And I will quietly be
as I am.
Yes, I will quietly be.
Tag: Living
The internet has stolen my words.
They were here, tied with a little bow, tagged: ‘Brooke’s heart’; now they’re gone, the internet stole them. Snuffed them out, like a candle, with ease.
The internet has been down all day, so I don’t suppose it cares for blogging. I don’t suppose it cares for drafts worth saving.
But then…
Maybe it wasn’t worth saving.
There are no accidents in the universe.
Maybe,
truly,
the stolen words were not at all
worth
saving.
Categories
Life Is For Living
Life is for living. It’s a lovely sentiment, isn’t it?
Lovely. And vague.
Because what, exactly, is living?
I turned thirty-eight this year, and I’m still fine tuning what living means to me. I imagine I always will be. Ever evolving. Ever learning and growing.
One of the beautiful things I’ve learnt about what living is to me, is that I have these five senses for a reason. For most of my life, I woke of a morning, achieved the mindless list of tasks laid out ahead, went to bed, and repeated the whole thing again the next day.
No wonder my soul was starving.
I’ve started to understand that, to fully live, you need to know yourself and how your senses interact with the world around you. I, for instance, am extremely sensitive and I’ve come to the realisation that because my senses are heightened…I need to be particularly conscious of my environment.
For example: I need to try and keep things tidy, both internally and externally. I feel calm when things are tidy. I feel calm when I am completing one task at a time. Overwhelm, for me, equals poor mental health and activation of either the fight, flight, or freeze response (and, I assure you, none of these survival responses have ever worked out well for me, in the past.)
This time in my life is where I’ve begun to really use my senses to enhance my world and wellbeing. I’ve come to understand that everything we perceive in life has a texture and depth, and I try to utilise this knowledge to better my life, as much as I can.
For some reason, my nervous system tends to do much better when it comes to perceiving softer, lighter more porous textures. Wood grain soothes me. Light, drifting plants soothe me. Soft pinks, mauves, light greys: these are all the colours of me. And yet, for the longest time, I surrounded myself with bright and bold…because the rest of the world did. I hadn’t learned to know myself yet.
I often think back to (and I’ve mentioned this story on here before) the discomfort I used to feel when driving to work with my Dad, listening to the two negative, grumpy radio hosts on the morning show. Every time I heard them speak, I wanted to run. I had no idea why I was feeling this way, at the time, but now I know. It was the density of their energy. The texture. It was not at all light, it was heavy and bold: never have I thrived when surrounded by this kind of dense energy. Never have I been comfortable in my own, unique (big ol’ sensitive muffin) skin.
I can’t avoid density, I know that. Life is full of the dark, the negative, the heavy. But I can try to be mindful of surrounding myself as much as possible with the softness that brings me back to life, so that’s what I try my best to do.
Humans are funny creatures. How our worlds shift and change with time and age.
And though reality often hurts, it is also very beautiful.
Life is for living, isn’t it.
And so it is: I live.
How lovely it is
to find home again.
In this home
I am what I am,
and what I am
is a river,
a rock,
a lion,
a ballerina.
What I am
is all I am.
All I am
is all there ever was.
All I am
is all
I am.
Categories
Choosing This
I’ve always looked beyond.
Always searched for the more.
Sometimes I wait for the more,
craving the sweet beauty of tomorrow.
Other times, I wait in fear.
For horrors that may, or may not come.
None of it is real.
None of it is now.
None of it is me…
until it is.
And even when it is,
it is not me.
It is always only life.
Life that has come.
And life that has gone.
But if you only have eyes
for the way you think life
should
be,
then surely you are forgetting
to live.
To truly live.
As you are.
In this moment, this
version of life that you
so desperately wish
to escape.
We tend to just do things, don’t we, without thinking too much of it. We go places, we see people. But do we really go places? Do we really see people? Most importantly, I suppose: do we do this life as we’d truly like to, from the absolute quiet of who we are?
There was a great chunk of my life where I didn’t follow the quiet voice that, only ten minutes ago, whispered to me: ‘Grab a candle, your computer, a cup of lavender tea. Go and sit on the couch. And Brooke? Dim the lights, will you?’
This voice, of course, belonged to me. The Soft Girl, to be specific, and how lovely it was to feel her presence in the quiet of the evening (the Soft Girl is the name I’ve given to my intuition/spirit for those of you who are new, here.) 🙂
Of course, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t interject with a teeny little side-note, to take us deeper into things. Self Care is the label most would glue to what I am currently doing with my body, my soul, my evening. But as the memory of the Soft Girl’s whisper returns to me (it was as I reached for the tea bag, if you’re wondering) I find myself rejecting this label, slightly.
Living fully, it seems, is what I am actually doing. Hearing the whispers and living them all the way through.
