Tag: Empathy

Categories
Life

It’s Love

Perhaps I am here to write. But at the core of that, at the core of my words, at the core of my message…I’m here to love. I always have been, and it’s more clear to me now that I’m allowing my love to be seen.

I can’t help but feel great waves of empathy, particularly for those who are struggling in life. Those who are scared. Those who are being unfairly treated, by those who don’t even recognise the wrongs they perpetuate (as a result of their own messy humanity.)

It’s all a bit of a mess.

It’s all a bit of a mess.

So maybe I shouldn’t waffle at you about love.

Maybe I should be writing something of substance: something about the politics of what’s going on with the floods in eastern Australia, maybe, and how they’d want me to say it’s got nothing to do with the way we treat the planet (when, actually, I believe that Mother Nature was the very first woman who learned to powerfully speak her truth.)

But I’m not going to talk about natural disasters, or about who believes what.

I’m going to talk about love, and how I feel it, and how I feel for everything and everyone, and wish that more humans did.

Because underneath every natural disaster, lives love. The rescuer rowing a family to safety while their own home—a home they have loved and cared for with everything they have—drowns behind them.

That’s love.

That’s not politics.

It’s not who made the wrong choice about dam management and should be fired because of it.

It’s not who is right and who is wrong about the effects of climate change on a struggling earth.

It’s love. It’s always been love.

Beneath it all.

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Categories
Poetry

Clear Air

One day,

she sits alone,

and understands it all.

That she’s never been alone.

That all this time

their pain has lived within her,

pain she never asked for,

pain that is not hers to bear.

Clear air is what she knows she is,

not charcoal-grey squalls,

nor black-rimmed mud.

A heavy reality,

a scared, scared world

drowns her in the darkness

of humanity’s shadow.

Until she removes the soot

and clears the air

once again.

Categories
Life

It’s Funny How Life Hits You

It’s funny how life hits you.

Whilst taking a shower earlier, life hit me in a simple, yet profound way.

A sudden wave of gratefulness. For hot water, my goodness, such a simple thing: taken for granted every single day by far too many.

How grateful I felt for that water. How grateful I felt to have access to water, at all.

In that moment, I wished so desperately that those around the world who have never known the beauty of hot water on skin, might know that delicious feeling one day.

It’s funny how life hits you.

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Categories
Life

Thank Goodness

I knew it would take me there. To the place beyond everything, the place that shows me, really quite beautifully, who I truly am.

I can’t remember the last time I watched Legends of the Fall. A very long time ago. A lifetime ago, you might say, and if you did say that I wouldn’t argue with you. I last saw the movie before I had truly lived. Before I had truly ached. Before I had truly felt loss, and the echoing stillness of life’s fragility.

Last night I watched the movie through new eyes, and it tore me apart. Very beautifully, it tore me apart, but it tore me apart all the same.

It reminded me of the depth and softness of who I am.

It reminded me of the beauty of the human connection.

And it reminded me why I write: to feel and to help others feel, too.

Thank goodness I watched that movie, last night.

Thank goodness.

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Categories
Life

Christmas Love Hearts

Dearest Bloggy friends,

Merry day, to you all. Just taking a moment to send you all the love hearts (because I can’t seem to stop myself- and because love hearts are the best).

To those of you struggling to make it through the joy of the season: it’s okay to cry. Please do. How beautiful it will feel to release.

To those of you who have found joy and more: I’m so pleased for you. Life is for living, and joy is one of the most beautiful seasons.

To the parents: rest. It really will be okay.

And to the rest of you: yes. I do think you should have that extra slice of cake.

Lots and lots of love, Brooke. xxx

Categories
Poetry

If I Must

This train.

It is a train that fights abuse

by abusing abusers,

and I do not understand it,

my heart.

It does not understand.

They tell me I must fight,

I must fight,

I must fight.

But I will not fight.

I will know myself,

I will love myself

(imperfectly)

and I will remember

I have the strength to shine

beyond it all.

And I will shine.

Above the train,

whenever I can,

alone,

if I must.

Categories
Life

Together

This morning I was taken back to the year 1997, when I sat glued to the television, hoping with all of my everything that a man named Stuart Diver would be rescued from beneath a mountain of rubble — the devastating result of a landslide at Thredbo: an Alpine Village in New South Wales, Australia.

The landslide at Thredbo broke the heart of just about every human in Australia, I’d go so far to say. Stuart was the sole survivor of the landslide that killed 18 people, including Stuart’s wife, Sally, who drowned in the rising icy waters beside him.

