, and I love you in the smiles that come in those things that only you can do. I love you in our sweet embrace that pulls us past our moments of hellish uncertainty, and in the shudders of unholy fear that come in its wake. I love you in the throes of ecstasy that beg me to love you more and in the truth that this man was made for you, and you were made for me.

It’s you I see who has showed me the way to the sweetest summit. It’s you that’s given me the pause to wonder, to find the Sun in the darkest skies and love beyond my eyes held shut. It’s you I know who’s pulled me from the whirlpool of my mind into the center of my heart. It’s you I love. You are the destination of my soul.

52 Years (A Warrior’s Lament)

November 8, 2019 / Tom

I met a man recently. He was a strong-looking older man, a Vietnam Veteran, a warrior, a man who’s had his own sense of loss and of struggle yet somehow survived. He had cancer twice, an illness he says was due to Agent Orange exposure during the war. He lost friends in battle, a lost even more in the years since. Yet I could sense in his struggle he had something that got him through it, something that prompted a man who had been beaten to rise, who had been nearly defeated to turn his chest to the demons and beat them into submission.

It didn’t take long before I found out what that something was.

“My wife died last month. After 52 years of marriage she’s gone.,” he said with a tear in his eye. I could feel the pain ripple across the room. I could see his agony restrained in tired eyes. I could hear his prayer for just one more kiss, for one more word from her whispered in his ear, for just one more minute with the woman he loved.

Nothing, it seems, can make a strong warrior crumble like the loss of half his heart. He seemed completely unwilling to surrender to age or to an enemy. But I could sense this old and wise man was completely ready to surrender to the loss of his great love. I could sense that no battle he’s ever waged was as fierce as the one he was in now. It seemed he knew that he had no part in this outcome, and that a broken heart could do what no bullet, no struggle, could.

He had married her before he was sent into combat, something not unique to the time. He loved her right away, and when faced with the likelihood of his death they decided to commit to the love they felt. If he died in combat he would die her husband, and she his wife.

He survived the war and the effects it had on his mind and his health. In their life she had often said that she had been married to two men, once to the man she knew before the war, and again to the same man after the war. He shared that she had been the reason he fought hard to survive many battles, but fought even harder to survive the long one that came when he got home. She had been there, always, his partner and his love, and he honored her as his wife each day of their life together. It was an honor that gave him life, even after he was certain his life would be over.

“She was quite a babe,” he said. “The guys in my platoon were always asking me about her. I think they loved her too. Here, look.”

He pulled out his wallet and showed me a picture of a stunning woman. The picture was black and white, but looked brand new, and I couldn’t help but understand his admiration for her. She looked like a pin-up model, even if the picture was 52 years old.

“She took this so I could take it to Nam with me. I carried it with me every minute of every day, and I have ever since. It has never left me, and I’ll be buried with it.”

“She is beautiful,” I replied. “Let’s be honest though, you had to be quite the catch to have her marry you.”

“I wasn’t bad, but I was better with her. That’s the thing about us men. We know we are good on our own, but we also know we are great with the right woman by our side. Even if she’s not there, she’s there. You know?”

I agreed with him, thinking of my partner who was over a thousand miles away doing her thing. I thought about how much I missed her and wished she was near. I hate distance, and I hate weeks of separation, but I realize that there is a good reason for the displeasure I feel in the separation.

I offered him my condolences, and though the words were heartfelt they seemed hollow in the space between us. He accepted with the graciousness of a man who was searching for any comfort he could find, even if it came from a stranger. The weeks since her passing may have helped him restrain the streams of his tears, but they seemed to do little to lessen the lake of emotion that gave them breath. I shook his hand and he thanked me while I issued a prayer that this would not be the last time I got to see this man.

“Namaskar,” I whispered to the ether. A part of me recognized this man and I believe a part of him recognized me. Though strangers until this moment, we were brought together to share a bit of wisdom, he to show me something and me to offer my gratitude in return. Perhaps I offered him some comfort but I know he offered me some perspective. In this brief interlude I remembered my grandfather and grandmother as well as the love I have inside me.

