Tag: love

What weddings can teach us about vulnerability and courage

August 23, 2020

I had the pleasure of being invited to one of my dear friend’s wedding last year. Amidst the most perfected spreadsheet organizing, whimsical flower arrangements, stunning weather, and breathtaking venue, I found myself moved, in awe and inspired. Here were two people who had worked hard to overcome their own obstacles to make space for a brand new life adventure together. Furthermore, they were willing to commit to it, out loud, in front of closest family and friends. Commit to choosing each other, every day, always.

This moved me on several levels. Most of all, the vulnerability and the courage. The courage to open your heart and 1) not only to admit you want/ need love, or 2) to believe you deserve that unconditional kind, but 3) to accept it, and make the intentional choice to keep choosing it even when it is hard, heartbreaking or terrifying. These seemingly simple steps have been things I know I have had a lifetime of struggling with. At times because of pride and not wanting to admit I need anyone, believing that this made me weak. Other times it was due to convincing myself there was “no one better out there”, that it was okay to be unseen, overlooked or even controlled. It ended up often looking like me turning away from wonderful supports around me, with outstretched arms, wanting to show love, care, consistency, due to shame, fear of connection and of being let down. It is something we all do, to try and protect ourselves. Call it self-sabotage, defense mechanisms, or self preservation, these patterns serves to ‘protect’ us from our fears and insecurities, whilst at the same time building a wall so high and impenetrable that we often end up unseen and alone.

On this beautiful day, none of this existed. I watched best friends, drop the need to use humor to mask depth of relationship, and speak openly from the heart, of gratitude, loyalty, growth and love. I watched parents share reflections from their own lives, speaking frankly about hurdles, idiosyncrasies and love over the course of a lifetime. I witnessed bride and groom, courageously speak to the significance they were to each other, the difference they had made in each other’s lives. There was no need or room for pride, self-preservation, fear or doubt, just love and an unwavering amount of trust and hope.

It reminds me of the original theme of this blog when I first started it. The idea that when we were children, we were unafraid. We felt free to be naked and unashamed, both literally and figuratively. Free to cry before we learned fear of judgement. Free to need or want the loving support of a parent, without pride getting in the way. Free to express gratitude and love to those closest to us, without a care in the world of who was watching and what they would think of us. Just being our complete selves, and letting the contents of our hearts and minds be seen. It was magical getting to be a part of a day that exemplified all this and more. An important reminder of so much that has been lost in the ways us humans connect and hide our true selves from one another. I was thankful to have been personally reminded to be vulnerable, to invite, foster and seek out connection above all else. Especially, in the face of fear, doubt and shame.

We all deserve the reality of being seen, and wholeheartedly loved

for the perfectly, imperfect beings that we are.

My First and Greatest Love

June 3, 2018

For those of you that know me, family has always been a main part of my life, and a major part of my identity. Coming to terms with impact of my family break-down and subsequent events, the blessings and challenges has continued to be an ongoing journey. For years I have tried to make sense of my inner battles, trying to make sense of the tornadoes that whirl up inside of me, a complex mix of sadness, grief, hopefulness and above all, a desire to survive whilst painting the most beautiful and glorious portrait of my family.

More recently I have returned to therapy to process my last relationship, and of course, without surprise, we end up back at the beginning, my family. Not to blame, or cast resentment or anger, but to try and heal loss and sadness, conflict and fear established before I knew how to name these emotions. This has sent me on a sobering journey of hurt, unresolved loss and wholehearted grief over what I would easily identify as the loss of my greatest love.

……………………..

And so, it turns out I never really got over the way we separated. A decision drawing dividing lines between us. I always thought we would be together forever, grow old together, still singing the songs of our childhood, Friday night Chinese school and dinners out, taking turns picking video rentals at Rogers, Mario party and Mario kart until the morning, sleepovers at the foot of mom and dad’s beds, annual vacations to the most magical and happiest place on earth. Not because of the rides, or even the fireworks, because I was with you guys, we were together and my world felt complete.

But then everything changed.

We were no longer one unit, unspoken walls and vast divides grew between us. We each saw and experienced the breakdown differently, and what felt like magical fantastical reality of us as a family, was broken into a million pieces, never to look the same again. And so we all walked our separate directions, some farther than others, tearing apart that world we once built together and fought so hard to preserve and enjoy together.

I swear, I thought I understood. I thought I had accepted it. All that it was, and all that it was not.

I watched it unfold before my eyes. I did everything I could. But it had already been lost, and my inability to accept the new harsh reality perhaps created the biggest distance from you all. As life continued for everyone else, in acceptance of what had happened, I did everything in my power to preserve my portrait of us and remain in denial about what had happened, pushing you all together to try to recreate even a fleeting moment of “us”.

Our beautiful family, as I had known it, would never exist the same way again.

It turns out that the little girl in me had held on tight to everything. So much that every Christmas or holidays that we were under one roof after the separation, I would weep quietly to myself, half grieving as my adult self, and half rejoicing as that young girl, trying to convince myself that we were still a unit, we were still a family. Fighting the reality of passing time, diverging interests, growing up and apart. I found my own way to hold us together, omitting all the difficult times, and over-emphasizing the positive.

But now I see. We weren’t perfect, we never were. And now, we just are what we are.

But I now see us clearly. I can see everything. The magic, the joy, the hurt, the pain, the disappointment, the unspoken things, the sacrifice, the hope, the love and the permanent tie that will always continue to hold us all together, no matter what happens.

And now that I can see us clearly. Grief speaks; weighing heavily on my heart and mind.

But finally, I know that I can love us better for what our family is today. Not as I had always pretended us to be.

Accepting the love given and choosing to give yourself the love you need…

September 25, 2016

People love us the best way that they know how, it may not be what we need, it may not be what speaks most to our hearts, but people love the best way they know how. And this applies to my parents, close friendships and to past relationships where I look back and think,“how could you not know that would hurt me?”, “how could you not know that made me feel insignificant?”, “how could you not know that made me feel so unseen and forgotten?”

 

But the truth is, that I can be mad as much as I want, I can wish that things would be different, I can even wish that certain things never happened at all, but the reality is that if these people knew how to love me better and if they could have loved me better, if it was in their capacity and in their self-awareness, they would have. And at some point I have to accept that, and let it go, that maybe it didn’t turn out the way I wanted, or maybe I would have been different or things would have been different if they had loved me the way that I felt like I needed to be, the fact is that they didn’t. Whether it was because they couldn’t or they wouldn’t, but at the end of the day, they didn’t know how to do it any other way, and they did it the only way they knew how. And I must come to the understanding that the extent to which people in my life loved me imperfectly, was a reflection of their capacity, and their experiences of love, and that does not mean that I am less worthy of love or unlovable.

At some point I have to find some level of acceptance with that and know that I am who I am because of the way that I was loved or wasn’t loved, this is something I cannot go back and change. But I can choose how to go forth loving myself and loving others from this day forward.