Inspiration
Articles to inspire authentic living on the topics of resilience, spirituality, and self-growth with touches of storytelling, depth, and humor.
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How I Learned To Walk Through Fire
I wasn’t planning to write about this, mostly because I don’t usually like calling attention to my problems. If there is an universal truth that I am still waiting for one person to challenge is that 2020 has been a very hard year. For me, 2020 probably holds the record as the most-tear-producing year ever. Adjusting to the pandemic, the lack of contact with the outside world, the new economy was actually tolerable. But early July I received one of those phone calls that we ever dread: I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
First of all let me be clear: I am fine, I am cancer-free and in the last part of this chapter. The amount of lessons I collected in this journey had been sitting in my soul and in my journal for the last few months and suddenly I felt the need to share them in case they can help anyone who is going through this, will go through this or knows somebody who is. In this personal odyssey I grew up, I discovered so many truths being revealed with the force of a duct tape pulled from my eyes. People who walk the same path may have a different experience, but these are some of my takeaways.
Kindness Is a Two-Way Road
It was a warm Summer day, the kind that warms your skin and lifts your mood. But a call later in the afternoon made the world stop on its track. They were not good news, at least not the ones that we ever expect to get. From that moment on, the world, my world at the very least, was going to look a little bit different and scarier
But I don’t scare easily. In fact, my body is wired to fight so when things get difficult I put on my boxing gloves or my armature, whatever is needed before I face the ring. That day, though, I could not move much. After the initial shock, I went to my studio to try to process the news in the best way I know: through prayer and meditation. I lit up a candle, turned up the music and sit down in silence while tears started flowing down. I sat with the fears, with the pain and the uncertainty. I let it all flow while I observed from a distance in a intent to be mindful while I allowed the numbness to shake out of my soul. I felt the hands of a thousand angels holding me up; I felt the warm embrace of loved ones surrounding me; I felt the certainty that the journey I was about to embark on was not going to leave me unchanged. All of that had proven to be true.
As I opened my eyes, aware of the significant moment I was experiencing, I took my journal and wrote my goals for the journey I was about to embark on. What was I going to learn? What was I willing to master? What parts of myself I was going to surrender and what parts I was going to embrace? Two answers came to mind, and I wrote them with big letters, the way one signs a declaration of independence:
1. I am going to learn to be selfish
2. I am going to learn to receive the help I need.
“F” is for *@uck Fear!
He was mad at something, I don’t even remembered what. But my five-year-old son was having a major tantrum. And by major I mean lots of kicking, hitting and throwing stuff. I was helpless. My usual “let’s-talk-about-our-feelings-approach” was not working. I had seen tantrums before but none like those. It started happening more frequently on the following days. Of course I started reading, researching, trying different methods without significant success. Then one day I was driving back home after an appointment and I had the need to scream. Not to anyone in particular, but to the air, to the world. But I didn’t. I am a relatively put-together adult who meditates regularly and who has an obsession with processing my feelings. I don’t always have my act together, but if there has been a year who had put me to the test it has been the wonderful, unpredictable and always beating-its-previous-record 2020.
Lost in my thoughts before the light turned green I realized what was happening to me. I wanted to allow myself to do what my son had been doing for the last few weeks. I wanted to have a major Tantrum, with capital T. I wanted to throw myself on the floor and scream and cry and say I didn’t want to cooperate, that I wanted to be left alone, untouched. I wanted to ask “why” knowing that I did not care about the answers. I just wanted to be heard. I imagined myself doing exactly that. Acting like an out-of-control 5 year-old.
The beautiful mirror of my son made me see that the cause of both of our tantrums was the same: we were in FEAR. We were both like two frightened tiger cubs trying to defend ourselves and all we need us was someone to hold us tight and tell us everything was going to be fine.
The sensibility of numbers
Being born an artist is quite a gift. Curiosity is your biggest talent and it is easy to delight in the simplest things because wherever you see there is beauty. There is a certain rawness that comes with it as in order to create artists need to experience, to live, to feel. Yes, I love being an artist with its presents and its challenges. We tend to be boxed into a category of dreamers as if we were disconnected with reality. As in any other profession or lifestyle, that is a generalization and I got proof of it years ago.
When I was about to finish High School, we were asked to take a career aptitude test. My results were somewhat unexpected. There was a tie on two - very different - careers recommended for me: Art and Math. Art was very obvious; Math not as surprising as you would think. The fact was that I love numbers. Math was one class that I always excelled at. I enjoyed solving questions, equations, finding patterns, the fact that there were formulas to solve simple or not so simple problems. Because I had played instruments from a young age, I knew math was interlaced in every musical rhythms and pattern. So, yes, I have always being an artist with a love for numbers, and history has proven that I am not the only one.
Lately, numbers have come to chase me with the force of an axe and I has been forced to deal with the way I relate to them. No, I am not talking about home schooling through the pandemic.
Skip Forest, Skip... the sun is chasing us
It looked like just another yoga class, a completely packed yoga class, I should say. I was in the front of the room, squeezed between a wall and three fellow practitioners. The instructor began by thanking people who have sent coundolescense after the loss of her mother. In the process of recovering from this life-altering event, the instructor offered us a word that has sustained her in the last few days: acceptance. The message resonated inside my heart like a cathedral’s bell at noon because I knew that was a message I needed to hear. However, what shook me was not the opportune word but her explanation. She mentioned that while she had been grieving someone advised her that maybe it was time to move on. Moving on?
The Cup of Tea
I just heard a receptionist talking about how she reached for a comforting cup of hot tea and she burned her mouth, which kept me thinking....
How many times we do search for comfort in the right things, either be a cup of tea, a conversation with a friend, a prayer, a medicine or a yoga class, to only realize we have being "burnt", exhausted, beaten up or left feeling empty and discouraged. The problem is not the item that was supposed to offer comfort. Most of the times the problem is our timing