Life is on your side

My body forgets quickly that life is on my side. Even after years of healing, my animal suit tries to protect me from disappointment by attempting to control outcomes. It wasn’t safe to be opened and soft as a child. And if I was, if my guards were down, then my environment would remind me quickly to shut it down. Often the reminder would come as a surprise, out of left field, catching me vulnerable, reinforcing the need for more protection, more layers.

Sometimes, everything outside of me proves true my conditioned belief that life is not on my side; I am the only one on my side. When my heart is closed, and my fire is kept neatly at bay below my diagram, with shallow breaths and business, of course, the reality I project is one of disappointment, of compromise, and of smallness.

And if I stay like this for a while, my inner world starts to crumble too. It’s harder to meditate, harder to breathe deeply, and my health suffers. Opportunities for a return to wellness seem few and far apart. I start to make decisions that are not in my best interest, and I compromise on who I really am and what I truly want, right and left. My mind can justify it all because: life is not on my side anyway. I need to keep myself safe.

And then I remember something. Maybe out of the blue, during a meditation, reading a book, or listening to a friend talk. I remember that I can ask for help. I can’t believe I forgot this. But I have people, within and without, that do have my best interest at heart, that love me unconditionally, to whom I am a gift. My body needs convincing, but my knowing is clear: guidance is always around the corner, if I just ask.

And when I do, I get one bread crumb, and then other. When I stay in the discomfort of receiving love (because at first, it’s not natural) I open myself up to receiving a love that needs nothing in return, a love that comes from a place that is already full, it does not need me to fill it up in exchange. And then my heart softness and opens and I get another breadcrumb, an understanding, a new insight, a new opening. My heart softens even more, and there I am, back home, knowing again, like for the first time, that life is on my side.

Life is on your side.

Not because it needs something from you

But just because. Because you are you.

That’s enough.

Put your guards down, soften your heart, and allow yourself to receive her love.

Life loves you, without conditions, with no opposite.

Soften your edges and let life’s love in.