Find The Light Within

Because You Are Worth It

Last week, Substack accidentally published this piece. I unpublished it because it was meant for this week. If you already read it, I would suggest re-reading it, particularly if you read my piece this Monday Hurt People Hurt People.

I also added an additional video at the bottom of this post.

Earlier this week we talked about how hurt people hurt people. I shared about experiences I have had where I have been on the receiving end of that pain professionally. But we all collectively have our stories and I have many more that are now a part of my past and not my present or future.

Today I wanted to flip the script and talk about the light. See we all have the light and the dark within us. We see that in society too, right? In fact we tend to see more darkness around us at times than good. It takes a keen eye to find the hearts so to speak.

But they are there amongst the pain and suffering. The hearts, your heart, is within you too. But when we are in our head with all its various worries, concerns and to do lists we are deeply disconnected from its beat.

In 2019, I had an amazing opportunity to see India Arie in concert at the Berkelee Performance Center. Two women I met networking from the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce and I headed out for what has now become one of the memories that gives me goosebumps every time I think of it.

I am sharing this because I want to share with you a song that I suspect may touch you as deeply as it touched me. Back then, I had several clients in my old office in Harvard Square in tears as we listened together in their session.

I AM LIGHT

I AM LIGHT

I AM LIGHT

I AM LIGHT

I AM NOT THE THINGS THAT MY FAMILY DID.

I AM NOT THE VOICES IN MY HEAD.

I AM NOT THE PIECES OF THE BROKENNESS INSIDE.

I AM LIGHT

I AM LIGHT

In working through my own past and pain, I found that actually the field of therapy and mental health was quite limiting. There came a point where it seemed like I was required to constantly identify with what happened a long time ago; as if I didn’t have the capacity to overcome and move beyond any of that.

A voice inside my gut told me that that was total and utter

Bullshit.

We are not our past. Our past has affected us. It can shift our perception of the world. But it can also cause us to become ever more resilient and stronger because of it. Years back I took a Trauma Sensitive Yoga training. No offense to anyone who might read this that finds that to be helpful but for me it felt like the yoga community adopting Western psychology’s idea that people with trauma are damaged.

Yoga and all forms of healing should be there to evoke our darkness so that we can enter into the light. It shouldn’t be a way of bypassing that of which is painful or challenging in an effort to emotionally numb and avoid our “triggers” and pain.

We need to go deep within if we are to unearth the light that has always been there. For most of us, the past or voices in our head are only the darkness casting the shadow on what shines bright underneath.

I’M NOT THE MISTAKES THAT I HAVE MADE.

OR ANY OTHER THINGS THAT CAUSE ME PAIN.

I AM NOT THE PIECES OF THE DREAMS I LEFT BEHIND.

I AM LIGHT.

Listen, we have all fucked up; we actually do so all the time. That’s because we are human. As much as I am a perfectionist, I know that that is part of my own darkness. My need to try to make things perfect is my Achilles heel. When I have read these posts after they have published and I find spelling errors or auto-correct BS and I cringe thinking that somehow now that makes me look as if I am careless or not paying attention when I am publishing. When in fact most of you probably have been more forgiving if you have caught them than I have. LOL

I have worked and continue to work on reframing the dreams that were left behind as things I am proud of. I am proud of being a dreamer and that I have the guts to chase after those dreams even if they have become “failures.” There really is no such thing as failing if you believe that everything in life happens for a reason and that we are meant to learn from life rather than “get it right.”

I AM NOT THE COLOR OF MY EYES.

I AM NOT THE SKIN ON THE OUTSIDE.

I AM NOT MY AGE.

I AM NOT MY RACE.

MY SOUL INSIDE IS ALL LIGHT.

ALL LIGHT.

Oh this is a biggie. I have shared previously that I have always been a bit vain. LOL I find saying that out loud both embarrassing and funny. Embarrassing because I guess I am supposed to feel embarrassed about that (???) and funny because caring about how we look just is another form of self love (unless it becomes obsessive that is.)

Our culture has become increasingly obsessed with perfection. Digital pictures do not show you how a person looked the day the picture was taken. (Thank god for that as I was lacking sleep during both my recent photo shoots LOL) But it was important to me to make sure that those pictures did not show me without having wrinkles around my eyes because I am not in my 20s and that is how I look.

We over identify with the body in our physical world because we have no concept of the fact that we are all just spiritual beings walking around in physical bodies in a physical world.

Racism is a very real issue but it is also something that is about the physical world. Without getting into too much specifics, the issue with the online program I did for social workers/therapists for BC in 2020, had to do with social justice. It was shortly after the George Floyd murder and race was at the center of everything. That online program had nearly 70 people in it and only one person on that call came to my “defense” so to speak when people were calling my program “white washed” and “Eurocentric.”

I was left crying at the end of the three hours on the phone with my mother and we were both like….

WTF JUST HAPPENED?

We don’t like to focus on spirituality because the mind can’t make sense of it. The unseen is easily disregarded and thrown in the trash as if it doesn’t exist. We also would rather become reactive than sit with our emotions because that’s “too hard.”

BC offered to have me rework my workshop into something that was more focused on social justice and I said no thank you. The whole point was missed on what I was trying to do which was really to spread the light to people who clearly desperately needed it.

Onward….

I AM DIVINITY DEFINED.

I AM THE GOD ON THE INSIDE.

I AM A STAR.

A PIECE OF IT ALL.

I AM LIGHT.

As they say we are all just flecks of stardust and we are all light underneath the darkness. So for today, how will you honor your light within?

Tomorrow I head off for a breathwork session with Tara Nieves Green because she always helps me to find my light within!

Cheers!