[lindalyn-blog1]

[lindalyn-blog1]

I made you special.

“The concept of “special” is based on anything we make an idol of-anything we perceive as better than others or ourselves. The ego has all kinds of ways of convincing us that people are special. When we perceive that someone is more special than others, we’re thinking with separation. We’ve forgotten that we are all one, and we’ve hooked back into the ego’s thought system of better-than and worse-than.”    -Gabby Bernstein

A chapter in one of the books I’m reading, Spirit Junkie asks that you reflect on anyone or anything you have made special or an idol in your life.  It’s a strange thing to think about at first because for me it’s been a natural part of my life.  It is the way I have lived since I can remember and looking back I can see how I let those Idols pile on top of each other until I felt so small that I spent a good portion of my past feeling not so good about myself. It might also be something I didn’t want to admit to at first. 

The obvious answer of where I’ve made people special is in my love life.  I can remember my first crush in elementary school and always feeling so small around them, to being thirteen and falling hard for an eighteen year old who I had no business dating but felt like my world would fall apart when my parents tried to stop me, all the way through high school where I would turn a simple crush into an idol and dwell on it until the next one came along.

When I met the guy I would be married to for almost nine years it wasn’t any different, except this time he did the same thing to me and it was probably the unhealthiest relationship you could be in.  We were both in lust not love with each other, I know we grew to love each other in some ways, but not what I now view to be real love.  Our relationship was fully driven by fear and that is the opposite of love.

When you make a guy an idol you give all of your power away to that person and put your happiness in their hands. You become unauthentic and easily swayed in whatever direction you feel like you need to bend to keep them around. Which actually doesn’t even keep them around, it causes the opposite to happen and I have spent so much time giving my power to boys who didn’t deserve it.

But when I look deeper into my idols, I literally see them everywhere.  Constant comparisons to others and feeling unworthy, all the way to those times I see myself as better than a person or a situation and make myself an idol.

I’ve done this with family, friends and people in general when I’ve felt like I’m not where they feel like I should be in life.  Getting married young, starting a family even younger and not having a college degree but plenty of money problems has been a huge trigger to cause me to feel small and when I felt my marriage falling apart it got even worse.  College, money, success, and status became my idols (that seemed impossible to attain at the time) and those around me, with those things sat on a pedestal above me that I couldn’t even reach if I was on my tip toes.

I spent my twenties as a stay at home mom, very disconnected from my friends, myself and feeling left out. Most twenty year olds live a pretty selfish life, at the time I thought this was a bad thing, though I know now it wasn’t and selfish is also another word for figuring out their own shit. But the truth is people without children have no way of knowing what it’s like to be a parent and how selfless you have to become once you are a parent (though I will say not all parents do this). Having children at twenty-one is like being put on a fast track to becoming an adult, you no longer only think about yourself first, your choices are determined on what is best for those little people you created. And while I was doing the mom/wife thing, my friends were doing what they wanted, when they wanted and put very little thought into how much planning it took for me to do anything outside of the home.  I would get canceled on last minute.  I wasn’t available to do things spur of the moment and didn’t have the money to just spend on myself. Although I now understand and realize it was never a personal things, it felt very personal at the time.  The more this happened the smaller I felt and it caused me to feel very separate from others. This would also cause me to go in the reverse direction from that and be judgmental at times, to make myself not feel so bad and to make myself special.  My ego would come in saying how much more I was learning or growing then those who weren’t doing what I was.  

It is all relative though, I was just at a baby shower for a friend and I had this weird flash come over me… My life is coming full circle, all though I am still a mom, my life is completely different; I am going through what they were going through and they are starting to go through what I was going through. This is a cycle that will continue… hell I am young enough I could go through it all again!  Nothing is more or better then something else. It’s all the same, it’s all equal, and we are all one.  

[lindalyn-blog1]

[lindalyn-blog1]

Returning to me.

