“Never judge another knight without first knowing the strength and cunning of the dragons he fights.”
Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons: Quotes, Poetry, & a few Short Stories for Every Day of the Year
Admitting that I’m imperfect, in a world that worships perfection, is not an easy thing…you see influencers on social media and their lives look flawless…exempt from pain or any flaw…
I would think I would have it all figured out and life would be a smooth walk by now…yet there is a deep chasm between where I am and the mountain that I want to be at…day-to-day resistance…a struggle that is painful…self-sabotage at work…
The faucet of emotions has been dripping for a long time…that’s easy to handle…to sop up and hide it away somewhere…I was always fearful that if I had to release it all that it would overwhelm me, and I would suffocate under the weight of it all…
I am not angry or do I feel like a victim…I believe in the goodness of God…grateful for the life that I am so gifted with…overcoming many obstacles in my life…but I’m stuck…a deep soulful yearning for that exquisite view from the mountain top…
Yesterday I heard of an artist that committed suicide…someone who gave his whole life to helping the less fortunate here in South Africa…the question is “why”…what pain did he live with that he couldn’t bear anymore…
I have been there… sitting in my bathroom at the age of 35 and the soul pain so unbearable that I wanted to die…ripping through the fabric of my being…again and again…until it became so excruciating …so agonizing …that even 35 years later it twists the very being of who I am…wringing tears from my heart that I thought I had cried…
Now I must face the monster to get where I want to the place I have been drawn to all of my life…Oprah Winfrey said it well, when she said...”I want to fulfill the highest expression of myself as a human being (a spiritual being having an earthly experience)…I want to fulfill the promise that the creator dreamed when He dreamed the cells that made up me”…
“Ultimately, we know deeply that the other side of every fear is freedom.” ~Marilyn Ferguson
I’ve tried to fix the problem with band aids…but I keep running smack dab into a wall…hitting bottom…living in the dark…facing buried childhood trauma is difficult…not blaming anyone…everyone does the best they can…I have forgiven…but the script that were installed as a child keeps playing…”you’re not worth anything as a female”…”you don’t deserve to be protected”…need to be erased and rewritten…not an easy task at any stage of life…
I have already come a great distance by myself and with support and love… crawling through continuing abusive relationships that reinforced the belief system that I wasn’t worthy of care and love…a friend once asked me, “if I didn’t feel that I deserved better”… and subconsciously I didn’t…always trying to prove my worth by being perfect…in literally everything…catering to every whim and desire of the people in my life…to the point I ended up with PTSD…curled up in a ball…totally and utterly exhausting…
I’ve been protected and carried even when I couldn’t walk anymore…with buried sparks of dreams that I was given before time…I thought most had been totally obliterated…I have worked hard to grow healthier and stronger…a lifelong journey of study…so I understand where I am at…it’s a final frontier…
I’ve been at the lower mountain camp for several years now…navigating the first forty pounds through sheer perseverance…then my husband’s cancer, covid and loneliness in a new country brought me to the open crevasse that is before me…
I see the beauty on the other side…and freedom…freedom to just be…
A spiritual being having a human experience come trailing the breath of the ancestors yet but trailing the breath of the angels and understanding that because I am connected to the source of all that is all that is possible is possible for me”
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin French philosopher and Jesuit priest 1881 – 1955
It feels like the Valley of Death that I must walk through…the “dark night of the soul”…that miserable process where we undergo for a significant transition …
“There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were.”― Hazrat Inayat Khan
If I die trying…for it is guarded by a dragon…who if I turn my back on will devour my soul…plant a field of wild flowers for me where butterflies will forever be free….schreech…hard stop…been through too many battles…I WILL CONQUER…I will scale the mountain…and come hell or high water…I will come out on the other side…and if I can’t slay the dragon, I will tame him and ride to the top of the mountain…and plant my own damn flowers and watch the butterflies…create my own fairytale
“They’re telling me that fairy tales are for learning how to slay dragons. But I’m telling them that I would never slay a dragon. I will mount the backs of dragons, I will fly with them. And if that doesn’t happen in fairy tales, well then, I’ll write my own.” ― C. JoyBell C.
“How to get the best of it all? One must conquer, achieve, get to the top; one must know the end to be convinced that one can win the end – to know there’s no dream that mustn’t be dared. . . Is this the summit, crowning the day? How cool and quiet! We’re not exultant; but delighted, joyful; soberly astonished. . . Have we vanquished an enemy? None but ourselves. Have we gained success? That word means nothing here. Have we won a kingdom? No. . . and yes. We have achieved an ultimate satisfaction. . . fulfilled a destiny. . . To struggle and to understand – never this last without the other; such is the law. . .” ~ George Mallory
