The Battle Between Head and Heart

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My brain and heart divorced a decade ago over who was to blame about how big of a mess I have become. Eventually, they couldn’t be in the same room with each other. Now my head and heart share custody of me. I stay with my brain during the week and my heart gets me on weekends.

They never speak to one another – instead, they give me the same note to pass to each other every week and it always says the same thing:

“This is all your fault”

On Sundays my heart complains about how my head has let me down in the past and on Wednesday my head lists all the times my heart screwed things up for my future. They blame each other for the state of my life.

There has been a lot of yelling and crying so, lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time with my gut who serves as my unofficial therapist. Most nights, I sneak out of the window in my ribcage and slide down my spine and collapse on my guts plush leather chair that is always open for me. And I just sit sit sit sit until the sun comes up.

Last evening, my gut asked me if I was having a hard time being caught between my heart and my head.

I nodded. “I don’t know if I can live with either of them anymore. My heart is always sad about something that happened yesterday while my head is always worried about something that may happen tomorrow,” I lamented.

My gut squeezed my hand.

“I just can’t live with my mistakes of the past or my anxiety about the future,” I sighed.

My gut smiled and said, “In that case, you should go stay with your lungs for a while.”

I was confused. The look on my face gave it away. “If you are exhausted about your heart’s obsession with the fixed past and your mind’s focus on the uncertain future, your lungs are the perfect place for you. There is no yesterday in your lungs. There is no tomorrow there either. There is only now. There is only inhale. There is only exhale. There is only this moment. There is only breath and in that breath you can rest while your heart and head work their relationship out.”

This morning, while my brain was busy reading tea leaves and while my heart was staring at old photographs, I packed a little bag and walked to the door of my lungs. Before I could even knock she opened the door with a smile and as a gust of air embraced me she said, “What took you so long?”

Written by: John Roedel

As Time Goes By

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As time goes by,

You will loosen your grip on that rock,

The one you always thought was home,

And you will realise that home is not a place,

It’s a state of mind.

Let it go.

 

As time goes by,

You will learn to see yourself more clearly,

The girl who was always too much of one thing,

And too little of another,

Was actually

Everything she needed to be.

Let her out.

 

As time goes by,

You will let the simple things become the big,

And you will allow the big things to become the simple,

And that readjustment will be,

The day you really start to live,

Let it be.

 

As time goes by,

You will be forced to say goodbye many times,

And your soft little heart will shatter but,

It will still beat and that will bring you,

All the purpose you need.

Let it be.

 

As time goes by,

You will stop choosing wealth over peace,

You will stop choosing money over time,

And you will see that the treasures you need,

Are in the smiles and the laughter.

Let them in.

 

As time goes by,

The moments you remember when your life flashes past,

Are never the awful memories my friend,

It’s the joy,

The summer nights, the lazy days with loved ones,

The midnight chats and the morning hugs,

Let them happen.

 

Let them all happen.

 

By Donna Ashworth

From ‘The Right Words’:

Inspiring Reflections on Life By Pope Francis

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Hospitals Are The Most Beautiful Churches on Earth…

Hospital walls have heard more honest prayers than churches.

They’ve seen far more sincere kisses than those at airports.

It is at the hospital that you see a homophobic being saved by a gay doctor.

The wealthy doctor saving the life of a beggar.

In the ICU you see a Jew taking care of a racist.

A police patient and a prisoner in the same ward receiving the same care.

A rich patient in the liver transplant queue ready to receive the organ from a poor donor.

When hospitals touch the wounds of people that the universe brings together on divine purpose, we realize that we were not created to be alone.

The absolute truth of people, most of the time, only appears at the moment of pain or the real threat of definitive loss.

Hospitals are a place where human beings strip off their masks and reveal their true essence. Raw, naked and real, the way you were when you were born. Each of us at our most vulnerable and yet equally at our most beautiful.

This life will pass too quickly.

Do not fight with people.

Do not criticize your body so much.

Don’t complain so much.

Don’t lose sleep over the bills.

Be sure to kiss your loved ones.

Don’t worry so much about making the house spotless.

Goods and assets must be conquered but do not dedicate yourself to accumulating inheritance.

Keep the dogs closer.

Throw away clutter.

Use the new cutlery.

Don’t skimp on your favorite perfume, use it for a walk with yourself.

Wear your favorite sneakers and reuse your favorite clothes as often as you want. So what?!?

If it is not wrong, why not do it now? Today!

Why not take a break now?

Why not make the call now?

Why not forgive now?

