But isn’t it entirely beautiful
to be you.
Tag: Unconditional love
I am only me.
I am only here in this small body, with this small, helpless voice calling out.
I reach out to hold them in pain, while others seek to tear them down.
What are we doing, in the name of the law?
What is the law?
What is punishment at the highest level?
Isn’t it the feelings of heartache, guilt, shame, loss, that arise as the natural consequences of our mistakes? Do we need to drive the pain and the self-hatred into them more by casting them out and throwing away the key?
My heart breaks for those who have lost their way, who have committed an accidental crime for which they must pay a heavy price.
Why can we not hold them deeper?
Why can we not see their pain and feel it so deeply in our bones that rehabilitation is our only wish for them?
I could roar with this anger within.
It is why I wrote the post I deleted last night.
A man who’d been jailed for causing an accident that killed a child. He was a fool. He made an impulsive mistake, driven by ego.
And now the law stands, throwing stones at him until his soul is dead.
His soul is already broken beyond measure.
The child he accidentally killed was his Son.
How can they not see that this man could be their own Son?
How can they not see that we should be holding him through this tragic, tragic day?
Categories
For The Birds
The birds are home and so am I.
I could say they are noisy, but they are not really noisy. They are only noisy if I think of them in relation to my world.
On their own, they are just who and what they are.
Birds.
Chirping, squawking birds.
I’ve deleted another of my posts (those of you who have been around for a while will know I have done this, from time to time) because the energy of the post didn’t feel like my truth.
It felt like the underside of my world. It felt like the dark parts of me, not my sunshine.
I choose only to shine on this world, when I can help it.
In the post I deleted, I spoke of scammers and manipulation, and where I have felt victimised as a woman in the past. These pains, I know, are real, and they will live within me and walk beside me in everything I do.
But they are not who I am. And the ways I have been victimised are not the people who have hurt me, either.
I see those who have bullied me, taken advantage of me, used or abused me, but I see the pain within them more. They have been small children, hurt by something in life, desperate to cover that pain with a bandaid.
Who am I to blame them when I am the bearer of the very same wounds that scar them?
I will try for the birds, to allow them to be.
Categories
Love and Pizza
I firmly assure you.
Love
is all
there is.
Stop mucking around
and get on with it, world.
The pizza tastes better, there.
Unity is the magic pill.
But unity
does not look like
shaming the broken.
Hear it.
It is this,
my truth,
I speak.
Categories
Love Kept Her
And with a smile,
she held life gone by.
And love kept her.
Love kept her,
home.
Home, at last.
Mistakes are our greatest gifts, and yet, we are buried in shame.
Do not make a mistake. Do not ever be bad.
We are shamed.
We are shamed.
We are human. Not one of us is perfect, not one.
I teach my children that their failures are the best things that could happen for them, their mistakes, beautiful lessons in how to do life beautifully.
Punishment breaks my heart. An eye for an eye, an ancient, barbaric way. And all of it pointless, in my eyes, because shame only drives the ‘bad’ underground, it doesn’t lovingly guide it to a better day.
Accepting our faults and carefully growing with them through life might work.
Shaming will destroy.
I choose the gentle way.
I choose self compassion, and compassion for others.
I choose…actually, I choose sleep.
I’m so terribly tired.
So terribly tired.
Categories
They Know Not What They Do
Why,
when the road is so beautiful,
(dappled sun on white)
do these lashing tongues
slice my delicate sky, so?
I shall find a cave, as promised.
A dear and perfect home
to soothe.
And I shall cherish the broken,
never shall I fight, as they do.
They know not how their barbs sting.
Be silent and sure, my battered soul.
Silent and hopeful,
the slicing pain will end.
Categories
Self Forgiveness
They abused their horses; yelled at them, hit them, spat daggers of anger at them, daily.
I was the thirteen year old victim of school bullying at the time, so I smiled when the abusers smiled and I laughed when they laughed (thankfully they weren’t horrible enough to laugh about the abuse.) I suppose a part of me must have thought: well, if they do this to horses, what might they do to me. I’d best tread carefully.
And so I did.
I was a mess of crumbling empathy, inside. Those poor horses. They must have been so frightened and so, so confused.
The two women, a Mother and her teenage Daughter, seemed otherwise nice. They had genuine love for their horses, I could tell by the way they spoke their names and stroked their strong, wide shoulders at the gate, as we talked.
Still. They really were rather horrible, to my thirteen year old eyes. That would never be me.
The day my horse bucked me off in the paddock was an ordinary day. Nothing unusual had happened to upset me. No dark clouds threatened to ruin the perfect sky, or my day as a little sad girl, joyously bounding around on her beautiful, crystal pony.
I was up on the horse.
And then I was down.
And my beautiful grey girl felt the wrath of a Brooke I had never ever been.
I screamed at her. I used words I didn’t even think I knew. I purposely chose sentences I had heard the ‘horrible ones’ using. And although I would never have hit her, I may as well have, because when the dust had settled…I felt such remorse. How had that venom lived inside of me? Did I really think all those horrible words about my very best friend?
I instantly hit the self preservation button, blamed the ‘horrible ones’ for making me behave in this way. Without them, I would never have done this. I was a beautiful, kind person, and wise beyond my years I had been told. Until now. Kind people absolutely never did ‘bad’ things.
But, you see, they did, apparently.
I did.
Every chemical of panic flooded my nervous system.
‘Horrible me’ had to go under the carpet and she had to stay there, never to be seen again. Only beauty lives here. Only sweet kindness and love.
Today, 26 years later, as I stood in front of the mirror, a flash of feeling came to me, a sludge of shame. And a memory. Of the little girl who had betrayed her own goodness, and tore another beautiful soul down.
Today, I saw the truth of what I had done, and I cried.
My beautiful girl. She had deserved so much more, and I had been capable of giving her everything she had deserved…until the moment I hadn’t.
That was the day I became fully human, imperfect and perfect, all at the same time. I wouldn’t understand this idea until many, many years into the future. Sometimes, I don’t understand it, now.
Self compassion is a beautiful learned skill, and my own has held me well, today. I can hold that silly little girl who really didn’t know any better and I can promise the me I am now that I will better protect my energy in the future.
Too many times I’ve allowed myself to be influenced by others in a way that has been damaging to me, and sometimes to others. I like to think my beautiful pony gave me one of the greatest lessons I’ll ever learn in life, however late I’ve learned it.
It is up to me to protect my boundaries.
It is up to me to choose love, and not the opposite.
And when I slip up and inevitably fail, it’s up to me to love myself enough to find self forgiveness.
Categories
The Angel There
As the ice drips
from this frozen heart,
here grows the beauty
of feelings gone by.
How I remember you,
dear echo of friendship.
How clear it has become that
kindness
was the angel there.
brooke-cutler.com 