Flowers for Mother's Day,
Golden sunsets in WA ....
Back in 2021, being on a deeply challenging healing journey, I had not shared on Facebook for a long time.
Equally, for a long time I had resisted the idea of being on a 'journey', because I saw a journey as something you choose to go on. However, the diagnosis I had been given was not something I chose, in fact I felt like my life had been hijacked by it! Then a friend coined the phrase - a deeply challenging healing journey, and this resonated with me enough to accept embarking on it, for I felt it to be a choice (my choice) on how to respond to this diagnosis.
With this new insight, I wanted to write a Facebook post the day after Mother's Day, something 'deep and meaningful' about mothers, love and creativity ... and it was only when I didn’t manage to share it (because of technical difficulties) that I realised what an impossible thing I had been attempting to do - to share the deep meaning of the ultimate power in the world that all of us have experienced, however briefly and to various degrees - a mother's love.
Love was something that I had been contemplating to a great extent, especially after discovering (with the help of another close friend) that I only loved myself 50%. On discovering this I could not believe it, and the first thought that came to me was: 'I thought I was better than that!'. Yet that thought revealed to me my quick self- judgement, promptly confirming to me the truth of my discovery. From disbelief I moved to understanding on how this might have come to be, and how (especially for women) in our society we are invariably conditioned and limited to loving ourselves up to only a certain amount ... So how could we possibly ‘Love others as we love ourselves’? This explained so much!
I then became aware of how (wonderfully) all the love that so many friends and all my family, and even complete strangers, had been showing me, and sharing with me, was now actually teaching me how to love myself more.
The love that I had sowed with others in the past was also revealed to me. I had not been aware of this, and so I didn’t know that things I had done, or said, had been been so important to them, and what a difference these had made. I am so thankful to all those who let me know this, as it showed me clearly how I have, and always have had, a loving nature. Indeed this is the very nature that is part of our human heritage, and we all have it no matter how hidden it might be at times.
We change the world by growing more and more into who we are. No matter how awful or sad things seem to be, if we go past discouragement we can allow things to grow anew by sowing love whenever and wherever we can. And when things feel bright and wonderful, we can use this feeling to transcend time and send love to the future and the past, to those times when it might have been (or be) otherwise, thus allowing meaning to be woven into the very fabric of reality.
Much love to everyone.
‘I’ve been thinking about the role of art in healing lately. I love the idea of sowing love & sending brightness into the times when it’s darker. Thank you for writing your book’
- Taysha Barrett - Artist and apiarist
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