Softness

Amongst this softness is where I wish to live. I know this place of comfort comes when the harshness inside me gives way to peace and acceptance. When I realise that often the things I can be blamed for were not my fault, or the ways I am talking to myself or about another are not loving and kind. When I remember I did try my best and I continue to try to front up on any day to live my own life and take care of my own responsibilities I feel a softening.

I never had a good sense of boundaries and now I am realising more and more when it is best to stay on my own side of the fence. I often believed I needed to take on the responsibilities or pain of others to help but I now realise there is a difference between being there when you honestly want to give from a full place and being there just to be filled up yourself or because as a young child in a dysfunctional family you absorbed a mixed up idea of your own responsibilities. The best place we can ever help another from is from deep sense of being whole and complete enough within ourselves. We give from this place because it feels the most natural thing to do, to want to extend ourselves in love to another. But if we wish to give truly we must learn to do it without conditions, purely out of love and a desire to give, not to gain power or in a confused way thinking we have power over what is not ours to heal.

Some people will not want help. Some people have never learned to ask for help. Some people believe they do not deserve it, or should do everything for themselves all the time but sometimes we all need each other and we all need softness. Even the hard hearted need it but they have denied their need as to them softness seems like weakness. It isn’t but that is their trip because you can be soft and strong. The two are not mutually exclusive qualities.

You can be hard and weak when hardness is nothing more than a defence against pain or vulnerability and to me that is not true strength or courage and its not coming from a place of wisdom. To be able to soften you heart and your body to lean into and absorb and transform or transmute pain, to me that is the path of healing rather than rigid defensiveness or intellectualisation devoid of soul and body sensed connection and awareness and centredness.

To be strong and soft enough to open up to embrace your own pain and that of another is truly healing. To know the limits of your power to help is wisdom. It is a true gift to be able to be present to ourselves or others, to open a space for the soul to express what it needs to pour out and to know when the time is right to reach out a hand to touch and then when the time comes to let go. This takes learning, sensitivity and experience.

Today I choose softness. Today I choose presence. Today I choose tenderness.