Christmas, Friday and next year is not guaranteed.

Don’t put things off, waiting until you have money, until love comes, until everything is perfect.

There is no such thing as perfect.

Human beings cannot achieve these things because we were simply not made to complete ourselves here.

This life is a learning opportunity.

So, ENJOY this life essay and do it now.

Respect yourself and respect others.

Follow your path and do not comment, judge or meddle with the path chosen by other people.

Love more. Forgive more. Embrace more. Live more intensely and leave the rest in the Hands of the Creator.

 

When Beauty Becomes A Background, It’s Time To Pause

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Years ago, I had a very sad conversation with an elderly lady. We didn’t talk about loss or tragedy, instead, we talked about beauty.

The woman’s sister lived in one of the most scenic parts of the country that comes with harsh winters. When I asked her if the stunning mountains and lakes make up for the cold, she replied, “My sister says it all just becomes the background.”

I forgot about that exchange until recently. I was driving my youngest to school and the panoramic mountain views that normally make me gasp when we reach the top of the hill – didn’t.

The beauty became the background. It was a wake-up call. A warning sign. Something was off.

Life is complicated. There are schedules to manage, deadlines to meet and laundry always in need of folding. And when our calendars, our minds and our hearts get too cluttered it’s easy to miss the beauty all around us.

When our kids giggles don’t make us pause and say a quick prayer of thanks,

when our spouse touches the small of our back and we can’t feel that quick burst of love,

or when we can’t see the presence of the Divine in the nearby wheat field, the swaying palm trees, or the mountains,

it’s time to create a pause. It’s time to look inwards and upwards. It’s time to start paying attention once more.

Because there is no line between the secular and the sacred. It’s all intertwined. The finger prints of God mark it all.

Our job is to recognize it. We are meant to recognize the Divine within our selves and in each other. In nature and in all the good things He inspired people to create.

And so in between pick-ups and drop-off’s, in between assignments and loads of laundry, I will create pause. I will sit in awe and thank God for life’s beauty. I will slip up at times. But I will keep trying.

Because I don’t want to become an old woman who let the beauty of her life become the background.

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Content Written by: @jillianbenfieldblog

We Are Not All We Wish We Were, But We Are Here

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A journalism professor in a long gray sweater taught me the difference between a story worth writing and a public relations stunt:

A real story still has meaning even if no one ever hears it; a PR stunt only matters if people are watching.

And that became a new item on the list of promises to myself: That I would never let my life become a public relations stunt.

My life would have meaning, even if no one ever knew it. I wanted to write a story I was proud of, even if nobody read it.

I used to dream that I’d grow up and dazzle the world. But time and disappointment chipped away at me until only the real stuff was left, and it wasn’t very dazzling. I just had some sad stories and a sack of regrets, and a new reverence for the pieces of me that survived.

All of these shipwrecks have stranded me in desolate places where I stared at my hands and realized that I couldn’t offer the world what I had hoped to. Dreams shatter and eyelashes fall out, and lungs aren’t big enough to carry the song sometimes.

But I still wake up in the morning and draw my hopes on the sidewalk. And every time so far, they’ve been trampled over, or hosed off, or the rain rolled all of it over the curb.

But I pick more flowers, write more stories, dream more dreams. After all that’s been destroyed, maybe it’s foolish to still be speaking this way, but at least I’m a fool with a soul alive. I swing open the doors on my chest and I offer to the world the only thing that I can: myself. I get it now.

We are not all we wish we were, but we are here, and we are trying, and we are awake.

We are not public relations stunts.

We are stories worth hearing, even with no crowd in the stands for us.

We are the heroes. We are the poem, we are the song, we are the gift.

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Written By Jane “Nightbirde” Marczewski

Image Source: Feature Image Daily News and Image Below: Nightbirde Facebook Profile

 

How Avoidance Robs Your Life

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There is nothing that gets in the way of success more than avoidance. We avoid hard conversations. We avoid certain people. We avoid hard decisions. We avoid evidence that contradicts what we think. We avoid starting a project until we’re certain of the outcome.

To justify our avoidance, we lie to ourselves. We tell ourselves that we’re noble — we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. We tell ourselves we don’t want to offend others. We tell ourselves that things will get better. We tell ourselves that things will get easier. We tell ourselves that we can avoid the real issue without any impact. We tell ourselves we’ll start when the time is right.

Sometimes we muster up half the courage. We have half the conversation we wanted to have. We do half the hard thing. We acknowledge the evidence but convince ourselves this time is different. We see the person we’re avoiding but don’t really talk to them. We start but don’t commit to the project.

