Inspiration
Articles to inspire authentic living on the topics of resilience, spirituality, and self-growth with touches of storytelling, depth, and humor.
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2022: Time To Unleash my Inner Child
Sometimes we have plans that can dissolve like sand in our hands in a second. 2021 has been a trying year in so many aspects. Experience has shown me that we always experience a year of constant challenges in our lives' cycles, followed by a time of appreciated growth. I don't know how we ended up with two years back-to-back of continuous blows. I guess I can only speak of myself, but I am exhausted. I have been exhausted for a while, numb, and at times hopeless.
The Connection Jackpot
With my heart as complete as it was, feeling extremely lucky for the beautiful relationships that surround me, I got to reflect on the kind of connections that feed my soul. Because let’s be honest, we may have tons of friends, but not every tie makes our heart swell. So, what are the criteria? What makes an acquaintance move from “yes-you-are-fun” to “I-am-a-different-person-because-of-you”? What makes us want to go the distance to cultivate a relationship?
Maybe this will be the theme of this year for me, but I want to spend more time with meaningful people. I just don’t have as much energy to stay in places that don’t elevate me or support me.
How do I define who those people are worth keeping close to?
Catch and Release
Through my adult eyes, fishing has become a great source of life metaphors. And because I could not let the lessons pass, I started finding analogies between the art of fishing and an area of my life that continues to be my savior and my quickest ticket to confusion and sadness at the same time. Fishing, I have found, has a lot of parallelisms with intuition.
Both fishing and intuition require an act of faith. We can’t see what is underwater or what can come swimming in our direction. However, the true fisherman remains loyal to his belief in the ocean’s abundance, regardless of what can be seen at the moment.
Of Finding Our Purpose and Calling on Magic
I always joke that I have a Librarian Complex. Not only because I obviously love books - the actual physical books, not just reading – but also because I love to organize and categorize everything: information, ideas, feelings, facial features, personality types…you name it! Maybe it was because my brain worked that way that from a very young age I started seeing my life as a series of puzzle pieces, each representing things I was either good at or that I loved to do. One piece, for example, was my passion to create constantly. Another one was my interest in building communities. I was the child always organizing groups, bringing people together through common interests. Later on, when I had a short stint doing theater, I discovered that I really loved creating experiences where people felt transported. As I started growing up and all these pieces started fitting into each other I realized they contain my purpose. What a great feeling to start discovering what we came to do in this world! I feel my “Purpose Puzzle” is still evolving and I can identify pieces that still haven’t fit there, but I know they eventually will.
The last couple of years have offered me the opportunity of immense growth, although sometimes they have come like axes that have as well left me terribly bruised. The beauty of it is that it has brought me closer to find my purpose, and I am grateful for that.
Back in December an opportunity came for me out of the blue.
When the plane goes down
I don’t remember when was the first time I had a dream, but I can assume that I was still a little girl. Up until this day, my dreams can be quite entertaining, to the point I sometimes wake up exhausted because I have long, energetic visions that seem as I got to relive in my sleep a Tarantino movie on a nightly basis. Other times, these oneiric experiences are nothing short than pieces of wisdom. I receive messages for others, process complex problems and even get to meet cool people and places I have never met before. I also get repetitive dreams and continuing dreams, complicated stories that are paused when I open my eyes to be continued later as if I had just pressed some kind of mental pause.
Months ago, I had one of those dreams whose wisdom was meant for a friend but up until today its moral still haunts me.
Living Authentically, with open wings
Blame it on my artist’s heart but here has always been a certainty in me that the only road to happiness comes from living as authentically as we can. Hiding behind a more acceptable persona seems like an incredibly expensive prison. But sometimes honesty and transparency come with a very high price tag as well. I used to believe that those who live portraying an image of who they are not, to be liked by a group of people who don’t even like themselves, had to be in constant anguish. The fear of someone holding a mirror in front of them should be terrifying. And then there are all the lies and all the schemes that need to be strategized in order to support that unstable structure. Nope, too much work for me!
But then I realized how much courage, how much strength it takes to live authentically and I discovered that veracity was not exactly an easy road either. There are internal voices, society rules and expectation, unspoken commitments to keep connections no longer valid, and then our own insecurities that make living in full honesty an unsurmountable task.
A Blind Eye And An Open Soul
I might be either the most illusory person on earth or I do live in an alternative reality but I do believe that the universe, God, Higher Being, however we want to call it, is always watching after us. That is my safety net! Whatever happens, does so for a reason and a master plan that I don’t necessarily understand at the moment. This allows me to release the reins when the road gets bumpy. Kind of like saying “I am not sure why I am going through this, but I am sure there is a plan that will work on my benefit at the end.”
This approach that I called stubborn optimism had helped me in so many occasions.
And then life decided to play some kind of dark joke on me and my theory went overboard with the ease of an autumn leave on a stormy day.
How I Learned To Walk Through Fire
I wasn’t planning to write about this, mostly because I don’t usually like calling attention to my problems. If there is an universal truth that I am still waiting for one person to challenge is that 2020 has been a very hard year. For me, 2020 probably holds the record as the most-tear-producing year ever. Adjusting to the pandemic, the lack of contact with the outside world, the new economy was actually tolerable. But early July I received one of those phone calls that we ever dread: I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
First of all let me be clear: I am fine, I am cancer-free and in the last part of this chapter. The amount of lessons I collected in this journey had been sitting in my soul and in my journal for the last few months and suddenly I felt the need to share them in case they can help anyone who is going through this, will go through this or knows somebody who is. In this personal odyssey I grew up, I discovered so many truths being revealed with the force of a duct tape pulled from my eyes. People who walk the same path may have a different experience, but these are some of my takeaways.
