To Hold our Own Tender Heart

To Hold our own Tender Heart

When You look in the mirror, and experience feelings of inadequacy, where do these feelings originate? Fear of being rejected or abandoned by our precious children, by our partner, by anyone who finds out how imperfect we are…

Try this exercise:

Find a picture of you as a young child. There she is. So small. Looking at a maple blossom. Being held by her father. Who left. Who did not raise her.

“Perhaps I sent him away”, you thought. “Perhaps I am inadequate.”

Now look again.

You are so sweet and beautiful.

Radiant.

Interested.

Safe.

Curious.

You feel with certainty you belong to the world. You have so much life and love to offer. To the blossoming plants, who, like you, are loved by the sun. To the still water.

Whatever it was that your father (or your ex) was seeking…He was running away from himself. Not from you. He was lost or trapped with no map to navigate his difficulties.

The goodness and love in you have always been there.

Behind the veil of the menial, everydayness of things and mistakes and suffering are possibilities.

The possibility of remembering what is Divine and curious and radiant and loved in you.

The possibility of discovering and releasing our own vices, noticing how we are lying to ourselves and to seek the truth.

The possibility of being tender with ourselves. Look again at the sweet picture of little you. She is becoming love. A little bit more each day. She, herself is blossoming.