Running Free

Often I dream of running, effortlessly through the field and wood, across the emptiness of my past to the spaces of my future. However, running requires work and training. The training is not fun; it is repetitive and pain filled. Feet blister, shins ache, stomachs cramp, and lungs burn. There is no short cut to the strength running requires.

I must train the muscles that have atrophied from disuse. Never have I lived on my own. Never have I lived by myself. Never have I lived for myself. Right now, I cannot run far or fast because there is little strength in my muscles. I stumble, fall and ache, but each and everyone of those experiences increases my endurance. Soon, when I least expect it, I will be running. I will be free to explore and discover spaces that were unreachable.

For now, I will accept the stumbles and pain while reveling in the training knowing it brings a joy and freedom that can be found no other way.

Naturally

Reviewing my posts and my private journal, I find most of my experiences are described in terms of natural processes. Whether it is the strengthening wings or the burrowing roots, the changes are a necessary part of natural growth. This particular year in my life has been one of dramatic almost traumatic alterations. I see so very much that is good and nurturing in this new life, but a danger is always present.

Will I continue in a healthy growth pattern or will I bend and wither under the pressures of this growth? Can I use the pain and struggle to expand and bloom, or will I fold into myself and become simply an empty husk? There is no clear answer. However, what is becoming clear is that I control the process by my reaction to this New World. The power is within me and is not dependent on the circumstances around me. I will become the person of strength and courage that I choose to fight for.

Rerooting

I'm finding an increasing power in my new life. It's not coming all at once. Instead, it comes in spits and starts. One day I feel this new power flowing through my soul; the next I'm drained of energy. The days of draining are becoming fewer and farther between. That's because the source of my power is myself, and as I learn more about myself, that source is easier to access.

It's rerooting myself. For years, I tried to root myself in soil that was hard and unyielding creating a stunted, ineffectual system that was meant to nurture my soul. Now the soil is open and fertile. My roots are no longer bound into a small crowded bundle. They are free to expand, deepen and draw from a fuller and richer set of nutrients. These nutrients are the friends I'm developing, the experiences I'm seeking, and the responsibilities I'm bearing. The pleasures these provide are making rooting in this soil a joy, but without the struggles that come as well my roots will never grow as deep as I will need to become a strong, independent soul. Pain and joy are both sides of the same process; neither can or should be avoided.

Wings

This is one of my more difficult posts because I am exposing my weakness. Over the last several weeks, I am noticing a pattern of soaring highs and crashing lows. It took awhile for me to accept that I could not control the falls, but until I did, I couldn't begin exploring the cause.

This is the pattern of a new butterfly. It is a clique, but it fits my situation. I'm not referring to the new, beautiful creature, but to exercising new, inexperienced wings. For the butterfly to gather strength, it must fight and struggle into it flight. Without the pain there is no ability to soar on the wind.

I am learning to use a new set of emotional wings. There is pain and danger involved. My initial reaction is to draw back inside to a place of relative safety. However it is place of death not safety. Just as the butterfly must fly to strengthen its wings or die, I need to fly into my new emotions to explore and experience them or die. That death is not physical but in its own way is just as dangerous. I will fall and that will hurt. The deeper I go or to follow my analogy the higher I fly the greater the risk and the pain of the fall. People will let me down; I will misread others. All of these experiences hurt but all growth is painful.

At times I will fall into a spiral that feels and is out of control, but that same spiral will take me to places I've never imagined. That is both the joy and danger of strengthening my wings. It is also the only way to move into a full, complete life. I am making the choice to accept my inability to control this process, and to accept that I will fall. But I also choose to grow stronger by exercising these emotional wings so I can soar on the wind. How can I ever know how far and high they will take me if I don't exercise them?

Masks

One of the hardest things I am dealing with is letting go of the images I set for myself. The masks have become such a standard part of my wardrobe, I'm not sure I even know when I'm wearing one. But I do know that as long as I hold on to them, I will never rediscover who I truly am.

As a child, I simply was. Then as I aged, I studied those around me to see how they view me. I begin the process of looking at how others look at me and creating a person that I thought they thought I should be. Yes, this process is that confusing. And yet, as women, we fall into this trap.

At some point in my live, I was forced to either recognize that I was carrying those masks or let them become melded so deeply to me that there was no longer anyone below the mask. The failure to recognize the masks I wear for the burden they are began to drag me down into fits of doubt, self-loathing, depression, or worse.

That is why I have moved out and onto a path to find how much of me still exists. It is also a process of discovering what parts of this person that I appear to be are masks and what is really me. It not easy, safe or comfortable. I wonder if I will like the person I find or if I will even recognize her, but either way, I know I must push ahead for there is no option.

Life Quote

I'm not sure just how far to follow but this idea does remind me that the pleasures of sunshine on my shoulders, the scent of fresh mown grass, the touch of the breeze on my face, the taste of a fresh salad grown in my own garden, and the color of the clouds in the sunset come as personal gifts for me from God's hand.

"When you die,

God and the angels

will hold you accountable

for all the pleasures

you were allowed in life

that you denied yourself."

ANONYMOUS

The Beginning

There is nothing simple about leaving behind all of your plans and dreams. It is both frightening and daunting. But still a new set of dreams come with the process. They are not the same, and it will be some time before I know whether they are better or worse. Actually, I'm learning that there are no BETTER or WORSE dreams just ones I never follow. Robert Frost says it in The Road Not Taken,


"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both...
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back..."


I can't follow both set of dreams, and even if I could, they would never be the same dreams.
So the beginning is letting go the fear of released dreams and the exalting in the joy of new ones.