photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography

Three people in one day shared their stories of woe and need with me.  My heart went out to them.  To fix them.  To respond to their needs.  And my inner voice said this, “they are on their journey and you may encourage, but you cannot change them.”

Sometimes by listening, with my heart, and not jumping in with an easy fix (because truly, I could not ‘fix’ these situations – even by giving them what they thought they wanted) is the greater healing gift.

I realized that there was some small fear inside me that was the mirror of their truth.

The fear of overwhelm and lack.  I wanted to sit with it and make some peace in order to release it.  You only attract what you have in you.  I believe that in my bones, even if everything I read about it sounds either pie in the sky or pedantic or “I told you so” ish to me.

Nonetheless, it’s a belief I embrace.

So when three people – all of my acquaintance – actually, now that I think of it there was a fourth – appear in my life to share their lack of money, their lack of love, their lack of patience or their lack of organization, there’s something there for me, no?

For much of that day, I reflected on my fears around writing and around setting my life up to be fully me and fully creative and fully present to my own voice.  I revisited my beliefs and fears around the idea of asking for what I need and then releasing the need for it to arrive immediately.

Most of  my reflection came down to the idea that I’m afraid of not being accepted if I’m fully me.

Yet, being accepted as anyone other than “me” is only really a fake win.

Right!?  I mean, why do I want to be part of a club that has rules I disdain?  I used to tell myself it was so I could make my way to the top (claw my way) and then engender change in an organization entrenched in some ugly traditions.

So if I don’t have to be more of anything to be me and to be successful on my own terms – what is it that attracts this lack?

I am enough.  I am worthy.  I am lovely, quite frankly, and I am a good cook to boot.  I make my friends laugh, I put strangers at ease and I adore sitting on the floor with animals or babies (or both).

So now, it’s time to respond.   And the time waiting has allowed me to find solutions – for me, and my value.  I’m not in their shoes.  No one is EVER in anyone else’s shoes, no matter how much we’d like to empathize.  And that’s a good thing.  It allows us freedom and space to stretch and be ourselves.

That’s the thing we’re lacking.

More of ourselves.

We don’t need to be ‘more’ anything but us.  We were formed fully magnificent.

Fear and lack – for the month of October, I’ve been sitting with these feelings (or any others) as they emerge.  Making some peace and love and then releasing what’s unnecessary.  I’m repeating my own personal mantra every day for a month to remind myself of my self-approval.  I don’t know if it’s “working” or not.  I know that I feel more peaceful most of the time and often ready to cry.

I’m not berating myself for making choices – no matter what they are, I know they are right for me at this time.  When I allow myself to do what I feel at the moment and to be at peace with it, something is shifting.

It’s all part of the experiment of checking in and making choices.

And therefore I’m worthy of my own acceptance.

Right now.

Right here.

It’s all there is.

In hindsight, I must always reconnect with my feelings and my beliefs about myself, especially when others come to me with their feelings of fear asking for help.  Then I can be honest about what I can and cannot do.  I’m finding that sometimes not getting what I think I want is actually more empowering and more healing than I thought.

In the four instances I talked about, I responded to each with my truth.  Not my “opinions” or my “lectures” or what I thought they “should” hear, do or be.  I simply responded with truth.  And the relationships are intact and I’m watching each of them take some new steps too.