And here’s the interesting thing.

Half-efforts tend to make things worse, not better.

When things don’t get better, it only reinforces that we shouldn’t have said anything in the first place. Avoiding isn’t better, it’s just easier.

Not only does avoiding today make the future harder, but it also almost always makes the present harder.

Avoiding puts you on a hair-trigger, anything will set you off. We all do this.

Who hasn’t entirely avoided a hard conversation with their partner about something only to find themselves in an insignificant argument over something trivial? Of course, the petty fight isn’t about the trivial thing, it’s about avoidance of the hard thing.

Everything becomes harder until we stop avoiding what’s getting in the way.

The longer you wait the higher the cost.

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Content Source: Unknown post on social media

Are You Running From Death or Towards Life?

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If you’re reading this, this fu$king brain cancer probably got me.

But let me be crystal clear while I’m able: I did not ”lose a battle” against cancer. This is a ridiculous, steamy pile of horse shit that society has dumped on cancer patients. Western medicine, and Western culture, especially, is so uncomfortable talking about death that instead it created this “battle” analogy that basically shames people who die from cancer.

News flash: None of us gets out alive from this rodeo called life.

There is no shame in dying from cancer – or any serious illness. And it doesn’t need to be a battle. It’s a transition that each of us will go through.

I was asked by a shaman, whom I spoke to after my second brain surgery, “Are you running towards life or running away from death?”

Whoa! That got my attention.

There’s a BIG difference. I got it wrong more often than not.

Don’t let fear fuel your choices. Live fearlessly. Run TOWARDS life. Don’t worry about what people will think. Trust me, it doesn’t matter.

Focus on you. Be true to yourself. Be your own best friend. People who tell you you’re selfish are not your people. If the voice in your head says these unkind things, get a new voice. Honor your mental health and seek out a good therapist with the same vigor you’d search for a romantic partner.

Speaking of, be intentional about cultivating friendships that lift you up. As those friendships grow and change, don’t overlook them while you search for that “great love of your life.” (No, I’m not suggesting you sleep with your bestie. But you do you!)

Another unhelpful message that we get from society is that we need a “love of our life,” as a romantic partner.

Single and childless when I was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, I looked around my life and came up sputtering and sobbing from the wave of grief washed over me. I thought I’d be doing this alone… no husband, no kids, no “great love.”

How wrong I was. At the first appointment with my neuro oncologists, one of the nurses diligently hauled in chair after chair for the great loves of my life who came with me that horrible day and many days after that.

I sat and listened while the doctor explained the 12-month treatment plan, focusing on my breathing, then looked around the room…. filled with great loves of my life: incredible women friends whom I had met at various stages of my life.

Surround yourself with people who contradict that unkind voice, people who see your light, and remind you who you are: an amazing soul.

Learn how to receive these reflections from your people. Because they are speaking the Truth.

Love yourself, no matter how weird and silly it might feel. Every morning, give yourself a hug before your feet hit the floor. Look deeply into your eyes in a mirror. Say to yourself, out loud, “I trust you.” That voice in your head might say you’re a dork. Ignore it.

As I prepare to leave this body and embark on this mysterious journey of my soul, I hope these observations from my deathbed are somehow useful.

What I know, deep in my bones, is that learning to love myself has led me to be able to say this: I’m so proud of how I lived.

May you, dear reader, feel the same when you head out on your soul journey, too. Until then, enjoy the ride. And always eat dessert first, especially if there’s pie!

Source: Written by Kerri Grote before she grew her wings

Image: Kerri Grote Facebook page

Rest in peace beautiful lady and thank you for your courage and words of wisdom.

Lessons In Life

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The Days Are Long But The Years Are Short.

When you first have children they talk about the challenges of parenting….the struggles of a baby waking in the night, the toddler who won’t stay in their bed, the cost of childcare, injuries from sports…

Having to take off work to pick them up from school when they don’t feel well, helping them with homework, a messy house, the never ending laundry, the cost to buy school clothes, packing their lunches….

You watch their eyes light up on Christmas morning….and try to soak in the magic of those moments.

You coach them in sports, rushing to practices and ballgames…and tote them all over the country to let them play the game they love…no matter how exhausting or expensive it becomes.

Life is just so busy that you rarely even stop to think what the end of those days look like.

In fact, it’s not really even something you can wrap your mind around.

You go into it thinking that 18-20 years sounds like a long time….

Then suddenly hours turn into days…days into months…and months into years.

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