My Birthday and Tony Robbins
On the road, my favorite way to spend a birthday. I am currently adventuring with my family, following my heart, following the forgotten roads into the deep wilderness and desert oasis of New Mexico.
The long drive and open spaces give me the time and tranquillity to think and reflect on aspects of my life like the day of my birth, the purpose I want to engender, and the many transformations that have brought me here. The following are some of my thoughts from the last few days.
“Whose love did you crave more growing up?” asks Tony Robbins in the new documentary out on Netflix, “Tony Robbins. I Am Not Your Guru.”
“Your mother or your father?” Robbins is asking a young 19-year-old woman at his Date with Destiny seminar. But I answer the question for myself.
“Good question, Tony. I would have to say, my father. I had to be very vigilant around my father. I had to watch what I said and somehow anticipate his moods so as to avoid setting off his anger.”
I ponder the question a while longer and realize to what extent that shaped me. How it has affected my life, especially my relationship with men and authority figures.
It’s a good enquiry for me and I know I am going to chew on it for a while. It’s not an especially new revelation but rather the realization that I am now more ready than ever to drop this behavior and to act differently. I am ready to be free of the trembling I feel when I stand up to authority figures or bullying types. It’s funny how we can know something and not act on it. The fear we felt as children keeping us in lockdown.
I want to take a moment to draw further distinctions between knowing something and not acting on it. Knowing might be half the equation, but there are many reasons why we may not choose to do anything about it. We may not always act on something we know because sometimes:-
- there are other aspects of our lives that occupy our thoughts and actions completely.
- the knowledge comes in as fleeting thought and is gone before we can grasp its true potential.
- we just don’t have the support system or the desire to dive into a life changing transformation at the time
- we know it but are afraid of the consequences a change in our behavior may cause.
- it is easier to stay being the way we are.
But then something happens and the pieces fall into place. Parts that kept you distracted no longer hold your attention, people you once feared cease to be so intimidating and all the judgment that stopped you from being you, evaporates because it doesn’t hold a candle to the passion moving you towards your freedom.
I only caught a few minutes of Tony Robbin’s documentary, but it was enough to remind me that I was through walking on eggshells around the strong personalities in my life. I had known this. I just needed a little push to own it.
Onward!
Bare Skin
If you know my story, then you know that I cover my body from head to toe because of the burn scars from an accident 6 years ago. Whenever I go to the pool or to a river or any bodies of water, I wear sun protection gear from top to bottom. Part of the reason is to protect my scarred skin from the sun rays and part of the reason is that I have been afraid of being pointed at and/or pitied by others. But wearing the head to toe gear makes me feel just as self-conscious.
I hate feeling self-conscious. So, I did what I have been afraid of doing for 6 years. I wore a bikini for the first time at the Ojo Caliente Hot Mineral Springs Spa. Being there with family and feeling their love helped me to finally let go of fearing other people’s judgement about my skin and more importantly my own judgement about my skin and the story that I have been carrying.
This is a big win for me. I feel as if I popped into 48 as myself and that is thrilling.
Where are we heading?
I will be voting for the first time here in the USA and boy, is this a good time or what? Our votes matter.
Love
I feel love. I feel it in every single cell and breath of my body. I feel it melting out of my bones as giggles of gratitude. I feel this love sending out love beams to the stars, snakes, rivers, and the atoms dancing on my skin…
.. I think feeling love, filling up with love is the first miracle to perform. If we can do that for ourselves then we can love others. Truly loving others is a magnificent miracle of life.
There are many roads to travel whether in summer or winter (my southern hemisphere friends), inwards or outwards, long journeys or short, spinning or standing still, alone or together.
Always, always we travel on.
May your journey be enlightening and delight-filled, may it be soothing and deepening, may you discover that you are gorgeous in many ways than one. May your journey be yours.
Thank you for reading my musings and please feel free to share them with anyone you think would benefit from these conversations. Tell me what’s on your mind. What’s real for you in your current life? Add your thoughts to the comments below.