Even when it shakes

There’s a heavy feeling here. A heavy sadness, a helplessness, a powerlessness, a frustration around what is happening. It’s playing out on the world stage and I know for a lot of people, myself included, it’s playing out on a smaller scale in our own lives too. In our homes, in our communities, the feeling of things having been on the verge of something for so long and now those building, lingering, unsettling things have gone off. There is fall out, there is confusion, there is fear for what will be next.

We’ve seen a war begin on the world stage and in our individual, small in comparison lives, on so many levels war games all around us are showing up. The closest and most individual being the war within. The war of what to do with what is within us. After years and years of playing for the ‘keep it quiet, don’t say anything that might bother someone else, deal with it yourself and slap a smile on to keep everything comfortable for everyone else’ side, many of us are now feeling the call, the urge, the need, the empowerment to just be.

To express what is on the inside, to share how we feel, to explain how we hurt. We’ve been recruited by another side, not THE other side for we see there are way more than just two. We’ve joined our ‘selves’ and banded together into circles of individual voices hearing and taking care of each other. It’s the team of authenticity and love. Where we work, we grow, we learn how to express what is in us with care, thought and feeling but without apology.

There is still a battle, there are still always moments of doubt. Moments of having spoken out and then felt I should have shut up, feeling the weight of the fallout of being misheard, misunderstood, not heard at all or just not liked. Moments of shutting up and then regretting missing the opportunity to connect with someone in truth, in authenticity, in what was there in that moment for both of us to experience and grow through. It’s hard either way, it can be uncomfortable either way and there is fallout to be dealt with either way.

What wins the battle of what to do and what to say or not say every time for me is ‘what do I want for my kids?’. Do I want them to shut up or do I want them to speak up for themselves and what hurts them even when their voices shake? It’s a no brainer and if I want it for them I need to be it for them.

I need to be honest and open about what is in me, how I feel and how I hurt. I need to be open and willing to sit with and explore conflict when it arises out of what I have spoken and shared from my heart. In my home, with my children and in every relationship and interaction in my life. I need to say no to powering over and being powered over equally. I need to say no to living my life like a game of Survivor. No to outwitting, no to outsmarting, no to tricking and manipulating. No to connecting in the form of alliances against others.

I am powerless on the world stage. I am helpless to make change on a global level.

I am powerful in my heart, in my knowing, in my home and in my actions. In my way of being in the world, being open, honest and willing even when the response I receive could be the opposite and in the ripples all of that can create through my children and the people they will become.