write

I WOULD LIKE TO GIVE YOU PERMISSION

There are some days that I know that it's time to slow down. There are days that everything within me says it's just a day to rest. To nap, to reflect, to process, to stop. To honour the signal to surrender into resting, so that things can move through me as they should.

I've learnt over time if I don't make a space for this rest, then life will find another way to cut a hole out of all the busyness for me. But choosing it instead means that it doesn't have to.

To make this totally acceptable, and even completely necessary, means that I don't have to wonder why I feel this way, or think I should feel any different. Convince myself that I have 'stuff' to do, to be a 'busy bee', or that taking a day of rest is a luxury.

The flow of life feels powerfully strong. Every moment it seems to be rearranging the path before us with it's divine intelligence. We are not finished projects, and neither will we ever be. Our beautiful, impermanent nature makes it so that everything is always changing. Our small conclusions we've made fade, and things reinvent again and again. When you commit to that change, when you offer your heart and surrender yourself to the pull of life's great stream, it will wash you to where you are supposed to go. The old may wash away, the new washes in, or something old becomes recycled and made new again inside a different you.

Life's waters of change can be rapid and ferocious sometimes, and they will carry you quickly if you are on board. And some days....you will need to step off. To slow down. To press pause.

I would like to give you permission to do those things.

To find home on a sofa, a cup of tea, with a pair of your softest socks on your feet.

I would like to give you permission, to let go of your to-do list, to turn off your phone, and to pick up your favourite book...or a wonderful movie for a while. To take a bath, to light candles, to spend an entire day snuggled up with yourself from time to time.

I would like to give you permission, to listen to the soft, subtle signals within your soul that are craving to stop, to rest, to process...to renew you.

And I would like to give you permission, to make this a totally okay, and very normal thing to do.

I promise.... life will wait for you.

MY WISH FOR YOU IN THE NEW YEAR

My wish for you in this New Year is to feel inexplicable joy rumbling in your belly and a fire within your heart. To feel humbled with gratitude upon waking, having been gifted another day to explore this crazy, beautiful world…No matter how much money is in your bank account or how many certificates you own.

My wish for you is to feel the overwhelming humility of giving without expectation, the bliss of loving without need, the thrill of opening up to adventures, and to feel the fear, yet take your leap into the crazy unknown anyway.

To pay attention to the seemingly small and simple things, and to find mystery and peace within them. The sunlight glistening on your face, the changing colours of the leaves, the smell of a loved one’s clothes…the kindness in a stranger’s eyes. To find, and to cherish moments where the intricate intelligence of the universe still serves to baffle you with its beauty. May this be the year that you explore more, laugh more, love more, let go more…and to see the absolute perfection in all of your mistakes.

My wish for you is that you make your highest endeavour to stay close to your soft centre, and that you strive to find the courage to hold everything in love. And to recognise that everyone you encounter is striving for this too…no matter how lost or far away they might feel. In the year ahead, may you notice how you can pull those around you into love, with the power of your gentle attention. May you notice how you can tease out the tiny details of someone’s great beauty by choosing to really see them before you. May you subtly recognise your own immense ability to find the good in others, and know that in doing so, it will never detract from your own magnificent beauty.

My hope is that you reach out to one another, to hold each other in grace, and resolve to outshine any darkness that may sometimes shade this world with the power of your united light. For it is in believing that rather than fear, the heart will always win, which will dissolve the darkness that may come to pass.

My wish for you in this coming year is that you may come to know, in the simple spaces of your most quiet self, that nothing in you is ever lacking. To listen to the small voice inside of you that has always been asking you to join in with the truth of your unique beauty. The voice that has been guiding you to your heart all along. To recognise that wherever you go and whatever you must face, you are always ‘home’. No matter how many times you abandon yourself, to know that you will always have you. Let us come to know this as truth. To know this as home.

I want to let you know that you are already enough. That you were enough yesterday and you will be enough tomorrow and forevermore. That there are no holes to be filled, or pieces to be fixed. Right now and always, you are so very much enough and everything you ever need, know you carry within your own beautiful spirit. Allow yourself to take a moment from time to time, to thank your strong and resilient heart for carrying you through the speed bumps in this life. Notice how the experiences that have most shaken you have caused you to discover the depths of who you really are and what invincible strength lies within your bones. That one, that person that you are, is amazing. And it is my wish for you this year that you believe that without a doubt, and that you tend lovingly and truthfully to this one…first and foremost.

You are here, to be a light onto this world. To come home to yourself, to saturate the world with your love. To arrive, every fibre, every molecule, every piece of your existence. And to blossom into this precious life.

From the very depths of my heart, this year and always… I wish this for you.

VULNERABILITY

It is one of my favourite qualities in another human being; vulnerability.

It requires real courage for someone to truly open their heart and let you in to really see, to share with you who they really are beyond images of themselves.

It is so irresistibly warming for someone to be open, raw and real with you.

The beauty in someone saying "Hey, this is ME, in all my nakedness, with all my imperfections, here to connect with YOU, in all your nakedness, with all your imperfections too. "Can you see me?"

What a privilege it is to meet someone as open space to open space, in a world that can be so full of pretending.

How wonderfully refreshing it is to no longer need to pretend.

BEING BRAVE WITH LIFE

I am learning that life is a continuous expanding – a slow and sweet delicious diffusion of the essence of you into the world. Like a life-size Russian doll, constantly opening, each time shedding another layer of yourself to reveal the real you underneath. A stripping of the no longer needed, unnecessary versions of yourself, as you watch them fall to the floor covered in lessons learnt and each a different shade of beautiful. Constantly faced with the challenges of loving yourself, even as newer versions of you continue to evolve.

It is all of the intensities – that is what I’m learning makes it rich. It is every single colour and every single flavour – bitter, sweet, nothing, everything all at once. Unpredictably, outrageously and unavoidably LOUD and close and always demanding to be felt. It seems that we cannot choose one side of life and not the other. We can either accept and embrace and be FULLY PART OF every version of what we call ‘life’ or to avoid the parts we see as uncomfortable out of fear. I’m figuring out doing this is absolutely no protection – avoiding pain and hurt and disappointment and rejection means we are so much less involved in the incredibleness of joy and laughter and bliss and love.

I have come to the logical conclusion that there is no logical way to live but fearlessly.

From here on out, I fully commit to being brave with life.

I WILL HOLD A SPACE FOR YOU

I will hold a space for you,
to be who you truly are.

Even if that you is currently unravelling,
undefined, still unknown to you.

I will hold a space for you, to slowly unfold,
contract, and so patiently expand
into whatever series of you is revealed to the world.

I will hold a space for you,
to express and explore
as you dare to venture into the depths of your corners.
Teasing out the tendencies in us to close.

Yes, a space I will keep wide open for you,
to dance into even your uncomfortable, awkward edges
as you carefully begin to untangle yourself
from all ideas that may have been tied to You.

I will keep a room inside of myself
to watch the sweetness of you, participating with your life
in all of its forms, from all angles.
To experience You, living undeniably, inside the You
that exists moment by moment.

Each version of You, I will choose to hold lovingly,
without views
Each one tenderly expressing raw life,
built for a reason, calling to be heard.

So often, so quickly
we cover up, run from,
the ‘un-edited’, the ‘inconvenient’, the ‘too much’ parts of another.
But no, I shall whole-heartedly resolve,
to hold space for the You that you may feel has no space to be in.

For in this expanse that I will carve out for you,
the permission and promise I will receive
to puncture my own walls,
break down my own barriers
and widen me deeper into eternity.

Yes, a space I will hold for you dear one,
to be the most You
and in return I will receive
the mirror of Me.