This Is Everything Life Has Taught Me

I am a woman who walked into my thirties with a confidence – my heart was bruised and my head was foggy and battered from life – but I still walked with naïve confidence because I had declared my thirties would be different.

My twenties was watching loved ones pass through illness; of being shattered by the tidal waves of grief; enduring the demise of abusive friendships and juggling all of life’s happenings of study, career, love, adventure and all the while trying desperately to find my feet in the world – trying to find stable ground to hold myself firm and catch my breath – yet still showing the world I was strong, brave and that I was okay – because I was afraid of the world seeing what I was feeling.

I walked into my thirties with false confidence that I had mastered life or at the very least, the needs and desires of my own soul. I thought that so long as outwardly my life shone, then the challenging life occurrences would cease. I thought the world needed to see me stand tall in strength against the enduring winds of challenge. I thought the world always needed to see me smile and hear me laugh because I thought the world would reject my tears and those moments of weakness. I thought my bruised heart wasn’t enough for the world.

My thirties arrived and in a moment, the clarity arrived and the fog has lifted.

My heart finally breathes because the challenges never cease – life moves in cycles – life, death and everything in between – and I feel – and it’s okay for the world to witness the emotion.

I breathe – My confident bravado strips away – it is no longer needed – my strength is my surrender and my surrender is my superpower…

…And this is my surrender.

Life has shown me to breathe into the moon and to fill my heart with so much love that it spills over and into every limb and crevice of my being. Life has taught me that love is the medicine for the soul.

Life has taught me to love big, to love hard, to love always.

It has taught me that forgiveness is love, release and power in myself and for myself.

Life has taught me to be – How to be in the moment; to sit in gratitude; to embrace the beauty in the ugliness and to hold my wounds when the darkness comes. Life has also taught me to draw in the light and bathe myself in the beauty of what is real. Life has taught me there will always be light.

Life has taught me that authenticity is the only option in my expressions of self – even when expressing this creates a discomfort around me. I have no interest in pretending and I have no interest in faking life until I feel like I have succeeded – because I succeed everyday by living – by taking my morning breath – by choosing to love with my whole heart and by living in gratitude. Authenticity is a cure for my doubts.

Life has taught me to embrace my weaknesses and to welcome life’s challenges because this is my surrender. Life has taught me to look to my failings with love and appreciation because where I fail is where I succeed at living. 

Life has taught me to promote my strengths – to wear them as badges as they have nourished my heart and etched the history of successes upon my soul. Life has taught me that with every tragedy there is immense beauty. With all grief there are lessons. And with every failure there is opportunity.

Life has taught me that every kiss is fuel for the soul and a surrender to magic and this magic is the road map to adventure and to living and loving and to being. Life has taught me that this magic is is my superpower – this magic is my surrender.

I surrender to life – to living and to loving authentically. I surrender to living in the magic.