Kindness Is a Two-Way Road
It was a warm Summer day, the kind that warms your skin and lifts your mood. But a call later in the afternoon made the world stop on its track. They were not good news, at least not the ones that we ever expect to get. From that moment on, the world, my world at the very least, was going to look a little bit different and scarier
But I don’t scare easily. In fact, my body is wired to fight so when things get difficult I put on my boxing gloves or my armature, whatever is needed before I face the ring. That day, though, I could not move much. After the initial shock, I went to my studio to try to process the news in the best way I know: through prayer and meditation. I lit up a candle, turned up the music and sit down in silence while tears started flowing down. I sat with the fears, with the pain and the uncertainty. I let it all flow while I observed from a distance in a intent to be mindful while I allowed the numbness to shake out of my soul. I felt the hands of a thousand angels holding me up; I felt the warm embrace of loved ones surrounding me; I felt the certainty that the journey I was about to embark on was not going to leave me unchanged. All of that had proven to be true.
As I opened my eyes, aware of the significant moment I was experiencing, I took my journal and wrote my goals for the journey I was about to embark on. What was I going to learn? What was I willing to master? What parts of myself I was going to surrender and what parts I was going to embrace? Two answers came to mind, and I wrote them with big letters, the way one signs a declaration of independence:
1. I am going to learn to be selfish
2. I am going to learn to receive the help I need.
“F” is for *@uck Fear!
He was mad at something, I don’t even remembered what. But my five-year-old son was having a major tantrum. And by major I mean lots of kicking, hitting and throwing stuff. I was helpless. My usual “let’s-talk-about-our-feelings-approach” was not working. I had seen tantrums before but none like those. It started happening more frequently on the following days. Of course I started reading, researching, trying different methods without significant success. Then one day I was driving back home after an appointment and I had the need to scream. Not to anyone in particular, but to the air, to the world. But I didn’t. I am a relatively put-together adult who meditates regularly and who has an obsession with processing my feelings. I don’t always have my act together, but if there has been a year who had put me to the test it has been the wonderful, unpredictable and always beating-its-previous-record 2020.
Lost in my thoughts before the light turned green I realized what was happening to me. I wanted to allow myself to do what my son had been doing for the last few weeks. I wanted to have a major Tantrum, with capital T. I wanted to throw myself on the floor and scream and cry and say I didn’t want to cooperate, that I wanted to be left alone, untouched. I wanted to ask “why” knowing that I did not care about the answers. I just wanted to be heard. I imagined myself doing exactly that. Acting like an out-of-control 5 year-old.
The beautiful mirror of my son made me see that the cause of both of our tantrums was the same: we were in FEAR. We were both like two frightened tiger cubs trying to defend ourselves and all we need us was someone to hold us tight and tell us everything was going to be fine.
Don’t Assume: a Prelude To The (Usually) Right Answers
Nothing like being a “why” kind of child to annoy a parent. It is a bottomless well: the more answers you get, the more questions arise. I was that kind of child, and it has taken me hours of therapy and self-help books to understand the effects of that in one’s psyche.
When we are always curious for answers, we are never satisfied with a statement. We need to know where that came from. Why did someone acted that way? Why did we reacted like that? Why that look? Why, why, why….
When I was in my early thirties, I was going through a very difficult time. My head could not get around to understand why someone had hurt me so cruelly. I played different scenarios, tried to put myself in that person’s shoes, questioned if I was in fact the one that was at fault. Through all my years of practicing the “let’s-find-the-reasons” game, I thought that there was always a motive for people’s behavior and even when I did not agree with it, understanding it made it easier to process and let go of any hurt. Was it healthy? I don’t know, but it certainly became a way to understand - and also justify - people’s actions.
While I was in that questioning process, a wise woman taught me a phrase that would become a sort of mantra for me: “don’t fill in the blanks.” It took a lot of repetition until it became second nature. If I did not have all of the absolute information, preferably from its source rather than somebody else’s recount, then I was not going to fill in the black with information I could not prove. I understood that in relationships, as in anything else, we could never take for granted we know the truth or that the other person has understood us unless we talk clearly about it. So, I practiced asking WHY to the people that had me on the dark. (continue)
The sensibility of numbers
Being born an artist is quite a gift. Curiosity is your biggest talent and it is easy to delight in the simplest things because wherever you see there is beauty. There is a certain rawness that comes with it as in order to create artists need to experience, to live, to feel. Yes, I love being an artist with its presents and its challenges. We tend to be boxed into a category of dreamers as if we were disconnected with reality. As in any other profession or lifestyle, that is a generalization and I got proof of it years ago.
When I was about to finish High School, we were asked to take a career aptitude test. My results were somewhat unexpected. There was a tie on two - very different - careers recommended for me: Art and Math. Art was very obvious; Math not as surprising as you would think. The fact was that I love numbers. Math was one class that I always excelled at. I enjoyed solving questions, equations, finding patterns, the fact that there were formulas to solve simple or not so simple problems. Because I had played instruments from a young age, I knew math was interlaced in every musical rhythms and pattern. So, yes, I have always being an artist with a love for numbers, and history has proven that I am not the only one.
Lately, numbers have come to chase me with the force of an axe and I has been forced to deal with the way I relate to them. No, I am not talking about home schooling through the pandemic.