What a gift, and one I’m happy to share.

Love is not a fixer

November 6, 2019 / Tom

One of the hardest things you will ever have to do is tell someone you love that you have no desire to fix them. Whether it is to someone you are romantic with, or friends with, or a parent/sibling/child of, the moment you cease all responsibility for their behavior it becomes the moment you risk losing them forever.

Or at least for the time being.

People want to share their pain, their suffering, their anxiety, and their fear. More often than not, they seek out fixers, those who will take ownership of their mess and step into piles of shit with them. People also want to “fix” other people, often sacrificing their own happiness and joy in the process. We are often so conditioned that love is only real if it includes an abundant willingness to suffer, and we want to so desperately prove how much we love in our relationships that we will forget the truest source of all love — the love we have for ourselves.

During one of the most painful times in my life I was told I was a project, that I needed fixing. I realized in the moments that followed that the pain I felt was derived not only from the constant need to please others, but in the feeling that I would never succeed in that effort. That fixer became like a sponge that I felt the need to constantly fill. In that need I would create situations and instances where I was broken. After all, if I was broken wouldn’t the fixer show love in the repair? If I was Humpty Dumpty, wouldn’t she then ride up on her horse to put me back together again? If I wasn’t in need of fixing, who would I be to her?

And that “her” can be a mother, a father, a friend, a lover. It can be anyone we seek approval from when we have not learned to find that approval within ourselves.

Nothing speaks to self-loathing like constantly breaking yourself to please a fixer. Nothing paints a picture of despair when one day that fixer leaves, and not only were you helplessly broken, but you were also not good enough to be fixed. The hammer you used to break yourself suddenly becomes too heavy to hold, and the fractures you habitually created in your heart bleed real blood. You were broken, just not in the way everyone thought. You were in need of repair, but not by any person other than the one looking at you in the mirror.

That first “goddamned motherfucking shit” you utter is the first moment of real healing. That first string of profanity you growl as you try to stand again is your first moment of awakening. It’s not the thunderclap you hear from beside your Bodhi tree that shakes you out of your sleep; it’s the sound of your reconciliation as it pours from your heart The tears run down your face in a flash flood of reality, and they cleanse you of your inequity and purge you of all sense of sin.

Then, finally, you can breath with little strain. You realize that the truest sense of love comes not in fixing someone, but in not taking ownership of their repair. Your truest love emanates from your sense of self, and you have no desire to fix others or have them fix you. You can walk, run, or sit based on needs the meet your purpose and, in turn, help those around you meet theirs in your way, in your time.

When you stop being the fixer you can truly love someone with all of you, and not just the part of you carrying the toolbox. When you no longer see yourself in need of repair, you can then love yourself and others beyond that cracked area of you that once needed to be filled. When the bandages are no longer the only part that can be seen, the healthy parts of you will flourish and unite with the healthy parts of others. You will not see others in how broken they are, but in how powerful they are. You will stand on your own next to others standing on their own, and you can then walk together freely in liberation and in healthy love.

Love is not the fixer, or the broken, or the wounded. Love is the selfless act that makes nothing broken, or wounded, or in need of repair. Love is the soul that rises from the ashes and the spirit that growls in the moonless night. Love is not the hand but the sword it carries. Love is not the rope but the blade that shreds it. When all seems lost you can count on love not to heal anything, but to stand by the one healing. When the twilight comes and the Sun takes forever to rise, love is not the one pushing the Sun above the horizon but rather the one shivering next to you in the cold. Love is not the one sewing your wounds closed, but the one holding your hand as the needle pierces your flesh. Love is not the healer. Love is the one who stands by you while you heal yourself.

So when the one who loves you dearly says to you, “I cannot help you,” he is in pain right next to you. He is writhing and wincing in the agony he shares by your side. Yet, his love for you has him remain idle for he knows in his heart that real love is found in the allowing space for the strength you are realizing, the truth you are discovering and the power you are finding not in him, but in your own self. What greater love is there to offer than such a truth?