All Knowing Nothing

"I know" is a very strong statement.  We use it everyday, and sometimes multiple times a day.  Someone tells you the something that you believe you already "know" and our response is "I know".  So what is it exactly we know.  The answer we tell ourselves is practically everything.  We know it all. But do we?  I am struggling with this concept because like I said, I'm trying to familiarize myself with living in the "grey" areas of life rather than my most candid approach which is oh so familiar, the black and white of any given fact, situation, or circumstance.  As I've stated earlier, this is extremely hard for me because at times I feel as if I'm lying to myself or in some what denying, or "unlearning" what I already know, which is the cold hard facts.  I've realized that I have studied science for so long that not everything is black or white.  There are grey areas of life, mostly in matters of the heart.  I read once that women should never believe anything what a man says but to believe what he actually does, his actions.  I have lived by this for so long but again, to me this is black or white.  You either follow through with what you have said, or simply you do not.  This is how I have based the decisions that I have made while keeping my heart at bay.  "When one is ruled by their emotions, they live a very challenging life.  Be the surgeon.  Stay neutral.  Go in and get the job done and leave.  Do not feel."  This was the advice given to me by someone that I've trusted for sometime.  So I have been wrestling with these thoughts of being ruled by my mind and logic or being ruled by my heart.  This week at yoga, the theme was to "unlearn what you already know".  How powerful is that statement but yet so confusing at the same time.  How can we just ignore the facts?  How can we throw caution to the wind and imagine what exactly we want for our life without a care as to what we do already know?  The answer, ironically is I don't know.  I can only go by, dare I say it, what I feel.  And what I feel is, oh so overwhelming.  And my heart, oh my heart.  So alive and scared at the same time.  Can the hope I have be real?  Can my faith manifest itself so greatly that all of my wishes, desires and dreams come true?  God I hope so.  Otherwise, what is faith?  Why do we believe?  Why do I believe?  So really, all I know is that, I must trust that all of this is for a reason.  I must have faith that all will be right.  I must believe in happy endings.  I must unlearn what I already know and search my heart.  Trust my heart and feelings and have the courage to march into the unknown.  For as the poem states " the less I know, the more I am free."

Coming Alive

There are so many movies that have been done about women being lost in what the various stereotypes society casts us in. We become lost in the corporate world, as in being so "buttoned up" and closed off that we do not let anyone near us or in to our true selves.  Some of us become lost in the role of wife or mother that we cannot identify with anyone who is not a wife or mother.  These are just some of the more popular scenarios that have been depicted.  But in every movie, book, story, the woman is triggered by someone or something that brings her back to her true self meaning she reclaims her woman hood and remembers what it's like to be a woman again. Because all of us from time to time forget.  We type cast ourselves as a daughter, sister, mother, grandmother, student, VP, CEO, wife, and so on and so on.  However even though we are all these things, we are first a woman with healthy carnal urges to be adored, admired, seduced, loved and sensual.  Feeling this way I find makes me a better friend, lover, daughter, sister, or whatever role I'm playing for the day because inside I feel amazing about myself knowing that someone sees me as the woman that I am.  I remember the director Adrian Lyne talking about the movie he made with Diane Lane, "Unfaithful".  This movie was so controversial, but  the director Mr. Lyne who also directed "Fatal Attraction", when interviewed about "Unfaithful" stated that it was really about the journey of the female character,Connie, played by Diane Lane,  and what it takes for a woman to come alive again, which ironically is not much.  After being suppressed to mother and wife, her new role in life, someone triggered something in her that made her feel that incarnate spirit of what it feels like to be a woman, to feel desired, wanted, loved just for being the woman that she naturally was before she suppressed that need to attend to others needs.  And he went on to say that you can see the transition in her instantly when it happens to her. You can see when she finally let's go and returns to her femininity and puts the labels aside for just a moment to regain a part of herself that we as women are trained by society that we must give up in order to be the perfect wife, mother, daughter, sister, CEO, VP and so on.  I beg to differ.  I know that for me, my business, my personal relationships, my family, my friends, everything in my life is so much better when I've channeled this energy.  It's intoxicating and the people around you get drunk on it, and so do I.  It's beautiful. It's carnal. It's natural.  In "Unfaithful", something or someone made her sparkle again and she knew it, owned it and embraced it as a part of her.  There is something to be said about that.  I feel as if I'm going through something like that myself as if you couldn't tell.  Something or someone has triggered that part of me that has reminded me of how to be a woman again, and once more, I quite like it. Actually, I love it.  I can't get enough of it. It feels natural, sexy, and comforting in a way.  I'm not sure if it's because I'm in my thirties now and feel more sound, confident and settled or if there is indeed a trigger.  All I know is it is beautiful.  I look around me and see so many women who have simply forgot how to be a woman.  They do not take care of themselves the way that they should.  This might sound narcissistic but a woman should worship herself as she wants to be worshiped.  I'm not talking biblical, so don't get uptight about this.  God himself said to men..."love your wives as Christ loved the church".  So why is it that women forget that and discount themselves?  Why is it that a woman becomes last on the "food chain"?  Listen, I know as a mother you must take care of your children first and foremost. But also being a good mother means that you must also take care of yourself too.  You are the example for your children and they soak up everything we do.  Show them how to take care of themselves and others by taking care of you!  I do know a lot of mothers, my friends who still make themselves look great when they are out in public or even in the privacy of their own homes with their husbands.  That is part of being a woman.  For me lately, I felt this spirit come alive. It is like an insatiable fire that I cannot put out and quite frankly I don't want to put it out.  I want it to grow.  I'm embracing it and trying not to ask questions which is very hard for me, but I'm going with it.  I just wonder if Adrian Lyne is right....can you see me coming alive? I think that you can because this is something that even I cannot hide, and nor do I want to.  It feels too damn good.