I feel the need to write this out and share it. Please be kind on my grammar, I've reread it but I'm sure I slipped up somewhere! I do not understand inspiration or why it happens but this is just the begining of something huge. I plan on starting a blog where I continue to share my writing, art and even plan on selling some crafts I've started. Stay tuned for that!! But for now it all started with this... The truth is I have an almost constant urge to express myself and my feelings and for the last decade, if not longer, I’ve been living with an insane mental block. Allowing me to get how I felt out in bits and pieces but not totally. I think the bigger truth in that is in that same amount of time I had been living in complete fear. I think I have, actually I know I have, let fear run my life. I was afraid of everything to the point I was frozen and unable to move forward. Anxiety ran the show and caused me to quit almost everything I tried to start. I was afraid of who I was, who I wasn’t, what I was missing out on in life while also scared of what I’d be missing out on if I made the choice to change my life. I was absolutely terrified of what other people thought of me, I over thought every conversation I had with others and every thought I shared with myself. And when I looked in the mirror I did not see me. I had no idea who I was or what I liked; I didn’t trust myself. So making decisions was a daily battle. I was literally dying inside and I felt stuck in a hole with no way out. I became so hopeless that I spent days on my knees in tears, praying to either not feel the way I did or to not exist. I know now that I never wanted to die but I was in unbearable pain and could not take it. I felt like something inside of me was screaming for help and I just wanted someone to notice. In February of this year someone I barely knew reached out to me and I finally felt a little less invisible. I was at a retreat for relationships where we listened to a speaker and then met in small groups and talked about our lives, sharing whatever we felt moved to share. Well I guess an older women in my group was paying attention to me and at the end of the weekend handed me a note. In the note she told me I was beautiful but she could see the loneliness in me. I was a bit taken back; I think this shook me and woke me up a little bit. But the truth is there were other people who noticed too, it’s just that in the end what it came down to was I was the only one who could really help me. Forward to June and between then and February everything in my life unraveled in a very big way. Life would seem like it was getting better and then would get progressively worse. To the point I made the decision to end my marriage of eight and a half years. I must point out this is not about my marriage but the choice to divorce, it has to be said because the choice to end it was the turning point to where everything in my life has changed. It was a decision that did not come easily or lightheartedly, it took a few years of major effort to keep it together as well as processing the idea of it coming to an end and was never really what I thought my future held. But when I knew, I knew. At the same time of having peace in my heart that I could walk away. Every fear I’d accumulated over the years hit me in my chest… hard. Who would I be now, how would I survive as a single mom of 3, who would want a damaged person like me, would I loose important people in my life and what would they think, was I just another statistic of failed marriage, what would this do to our daughters- knowing they wouldn’t have both of their parents there for things like putting them to bed at night and waking up together on Christmas, as well as the lingering fears I’d heard over and over about what the bible says about divorce, and was I setting my daughters up for failed marriages themselves?? The list went on and on and on. But just as those fears came, they slowly dissolved over the next few weeks and everything became even clearer to me, I was on the right path. After being released of the fear and the guilt of my choices, I started to become myself again. This happened a lot faster than I thought it would. I started laughing again, a lot, and I started being told how happy I looked. When I look in the mirror I see me again. And this is a direct result of the choice I made, it is not just about divorce or ending that part of my life, it was the choice I made to completely turn my back on all of my fears and change my life. It is not a perfect science, new fears pop up all the time. I have my ups and downs. Over the last week I was hit hard but when I really stopped to examine the situation I saw fear staring me in the face once again. This time was different though, after catching myself getting lost in fear, I made the choice to let go. I realized, like really realized and understood for the first time, it is not about me. None of it; there is something way bigger at play. To borrow the words of the author Gabby Bernstein, "I am a servant of something Fucking unstoppable. It is not about me and I will be given all the resources and support I need to make it through my mission and reason for being here in this life and this body.” We are here to love unconditionally and without expectation. With this realization I feel more alive and full of joy than I ever knew possible. I will never be the perfect me, I do waiver when my head gets the best of me and I can feel myself start to get drawn back in to negative thoughts. But something else I have learned from Gabby is that those thoughts are not born or created out of love so they are not real. Danger is real. But the fear we have of the future and the fear we project into our lives are not, fear is just something we choose to believe in. The only way to escape is to witness our fears and then choose to walk the other way. I am by definition a very emotional person. I cry easily. I feel everything very deeply, sometimes to an uncomfortable level. The above realization was no exception for me. It has turned my world upside down, but in an incredible way. I no longer feel the need to apologize for who I am or explain myself. I am embracing my truth, who I am and who I want to be. I feel happy being me. I truly am starting to feel beautiful for the first time in my life and a lot of that has nothing to do with what I see in the mirror, though as a result of how I feel inside I am starting to like what I see more as well and I am the healthiest I’ve ever been. I am starting to see others that way too. It is amazing how much less you feel judged by others when you truly stop judging yourself. I spend my time with the people I love and rebuilding relationships I had isolated myself from. I am starting to do what I love and realize what makes me feel truly alive. I am writing again, I am creating art again, making a list of all of the places I want to go and things I want to do. So much of this didn’t feel possible until now. And I am sharing myself and my love without expectation. I know I want to spend my time experiencing as many new things as possible, possessions seem so much less important than experiences now. I plan on making a life where I can support and take care of my daughters and do what I want, I will fight for that, but at the same time excess money is not an important thing to me and neither is status. My passions and love for life will be the driving factor and I feel unstoppable. I do not want my happiness to rely on anything that can be taken away from me. I want relationships that move me, that inspire me and that push both parties involved to be the best that they can be. I want to spend my time with people I can learn from and truly connect with. I no longer feel the need to fit into anything or belong to a group or a tittle. I am a mom, but that is not who I am. I am a daughter, but that is not who I am, and I am a friend, but that is not who I am. I love things, whether it be music, movies, art, or places I’ve been, that move me and make me feel something, but those things don’t make me who I am. I am whatever is left after all of that is taken away from me and I know that what I create is my way of expressing just that. And if I ever do end up with someone in my life that I am meant to spend it with I know underneath the butterflies and romance they will serve a much larger purpose… one that can’t be taken away if it is meant to be. They won’t be there to complete me or make my happiness for me and there is nothing that I can do or need to say other then be my most authentic loving self to find them. I am happy being me. I am okay being alone. I am falling in love with myself.