Collection: The Rewrite

Thank you for the hard lessons for they have shown me that I can grow, that bravery lies in my vulnerability and that I am powerful in my own way. Thank you for giving me health and agility so that I have the ability to keep up with life. Thank you for the spiritual presence that I feel all around me, constantly reminding me that I am not alone in my journey. Thank you for giving me people that love me deeply, that challenge me and people that need me and teach me. Thank you for teaching me to be compassionate because that has always been my saving grace. Thank you for gifting me with my talents and showing me how I need to use them to serve a greater purpose than myself. Thank you for bringing abundance into my life and showing me that life can be rich in every possible way. Thank you for showing me the power of the sun and how it can not only brighten a day but how it has the power to warm and nourish the light within me. Thank you for showing me that I have an inner wisdom that will keep me resilient no matter the circumstance. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for all I had, for all I am and all that is to come.

There are those rare, precious occurrences in your life where you find an extension of yourself in the outside world. Someone who has the same soul energy as you, someone who you have journeyed with over countless lifetimes, someone who mirrors your soul, an extension of your spirit. When your two energies collide, it does not matter if the collision was monumental or subtle, it does not matter what the nature of your relationship is or if that moment was only a one-time occurrence. You would have unknowingly changed the course of your existence, emerging as a different person, because when you meet someone vibrating on the same frequency that you are all too familiar with, you are inextricably connected. You have entrusted each other with a part of your soul, to keep until it all makes sense, until the reason your paths crossed becomes clear. When it does, it is only the purest form of love that erupts from your heart. The type of love that only gives and doesn’t take, the type of love that makes you feel weightless, the type of love that only brings you peace. Heartbreakingly, it can also be the type of love that you have to let go of and even though that heartbreak is difficult to comprehend, when you think about the freedom that type of love gave you, you realise that person has etched a permanent mark on your heart. You realise they gave you an answer, gave you strength and gave you a solution. That person made you aware of the most powerful frequency you are able to tap into, and if you use that power and you begin living with it inside you then you realise that everything around you changes for the better. Even though they are not physically there, their soul energy runs inside you, and sometimes that is the purpose of your worlds colliding. 

All I want is to be understood. I want to be seen for who I am and not who you think I am. I want you to see my flaws and understand where they have come from, to not judge me by them, but guide me with patience to do better with an understanding of how my imperfections came into being. It is that type of understanding that I crave, for it is free from selfishness and personal gain, it is giving, unburdened and riddled with a deep knowledge of who and why I am. I want to be seen for my strengths and I want them to be revered in their own light. I want to be given the grace to make mistakes without the fear that you will not see me anymore. I want to love openly and freely in my own way and I want it to be enough with the understanding that I am giving all I know. I want to be accepted without a list of conditions, so that I can feel the weightlessness of knowing that I am enough. All I want is for you to look at me and let me be me. Let me be me so that I have the liberty to grow and change, the capacity to be fearless. Let me be me so I can give you the best version of me, let me be me so that I can learn to love who I am. Let me be me so that when I look at you, I see you looking at me.

You are my sun, You are my moon, You are the stars that expand the Universe. You and I have travelled this journey for eons. We have loved each other, we have lost each other, We have fought, cried, hugged and laughed, But above all we have found each other again. We are sewn together by the threads of our past, Interwoven with such certainty that there is no doubt, Ours is an eternal love.

You have been told your words don’t matter. You have been taught to stay silent. It’ll get better they said. Did it? You craved to be taught to thrive. But instead, you were conditioned to sacrifice. You were taught to give. Give until you had nothing left. When you had nothing left, you were told to give a bit more. So you did. And when you had nothing left to give you had no choice. So you gave yourself away.

How do we tame the spirit of something so wild, unhindered and free? There is so much to learn from this untamable beast as it passes through, refreshingly renewing all it touches. Ruffling, disrupting and reviving anything motionless so that is able to come alive. Yet the most powerful thing about wind is that it never stays, never holds on to all it touches and continues living unobstructed by all it has seen and felt. In observing this, I am reminded that I too desire to be like the wind. I desire to touch the lives of others in a way that ignites their spirit. Yet I wish to remain uncaptured, like the wind, passing through their lives, invigorating but not remaining. For I know that if I stay, I will trap the freedom of an unlimited power by creating an identity for it, by governing it with rules and suffocating it with beliefs. Instead, I yearn to discover the weightlessness of true freedom, I yearn to be like the wind, ever present, observing and impacting but never lingering.