Dancing in the Dark

For me personally, life has been crazy over the past month.  I have experienced the highest of highs and  the lowest of lows, and back again.  This morning I sit here writing feeling so, dare I say it, happy.  I have no idea why I feel happy but I do know that I have done everything in my power to not allow myself to feel this happiness that has washed over me.  I'm not kidding.  I feel as if I have been through a war, with myself.  I have tried to talk myself out of what I'm feeling time and time again and despite my best efforts, the happiness has won out.  Ha! Through all of my wrestling with myself I found out some key aspects to why would someone, or me, fight feeling happiness.  Why, after all of this time would I stop myself from feeling something that comes natural?  Questions of "Is this wrong? Is this right?  How can I feel this way?  Do I deserve to feel this way after everything that has happened? Will it go away?  Will it stay? What does the future hold?".  Exhausting just reading these questions isn't it?  So what are the answers? Well if you know anything about me, I exercised every possible outcome to find the answers.  This is just the scientist in me.  There is always a solution to any problem/hypothesis. That reminds me in the movie "Clueless" when Cher says to her father who is a high profile attorney "Daddy, have you ever had a problem that you can't argue your way out of?" His response "Tell me the problem and we will figure out a way to argue it."  That's me. However with some of these questions if not all of them, there was no way to find a solution as hard as I tried.  There were lessons to learn with all of these questions.  One, I had to let go of the past.  Now I had thought that I had successfully done this.  I've been to therapy, took classes, written many hours in several journals but I had not really let go of the past until just recently.  God, it feels amazing.  It feels liberating.  I finally feel that I can move forward.  I let go of the guilt that I kept carrying around with me and with that, I let go of everything else.  All the labels, all the hurt, all the expectations, all of it.  Just let it go!  Ironically, all of my daily devotions had been centered around letting go of things that do not serve us and letting go of the past.  With that, transformation happens.  This is the magic time.  This is the time that you actually can actively feel God working in your heart.  The universe and you are in line with the exact plan and you feel it in your bones, your soul.  How could I fight this feeling?  Then there is the blessing.  You can't hold on to things that God has already forgiven you for and then expect to receive his blessing.  He forgave you in order to bless you.  And he always will forgive.  That is his promise to us.  He will forgive, now it's our job to open up, release the guilt and shame that are not of God, and receive the blessing or what he has intended for us in our life.  This is impossible to do if we allow the darkness to keep haunting us.  The past is the past.  Yesterday, last week, last month, the last moment is the past.  We have this time, this moment, this second to make our present and our future.  So with all of those questions that I have wrestled with, the answer is I don't know.  I've stopped worrying about all of those unnecessary things because I do deserve happiness, as we all do.  And feelings are true and real and quite simply, it is what it is so believe it.  So as much as I have wanted to know how all of this will play out, I have released that control.  I literally am dancing in the dark and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Part of Me

