Yoda's Right

"Fear is the path to the dark side.

Fear leads to anger.

Anger leads to hate.

Hate leads to suffering."

Yoda

thanks for reminding me of this one Che. I forgot how much I love Yoda.

So I’m humbly climbing back into my life again after a week or so of big emotions and even bigger lessons.

Looking back, the mountain I climbed with tears in my eyes and fury in my heart looks more like a bump in the road.

It’s crazy how that works.

But the fact of the matter is, I am who I am for lots of reasons and I hurdled that bump to the best of my ability at the time.

I hurt a lot of people in the process (including myself) but I also learned a lot from those mistakes.

Things like:

Don’t read facebook when you’re going through a huge life struggle. It will just make you more depressed. No one tells the 100% truth of their lives on there and all of those spiritual and zen quotes are often taken out of context and end up being more confusing than helpful when you’re really stressed out. Stress brings on black and white thinking and that zen stuff is more about the gray and finding the truth for yourself.

I remember reading through a few of them and feeling so confused.

Do I accept that I can’t handle this and just accept myself right now, or try to be grateful for this experience or push myself to find more strength? The truth was that I needed to do a little bit of all of it.

And the real truth is that there is no “right or wrong” when it comes down to it. We do the best we can given the skills and love we have in our hearts in every moment. If we screw up, the best thing to do is forgive ourselves, learn from it and move on.

I do have to admit that posting a SOS on my page and hearing from friends far away that they were sending me love and light helped… a lot. So facebook isn’t completely evil.



The other thing I learned is just how sensitive my body and consequently my mind and spirit are to chemicals. Taking medications that I’m not use to, spiked a chemical imbalance that created anxiety and angst inside of me that was way higher than my status quo. At the time I didn’t realize it and so I ended up overreacting to many of the situations I found myself in.

I also learned that my kids are not babies any more. I simply did not have the ability to “take care” of them the way I have in the past. They had to fend for themselves more and they did just fine. This was a huge thing for me because I should have been doing this a long time ago. I have to teach them to take care of themselves if they are ever going to be able to leave the nest.

Another gift that I received, although uncomfortable, was the gift of hearing the truth about how I react in these situations from Che. While I have always seen myself as a soul looking for deep connection, especially in the midst of stress, I see now that my natural reaction is to actually hide. I isolate and draw my light inside of myself and end up pulling it from everyone around me as a result. Staying present in the midst of pain is very difficult for me. This is a biggie and I’m thankful for the gift of that honest reflection.

I could sit and play coulda shoulda woulda all day about how I handled things and how I would do things different next time. But the point is, it’s over and done. The boys remember our experience as a fun trip. And while some painful conversations occurred, a lot of healthy conversations also took place. I learned that I really am a pretty tough cookie and that I do have the ability to snap out of the funk and just be in a good mood if I choose to do so.

There are a few moments speckled in all of that mess that I have been replaying in my mind while patting myself on the back. Like when we pulled over for Che to get a few pictures of Timmy at the sculpture park. It was cold. I was in pain and tired. But Hayden decided he wanted to get out too and even offered to let Che take some pics of him. I took a deep breath and got out and followed them through the park. We got some really great shots together that I will cherish forever and we had a lot of fun. If I had stayed in the car I would have missed out on seeing my baby blooming into this new boy exploding with joy and energy.

I have learned that there are really only two core emotions. Fear and Love and I even had someone tell me the other day that fear is just another form of love. I don’t get that yet, but maybe it will make sense one day. But the point is that I think we have a choice daily to choose which emotions we let rule us. I love myself enough to forgive myself for letting fear rule me for so long. And for the rest of my days I will strive to continue to make my life a vessel of love and light instead.