To me, the current collective perspective of Self Care implies a lack of something, a need for something nice to fill the spaces in between it all. For example, we often say: I’m so tired. I lack time. I lack energy. I am going to gift myself a beautiful little slice of Self Care because I lack all the above things.
The thing is this, though: don’t we all deserve to live a beautiful, care-filled existence simply because we are alive? Don’t we deserve the deeper level of care we innately have to offer ourselves, because our hearts have asked for it, and for no other reason?
I think we do.
So I’m going to start listening more carefully to the Soft Girl’s whispers, and gifting myself life to the fullest, whenever I can.
I so hope you do, too, my sweet bloggy friends.
You deserve it. Because you’re you.
xx Brooke
Here we are, world.
Another day of co-creation.
I do not own you.
You do not own me.
And yet we are one
becoming many
through each moment,
each hour,
each breath held
or released
in the face of it all.
Categories
Relative Darkness
I’m sitting in the relative darkness and life is happening, all around.
In the bedrooms, my children are sleeping. In the branches, possums are creeping across the night. There are bugs out the window by the thousands, spiders spinning elaborate webs: the most stunning miracles of architecture.
And here, there is me.
Still wondering: what is it all for?
I still feel alone, in many ways, although I’m quite happy to be alone in my alone-ness. Everyone has their own version of alone. My version just so happens to be the way in which I view the world. Just a small difference. Just a tiny glitch of alone on the vast sea of everything.
I suppose I should learn to accept our society as it is. Everyone has vastly different belief systems, and I think that is entirely lovely, one of the shining pearls in the ocean of humanity. I just wish we could happily be ourselves, without the nonsense, though. To be truly authentically ourselves, without having to bend who we are to fit our art into trends. To fit our personalities into social groups. To fit our broken pieces into shining humanity: the great big flying flock of perfection.
I find myself currently wrestling with a box. A place I do not wish to be.
A box, largely self made, partially made by well meaning folk (much like myself) longing for connection and home. What is a box, in the context I speak, you might ask? A trend. A stereotype. A label.
I am (what they call) an Empath. It’s clear that my personality and many of my traits and sensitivities fit into this box they have called Empath, and it’s been so beautiful (and very handy) to have had so many resources and like minded souls to help me feel as though I’m not alone in the universe.
But as much as it thrills me to have found a beautiful little tribe of the sweetest, softest hearts to love: I am suffocating beneath this label. And I don’t want it. I just don’t. Because as like-minded as we who can identify with the label Empath are, we are also a whole world of different, in many ways. Not only that, but we are also very much the same as others who wouldn’t identify as highly sensitive. We are human. Just like everyone else. Not special, not broken. Human.
I want to be free. I am a wide-open, free as the wind that blows me, soul.
I do not want a box. I do not want a box.
I am ready and willing to help other sensitive muffins open to the fullness of who they are, but I just can’t move past this feeling of no, stop, reassess. Yes, it’s clear I am sensitive. But I don’t want this to be a focus in my world, I just want it to be something that is.
If I carry on with my new blog, Empath Days, this will tether me to a box I don’t wish to belong in, and that’s the part of this whole thing I can’t come to accept. Am I overthinking? Probably (I am me, after all). The frame ‘Empath’ has served me well. It has served as contrast and recognition, a mirror to help propel me forward. But I do think that’s all it was meant to be on my life journey. A rocket launcher. A breadcrumb. Not my life’s work. And certainly not my identity.
I started Empath Days (my new little venture, aimed at Empaths and sensitive folk) because I wanted to help others, like me, find their way and feel less alone. But I can do that here, I can do that at the supermarket, I can do that at school pick-up, ’round the dinner table. There are many wonderful Empaths (let me just use the term because it’s easy) out there whose purpose it is to guide other Empaths into wholeness through a specific channel.
I just don’t think I’m one of them. At least, not at this point in time.
Right now, if I am anything, I am a writer of my heart: a liver of my dreams.
If I do have a purpose it is to guide others to open and release from the boxes of this life. To find their dreams, to open their box. Not to encourage people to find a box and stay there. Are we not here to live? Are we not here to fly wherever, whenever, however?
I believe we are.
So I’m going to stop Empath Days in it’s tracks.
I don’t want to be an Empath. I want to be all of me.
I want to create what I create, and I want it to be beautiful, all of it, especially the journey to each sweet prize. The creative process: I want it to be free flying everything.
I want to teach what I’ve learned and drown in my passions.
I want to write my book, my poems, my soul.
I want to live, however I live.
Oh, and I want to love. (Always, always I want to love.)
So I’m going back to the drawing board.
I’ll be back, sweet bloggy friends, when I’ve had a chance to unscrambled my thoughts, a little.
xx Brooke
I will simply
begin.
And flow
until the river ends.
brooke-cutler.com 