This week has been a very heart breaking week.  For the first time in several years, I honestly have heart break.  My heart hurts so that it is unbearable.  I have to let someone go that no longer has my best interest at heart.  How many times am I going to do this?  Make the same mistake?  I guess I should look at it as a blessing. Now I know true intentions of this person and in a way it is freeing and awakening.  It's not a fairy tale.  It's reality.  They love themselves more than they love me.  It's jarring to have to come to terms with the fact that words are just words unless action is followed by them.  So, with that, my heart sinks.  I feel like such a failure in love.  I have loved so deeply and so intensely, but have those men loved me back in the same way?  If so, would I be with one of them today?  Who knows but as Katy Perry states in her song "this is the part of me that you'll never, ever take away from me".  I love this about myself but it is also a double edged sword.  I wish at times, this part of me would just be quiet.  Ha...then I would be like all the other miserable people in relationships that have passed their expiration date.  So today, I sit with heartache.  However I know that in time, my heart will heal and I will move on.  I will be stronger and wiser.  I will never betray myself ever again to appease someone else.  I will never do that to myself ever again. For that is my heart break.  Knowing I did something that went against ever fiber in my soul.  So, now it's time for re-birth.  Renewal of promises to myself, God, the universe that I will be true to myself.  No matter how bad it hurts me at the time or another person, I will be true.  This is the part of me that no one will ever take away from me.  Going through heartbreak is indeed like loosing a loved one.  The five stages of grief has no bounds when one is grieving a loss of a person, a pet, something dear to them, a friend, a lover, or part of yourself.  This week I'm on the second stage I think, the sadness and crying.  I need for the anger stage to kick in to kick me in the butt so that I can move forward with daily activities.  Then the rest will come.  But I have to say that this experience has revealed to me some things that are amazing about myself.  One, I do have the ability to put my feelings aside to make someone else happy.  Second, I know that I will only be doing this for a select few going forward.  Third, it has put all of my past relationships in perspective and I have graduated over them.  Fourth, it has shown me what kind of relationship I want in my life and especially the kind I do not want.  So I feel that I am much closer to getting who I am meant to be with.  And for that and that alone, it was worth it.  Sometimes you have to face and own the ugly in order to over come it.

Smoke and Mirrors

In today's society it is very easy to get caught up in all of the glam.  Bright and shiny things turns us on.  Let's face it, we all get sucked in to the "newness" of something and the glitz and glam it can bring to our lives. It makes us feel like we our "kings" and "queens" of the world.  I have been caught up in something like this for a while, sorry to say.  It was a great ride at times but there is always something in the back of your mind that is telling you.."This is surface and superficial.  This is not real...and neither are you.  You are not being your true self but a version of that."  I used to call these things "distractions" that keep us from being and living our truth.  Now I call them "smoke and mirrors", or if you will, lies.  They are the lies that we allow other people to tell us to continue the cycle.  They are the lies we tell ourselves so that we can keep having "fun" and not think or deal with reality.  And the reality is that all of the bright and shiny, glitz and glam, smoke and mirrors, are not real.  They are lies.  In my everyday 8 to 5 job I pride myself at detecting the "smoke and mirrors" that are fed to me.  I do this very well and it has made me very successful.  I just do not let clients feed me a line of crap.  I question and examine what they are saying until we get to the heart of the matter, until they can no longer put forth the "front" and all we are left with is the truth.  The truth is what you can work with.  The truth is what you can accept and move forward with a solution if need be.  You cannot work with a lie.  You cannot work with someone who refuses to be honest with you or themselves.  So, therefore, you cut your losses until perhaps one day you can get to the truth and move forward.   In my personal life I have had to dispel a lot of lies, "smoke and mirrors".  I have had to really take an inventory of the people in my life and decide whether or not they are true to me or not.  Sometimes this has been easy and sometimes this had been really hard.  Why?  Why is it hard to clear out the smoke and mirrors?  Because at times, I didn't want to believe what is starring back at me.  I didn't want to believe that it is a lie.  If I was believing a lie, and ignoring the truth, then what does that say about me? Hard to face the ugly truth sometimes especially if you are just as guilty as the other parties.  I am a work in progress.  I faced the ugly truth and it has set me free.  In so many ways.  There is no guilt, no shame, no worry or stress, only peace and freedom.  The truth has set me free, and I am running with it.  There is no need to return to the lie, because the lie has unfolded.  The gig is up and now new life begins.  So let it begin.