If I had known I would have held on a little longer. I would have reveled in the presence of you without hurrying off. I would have sat and chosen to be with you in as many moments as possible. I would have found the joy in the simple things with you. I would have said thank you to the sun for giving you light and thank you to the earth for giving you a haven. If I had known our time apart would be like this, I would have made sure you felt my love so that it would linger in your soul until I had the chance to show you again. If I had realised then how truly impermanent life is, I would have breathed in your energy so that it would sustain me until we met again.

They said it would, but I didn’t believe them. They believed in me, but I didn’t. They told me I was strong, to have hope, they told me it was karma. They told me to leave, told me to be brave, to fight, to give, to accept and to move on. I tried, I really tried. I did everything I was supposed to do and boy it took everything I had. So many nights I wondered if I would ever get through this, tears soaked my pillow and an endless amount washed down the drain. I wished for non-existence, I wished for change, I wished to be free and I wished for the strength to give up. I don’t know exactly when the clouds started shifting, but they did. When I allowed the light to come through, there were moments of rebirth, surrender and gratitude. So, I leaned into those rays of light and over time they became stronger, pushing away the raging fears and embracing the calm, the peace, the stillness that remained. From time to time the storm still visits, but it is never as torrential or damaging, instead it acts as a reminder that there are still more clouds that need to shift so that my light, in all its power, can shine through.

If my tears could form a picture, they would tell the story of my suffering in the rawest form. For they alone carry the purest memory of my pain.

I became hardened by the lack of freedom that comes with putting others first. It is a noble act, yet I became so consumed by it that it grew into a resentment. And when that struck, it was like a plague. Spreading and controlling my mind, all consuming, dark and unpleasant. I began to resent resentment. I gave it power and it destroyed me. My energy was so attuned to it that I attracted more of it. I tried to claw my way out but it had infiltrated my roots. I believed that I did not deserve good things, that I was too greedy, there was too much anger inside. I became angry about being angry. I questioned my kindness, was it genuine? Bad things shouldn’t happen to kind people therefore I must not be genuinely kind. My past self was now riddled with guilt, torment and confusion. There was too much of a dichotomy between who I thought I was and who I was presently struggling with. It was almost as if the past was erased, everything I knew, believed, everything I had constructed my identity from disappeared. And so did I.

I have never felt as powerful as I feel today. You are a bold, bright energy roaring through my body, keeping me strong, keeping me fearless. Oh, how I wish I had found you earlier! Perhaps I would not have been as grateful for you then. For I am now wiser, I have confronted the consequences of my past, dabbled with illusions of happiness, mended a shattered existence and I have won. So, I continued this love affair with you. I nurtured it. I let it get broken and gave it time to heal, I asked for help, I cried and I released. And as I became grateful for the most ordinary of things, you transformed them into the most extraordinary of things. And suddenly there you were, my secret power, I found you in the quiet lull of the morning, I found you amongst the chaos of a mother’s life, in the adoring eyes of my son, the wise remarks of my daughter, there you were as I rekindled my love for lost passions, as I heard my mother laughing, almost in tears, I found you in each word that crossed my page and when I allowed myself to feel love. It dawned on me that you were here all along, weren’t you? Waiting, ever so patiently, for me to be ready for you. And when I found you, you were ever so humble, slipping quietly into my existence, letting me take the glory, for finding me.

The phoenix represents the continual rebirth that we undergo through life. It is a symbol of strength, reinvention and rising again. It is a reminder that we can use our own scars to emerge again. That we can take those memories and rise above them into a new, stronger existence.

