trust, love, and grace

TRUST equals LOVE. LOVE equals TRUST.
To grow in one, you must nurture the other and vice versa. They are not mutually exclusive. They live and breathe side by side, hand in hand. And the connection between the two is GRACE.

There is a calmness to this and a seeming simplicity, but usually there is stuff which interferes, our fears which can manifest in any number of ways. It's all fear. Releasing fear is a process, yet it can be a beautiful and enlightening journey, the path of which is found through whatever means works for you, be it meditation, journaling, reading books and articles that speak to you, sharing with friends or loved ones, finding your passions, all of these, or something else altogether.

Desire to embark on this journey is where it all begins, and this takes courage, strength, and resilience, but it's all so worth it. As you let your fears go, bit by bit is best, for this gives your body, mind, and psyche time to integrate, aspects of trust just seem to creep in as do the most wonderful feelings, indescribable ones. The more you release, the more of this you will feel, and the more your desire will deepen.

Some of the first steps will be leaning to trust yourself first, your intuition, your heart and all that arises from this. The more you actively work to let your fears go, the more you can banish or at least quiet down the demon voices that can sometimes scream at you. The more you can dig deeply inside, the more layers you can shed, the more you will find your true heart, your love that has always lain at your core, the more peace you will find, the more you will trust, and the more you will expand in all ways as the gorgeous goddess woman that you are.

Will you sometimes be hurt? Of course, unless you are able to attain nirvana which most of us as humans won't. You will still be affected by others words, behaviors, habits at times. But keep close the knowledge that they are out of your realm. You can only have control over yourself and your own actions which most importantly include your reactions, your feelings, your hurt.

You can choose to fall into old patterns of allowing others to dictate how you feel. You can try forcing yourself to ignore them by telling yourself they mean no direct harm which is probably true, but you run the danger of stuffing your feelings which can emerge, or they can lie there and fester. Either way it's destructive, and doing this will bring you further away from what you are working to let in, peace, trust, and love.

Or you can choose to sink into the pain, love through the hurt. Feel your feelings, the good feeling ones as well as the bad feeling ones. ALLOW your feelings in all their forms whether you deem them justified or not. Sink deeply into them, and then watch them shift, change, TRANSFORM.

It's perfectly okay to express how you feel. I strongly suggest that you do, without accusation or confrontation. This is done by using feeling statements. For example, "I'm feeling bad, awful, hurt or whatever it is you are feeling." You will likely be asked why. Express that what the person said or did felt bad, and then ask for their help with this or ask what they think. No raised or accusatory voices are necessary.

Compose a little speech and memorize it if this helps you from getting flustered. Keep it short and simple, and keep it all about you and how you feel. If you are nervous or anxious about speaking out, say so. Start out by stating that you feel uncomfortable or frightened bringing whatever it is up.

People can and will hear you if approached in this way. Go with whatever evolves from here be it further discussion, a negotiation, an apology, or nothing at all. If there is no response or if there is any defensiveness, that's okay though this scenario is unlikely. You can turn and walk away. Breath if there is any residue within you. Go do something that feels good to you.

You will learn to trust that any actions or words that hurt you are not intentional. Everyone is on their unique path. They must find their way in their own way. Knowing this makes it easier to let the hurt go.

As you work on yourself, releasing, letting go, and peace begins to pervade you, love begins to flow forth and fill your being, a humbleness, a humility will arise naturally, and what I mean by that is an elegance of spirit, a free flowingness in the face of whatever is. It's an openness, a vulnerability, a trust in self and love. GRACE. It's an inextricable part of this.

And all of this extends to trust in the ones you love and care about, trust that they know what they are doing even if you don't like whatever it is, that's it not a reflection on you or has anything to do with you. Trusting with grace, trusting with love, loving with trust, loving with grace is an acceptance and an embracing. It's freeing.