Commitment Phoebic

This is one of my favorite times to write...at night...when the house is quiet. The music is playing, candles are lit, glass of wine and a beautiful bouquet of yellow roses, courtesy of me of course, is sitting before me.  They make me so happy every time I look at them.  I would highly recommend that you buy yourself some flowers sometime if you never have.  I love flowers and I have all kinds of favorites, but roses are classic and timeless, so I love them.  Now that I have set the mood for us, ha ha, let's get down to business.  I have realized something about myself that I'm sure will cost more hours and thousands of dollars in therapy.  I think that I have known for a while but refused to admit it, but I have to or else I will forever be alone.  This week, I was faced with a very big decision.  I mean, if all works out, it's going to be amazing.  But it could go sour, real fast and I know that.  So I had to decide whether to commit to this endeavor or not.  I literally procrastinated until the very last minute possible to make the decision of what I wanted to do.  What I realized and actually had the courage to admit about myself is...I'm a commitment phoebe.  Seriously...I'm afraid of commitment.  Isn't this supposed to be a issue for mostly males?  Of course...I would have it.  My therapist is going to love this on Monday.  I can't or am afraid to commit, personally that is.  In business, I'm in it.  I'm in it to win it and there is no looking back.  I'm committed 100 percent.  But in my personal life...it scares me to death.  Perhaps this is the stumbling block for me to why I always fall in love with the WRONG MEN!!!!  ALWAYS!!!  Is it because deep down in my heart I know I will never have them?  I will never have to commit to them?  Is that why?  Or is it because, I am very loyal.  I am loyal to a fault.  I'm that person that when the Titanic was sinking, I wouldn't leave.  I was committed and loyal to the ship and when it sank...so did I.  This could be a metaphor to some of the most intense, amazing, and tragic relationships of my life.  It certainly is true of my marriage.  I sank along with my marriage.  I had to...to rise to the top again.  But that is neither here nor there, regardless, I am commitment shy.  I always have been.  I think it began after one of my first serious relationships with a man.  I'm scared to death that when I do commit by giving all of me, body, soul and heart, it will be discarded, like the other men discarded my feelings for what they wanted, needed, and frankly loved...themselves.  So I can't commit...not yet.  Not until I know without a shadow of a doubt that when I do commit myself again to another man, he will also commit himself to me, fully, not part time...full time.  There are so many times that other people will use you to get what they need for the moment, the night, the week, the month and then leave you until they need another "fix".  I have been that person for so many others that I have to pull away in order to save myself.  Sometimes you have to say no to others in order to say yes to yourself.  So this doesn't help my commitment issue.  But it does help my "love thyself" issue.

Connections

In today's world, life that is, it is very rare to find that human connection that everyone is looking for.  I mean let's be honest...every single person is looking for that connection with another person that will answer all of the unanswered questions, assumptions or imaginations that we have in our minds.  However when we do find it, it is often by surprise and very, very, intense.  And the intensity grows stronger and stronger until their is point, or plateau where something gives.  Something bad, or something good...it just gives.  And at that point, it will either make the relationship stronger or it will burn the flame out.  This doesn't have to be a romantic connection.  I've experienced this in friendships as well.  Think about the friends who have come and gone in your life.  It starts out where there is such interest, intensity and intrigue.  Then once we find out all we need to know about that person, either through a crazy night out on the town, through another friend, or in a disagreement with them, it simply ends.  It is never the same.  The flame got snuffed out.  And there are times when we see them again and regale old times.  However after fifteen minutes, if that, we realize that is all we had with them, fifteen minutes worth of friendship.  I'm not trying to sound insensitive, but really that is all that it is.  I believe that people enter and exit your life when needed.  Sometimes we are not ready for things to be over, and we fight it, or delay it as long as possible.  But the inevitable is coming, and that we are certain of every single day.  Then there are those that no matter where we go, no matter what we do, who we marry, who we unmarry, they are there, in our soul.  Our soul mates.  I have been very fortunate to have a couple of those in my life.  It doesn't matter how much time has past, we can always pick up right where we left off.  Those relationships are priceless.  I feel that there are times when I have lost myself...in some way.  Then I connect with one of my soul mates, either directly or indirectly and what was lost is suddenly found again.  That is what I want for my life.  That is what I want in my marriage. I will not settle until I have it...no one should.  Because, no matter what, even if you cannot face the truth as it is staring you down in the mirror, your soul companion will reveal it to you just in their presence.  Why? How?  This is one vital way that our soul communicates to us, reflecting our soul's counterpoint, revealing our truth, revealing us in them.  And that connection can never be broken, even as much as we would like it to be sometimes, it never goes away. The lost, gets found, it always, always does.