Brutally Human
Photograph by Juliet Lofaro
To be alive is to feel (especially the tough stuff). Anniversaries, even painful ones we’d like to forget, can bring purpose, healing and revealing.
—
To say that we’re living in interesting times would really be an understatement, right?
I don’t know about you but for me the last few years have felt like an emotional rollercoaster chock full of ups, downs and all arounds sprinkled with surprises at every turn.
It’s made me want to run and hide at times and stand on a soap box and be visible at others.
It’s broken my heart into fragments and filled me with hope for the soul of humanity. It just depended upon the day.
Maybe this is simply being a part of this ride through the human experience.
God knows we can each gather evidence to support our positions, defend our ‘rightness’, and see otherness at every corner — just turn on the TV or take a scroll through any media platform. Depending upon the station or network, you can find your team.
Politics. Protests. War. Fearmongering. Divisiveness. Red. Blue. Right. Wrong.
Pick a side. Run for cover.
There are voices that got louder. Voices that were cruelly vilified. Voices that were drowned out, voices that retreated — no more conversation.
That’s truly the saddest part for me. I miss critical thinking. I miss conversation. I miss differing opinions and intelligent, heart-centered debates. I miss learning from sharing, listening.
What happened to us?
I for one am a changed person. My relationship to the world around me has been infused with curiosity and some trepidation. I didn’t see this one coming. What am I supposed to do with all of this?
The journey to creating Best Self Magazine and all that led up to that point was steeped in my own personal awakening, emotional healing and recovering — discovering. Honestly, it was one of the most exciting times for me.
I began making connections in my life that I had never considered. Body, mind, spirit was kind of ‘woo woo’ to me at the time. But when light bulbs start popping, there is no turning back. Dots were connecting. Things began to make sense and most of all, I began to reclaim parts of myself and take back my personal power.
When we are in the dark, we remain stuck in limited thinking, fear, disempowerment.
I write this to you on the 21st anniversary of the day my life imploded. Really imploded, like in every single way a life could implode and fall to pieces beneath my feet. It’s strange to consider that this was 21 years ago...Wow, I’m getting old! Ha.
But it’s honestly evidence of how long we can hide. It’s why I’m actually celebrating this milestone here with you.
The body keeps the score. It remembers. Acknowledging this date actually feels good to me, it’s honoring a piece of my story. I am no longer stuck there, but it is a part of who I am.
It is not the sum total of who I am, but it needs to be recognized.
I write to you from the scar, not the wound. There is a lot of dust in the rearview mirror, a great deal of distance between us at this point now.
I have earned my hindsight, fought for my healing and allowed my becoming. We don’t heal according to any timeclock or schedule. No, we must march to the beat of our own drum if we truly want to emerge upon the other side as our Best Selves.
But our Best Self isn’t the polished and packaged version that has it all together — it’s anything but that. It’s actually your gloriously messy, human, authentic self — the one who admits to not being OK, not having all the answers and full of feelings. The one who may be running on fumes of faith. But the one who keeps going.
I share this with you because...well, we’re all in this together (even when we feel isolated in our own pain).
We all have life piles, setbacks, hurts and grief. It’s what we do with them that matters most.
That worst day of my life was also a portal to the best days of my life.
I know it sounds a bit contrived to say that it was the wake-up call that transformed my life into the one I was meant to be living — because when we are in it, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees.
And that morning of February 5, 2003 when I stood in a pile of my life shards literally filled with terror and immobilized by not knowing where to turn next, what to lean on, what to believe or the steps to take...I began to drown.
And I sunk for a while.
Fear does that. It’s like a vice grip around our ankles and upon our soul. It tries to submerge our spirit.
Truthfully my first reaction was denial, then scrambling to reassemble broken pieces as if no one would notice all the cracks and the hardened glue seeping out barely holding it together. This frantic impulse to hide or present optics to the outside world that only conceal the truth, serves no one, heals nothing.
The world can be hard and beautiful at the same time. I remember a term I learned from Glennon Doyle years ago when I interviewed her for Best Self Magazine, ‘brutiful’. Yes, life can be both brutal and beautiful. Two truths can co-exist in the reality of our experience.
When I tell my story now, I see if very differently than it felt then. When I let go, stopped resisting and lying to myself, I discovered a new path and a new way of being and navigating life’s adversity.
None of us is immune.
The moment I began to see the interconnectedness of myself and the world around me was the moment I reclaimed my power. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that life was full of rainbows and unicorns and that I can tie this story up in a sparkly bow.
Anything but.
However, it revealed all that needed to change in my world. It wasn’t about what happened to me, or about the actions of another — it was about how I had betrayed myself in small ways through decades for the wrong reasons — and how that led me to where I landed.
Healing is about seeing yourself...really seeing the essence of who you are. Remembering, joyously discovering.
Don’t worry if the road is circuitous, don’t worry if you feel old or like it’s too late. It’s never too late to become your Best Self, to align with your intuition, to soften your heart, to connect to yourself...to be brutally human. To feel it all.
Had my life not fallen apart, I could never have been released from the version of me that was only a fraction of who I was, what I desired and the gifts I had to share with the world.
Yes, I was not one to give up on anything easily...even an unhealthy marriage and a false life. I think a legion of my angels convened and acted upon my behalf. Yep, we’ve got a stubborn one here. We’re going to really need to shake things up if we want her to shift. Seatbelts fastened. Here goes...
Thank God for them. Thank God for waking up. Thank God for being receptive to see life through a new lens. I thank God for this every day.
I share this with you because we are each faced with struggles, upsets, disappointments and are constantly wrestling our own demons. Most of the time those are just false narratives and not the sum total of who you are and who you are capable of becoming.
I’m still discovering me. I’m still catching myself regularly not being my Best Self. But now I do so with so much more clarity, consciousness and compassion.
I don’t always get what I want, none of us will (and I don’t like that anymore than you do). But what if...just what if...we trusted that it is all guiding us somewhere better if we can hold onto the faith and trust? What if instead we could simply ask:
OK Universe, what do you want me to see here?
Where do you want me to go?
I have come alive in a zillion more ways than I could ever have imagined. I reclaimed lost dreams. I connected to passions buried in my past. I created, I wrote, I daydreamed. I allowed myself to change lanes and become.
I’m still changing lanes and I hope to until the day I take my last breath.
I recently came across this poem, Good Bones by poet Maggie Smith, that really touched me. I wanted to share it with you because, like me, like an old house that has good bones...I believe we could make this place beautiful.
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
Where is life leading you, dear friend?
What are you denying yourself?
What story are you telling yourself?
What are you pretending not to see, hear, feel, know?
I bet you’ve got your own hero’s journey within you. The details may differ (and hopefully aren’t as dramatic as mine), but please, if you do nothing else — allow yourself to breathe into your desires. Follow your heart.
On your mark, get set...gooooo!
Let’s make this place beautiful.
How does this idea of ‘brutally human’ resonate with you? I’d love to hear you’re story of struggle and discovery... Please share in the comments below.