My first soulmate. My first comfort and my first home. Now I understand how your heart aches when mine is aching. I understand your fear as I went off into the world, barely glancing back. I understand how your heart would have swelled up when I soared and how it would have broken when you wanted to give me more, but couldn’t. I understand how you sacrificed your body to bring me into this world and how it will forever be marked and changed because of me. I feel your cringes as you look in the mirror and quickly remind yourself that it was all worth it. Now I see that you did get sick too, but you never stopped. How could you? Your heart didn’t beat for yourself, it lived for us. I understand there would have been days where you wanted to succumb to the exhaustion but we were your greater good. I see you now. I understand you now. Mama, you etched your love onto my heart from the moment I came to you, and it only spread from there, lacing my veins with such a power that no matter the distance between us, I will always feel the love of my first home.

I look at the moon and I dream. I share my secrets, my plans, my stories. I see it gleam brighter, glowing a little more with the hopes I carry. I watch a little longer and I see it glimmer again and I’m certain it’s heard the dreams of another. I stare in awe at this magical orb that has watched the souls of this world for eons, that has listened ever so patiently as stories were told, as lives were birthed and loves were lost. I marvel at its grandeur with a slight pang in my heart knowing that if we noticed her more, we would realise how connected we all are. How for centuries she has listened as we have revealed our souls and cried about our losses. How when our heart aches for another she is able to connect us and for that moment in time we are anchored to the same place and the distance between us will evaporate.

Vibrate on such a frequency of love that every atom in your body is overflowing with it. Then the Universe has no choice but to match the magnitude of love you radiate.

Vibrate on such a frequency of love that every atom in your body is overflowing with it. Then the Universe has no choice but to match the magnitude of love you radiate.

Time to bloom. The sun said to the lotus.

How? My roots are etched so deeply into the mud. What will I become? replied the lotus.

Our roots do not have the power to define us, they are merely a place for us to draw our energy from.

But how do I abandon the mud? asked the lotus.

You use the mud. You cannot grow without it.

So the lotus used the mud. The mud taught the lotus, it gave strength to her and it drowned her many, many times. But the lotus never forgot what the sun said. She knew where she was going. Then finally, the lotus bloomed. She was magnificent, not because she abandoned the mud, but because she was completely at ease in the mud.

The downpour soaked the earth, washing away any traces of the past, cleansing and renewing. Like a woman, monthly releasing what she no longer needs. The downpour became destructive, leaving a trail of lost memories and broken possessions. Like a mother who birthed life at the expense of her own vessel, now a distant memory of how it used to be. The downpour asked the earth to drink, and keep drinking until it could hold no more. Like a grandmother who sacrificed her all until her last ounce of energy was spent. The downpour was loud, thundering against everything it touched so that we would pay attention. Like a sister that roars fiercely when she has your back. The downpour breathed life into all the roots, re-energising any that were becoming stagnant. Like a daughter who was born to break tradition. The downpour etched its memory into every crack, seeping into the core of the earth, so that everything that grew from this moment would carry the memory of what was just witnessed. Everything that would now grow would be stronger, wiser, braver and more powerful because it chose to keep growing despite it all. Like a woman.

If you were to ask me where the light was in my life, I would have told you that the only light I hold was in the souls of my children. For when I had withered away, they were the only thing bringing me back to life. When they were not around there was no light remaining for my petals to unfold, there was no reason for me to exist beyond them. But now I see the light everywhere. It is still a constant in the eyes of my children, the light that emanates from them is the spark of curiosity, reminding me to give them the freedom to be themselves. I see the light as it illuminates part of a tree in the morning light, waking it from its slumber and giving it energy for the day, igniting my sense of appreciation for a marvel that is out of our control. I see the light as it brightens the wings of a bird suspended momentarily in midair, before it regains control and carries on towards its destination. That light teaches me to be mindful, for there is so much to miss and so much to be lost when we are not paying attention. I cannot see the light but I can feel it as the wind kisses my face, a fresher feeling I am yet to find, reminding me that this continual rebirth is necessary, refreshing and essential to feed my inner light. As I allow the sun’s rays to give me energy I can see, I can feel and I can revel in the light that is within me and it blooms each day from within, increasing in magic, purity and spirit as I learn to forgive, release and protect a light that I know will never be lost again.