This post has no direct link to Stuart Diver and his shining human spirit, but it does have a few indirect links to (and hopefully a few reminders of) the magnificence of the human spirit. So I’m writing these words in honour of Stuart, and also in honour of every human who knows how beautiful it feels to shine through our dark times together.

Right now, twenty three years after Australia came together so beautifully for the good of one man, humanity finds ourselves in the united states of everyone hates each other. Just when we need each other the most.

What happened all those years ago, however tragic, was the most magical shining human thing I’d ever experienced. Aching life had brought us together. All of us. Every Australian, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, personality type: we all became one as we anxiously waited to see if our mate Stuart would pull through.

We cried real tears as we witnessed the beautiful bond between rescued and rescuer. We winced at the thought of Stuart’s journey beyond the rubble (which, tragically, only got worse before it got better when Stuart lost his second wife to breast cancer.) My point is: we ached. And we ached together.

We’re not those united humans, anymore. We’re about a gazillion aspects of our oneness, bursting into about a gazillion fragments of hate and pain and judgement. What might happen if we take a moment to remember just how beautiful we are, together? What might happen if we sat in our quiet for a few moments and just loved each other fully?

Currently, humanity is healing from about a billion years of collective shadow trauma, so the mature part of me wants to be kind to us as we vomit up all the nonsense we’ve shoved down for so long.

But there is another aspect of me who wants to shout at us for being dicks, and say: ‘Guys. We’re not getting it. We need to just stop and see the bigger picture.’

Meep.

Sorry for the cranky pants.

I suppose I might post a soft and fluffy poem on here tomorrow.

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Categories
Poetry

Innocent War

And there you are

with eyes wide closed,

slicing through bullies

with the very hatred you oppose.

It is all pain, to me.

The daggers of hate

disguised as love.

The broken ways in which

change

is achieved

in this world.

Are my eyes so different

that I must be an anomaly

of this world?

It is all pain, to me,

your innocent war.

I wish so desperately for peace.

Categories
Life

All Of Me

This morning, I stood at the sink and cried.

Years ago, quite by accident, and quite without me knowing why…I stopped crying after a lifetime of being a human river. I didn’t notice it happening, it just happened and there was nothing for me to do but keep living, wondering if this was the me I was meant to be all along.

I now know the lack of tears meant that I had lost myself. That I had been suppressing my emotions, either for the comfortability of those around me (to fit in) or just because the difficulties of life had closed my heart in order to keep me safe.

This morning, as I slushed around in that pile of dishes, I felt my wholeness again. For those of you who are new to my beautiful bloggy family, this reawakening of my spirit/senses began about two years ago, I’d say, and every so often I find myself reaching new milestones of truth, you might call them.

This morning delivered one of them, and every beautiful current of the river that once moved me was back, if only for a few moments. I’d just been told a story. A very sad one. A story of a man who had lost his wife and child in a car crash many, many years ago.

I cried those tears as though I was that man. I felt those tears as though I was that man. I ached for his pain. I cried for him.

And I knew it was right.

And I knew that, once again, I was all of me.

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Categories
Life

Dance

I bounded out of bed. No, really, I bounded out of bed and bounced around my room, arms and legs flailing— a sort of contemporary dance concoction that would have won me the award for the most daggy morning-human, ever. ( Like, ever ever. )

I’m glad I listened to the quiet whisper that asked me to flick Spotify onto a super playlist of YES, and go with it. It started my day beautifully, and had me connecting to my heart and full energetic flow right away, which I struggle with from time to time, I’ll admit.

I’m feeling positive, at the moment, which feels empowering and wonderful on the back of the bouts of depression I’ve found myself wading through over the past couple of years. I’m probably a little odd in my take on the denser human experiences such as depression, but I believe it’s all there to frame life and to, ultimately, make it better. To show us who, how and where we are now, and to teach us who, how and where we would prefer to be.

Without times of imbalance, how can we possibly know and appreciate our body in equilibrium? How can we recognise the things in life we need to shift if we don’t experience a reaction to them? How can we feel deep empathy for others experiencing tough times, if we haven’t stomped through the sludge, ourselves?

Do I like being depressed? Well, no. It’s a journey fraught with many a winding road and impossibly steep hill. But do I see how it has grown me as an empathic human and broadened my perspective for the good of a great deal more people than just me? Absolutely. And I’m so, so grateful.

I am also grateful to able to dance about the house like an absolute loon and, rather than feel silly, fully LOVE the ways this body of mine can be all the magical things.

YES!