Thirty One Lessons in Thirty One Years

Today is my 31st birthday and I am currently at a quaint coffee and bookstore shop in Boulder, Colorado. It’s a sunny day and the air is crisp and cool which I do enjoy. I usually spend my birthday mornings in a reflective mood–ruminating on my growth, my successes, the people who have made my life so heartwarming and full of love and lessons, my failures and areas of weaknesses, and all the things that I’ve learned that has shaped who I am.

I wanted to write this post mostly because I felt an urge to share what beautiful lessons and things I’ve come to learn in my understanding of my own self in this wild journey called life. I’m not afraid anymore to share my vulnerabilities to the world or be told that I’m “weird” and “intense” for some people, because frankly, there’s no other way I’d like to live than to live completely aware of my shortcomings and wholeness and be truthful to that. There are so many values and principles I live by that dishonoring and disrespecting them would be such a disservice to the people around me who might be struggling to find their own sense of self. I can only hope that to live and act in ways that are courageous and brave will also inspire others to do the same.

Over my 31 years of breathing on this earth, here are 31 ruminations and lessons I’ve learned that I think may help serve you in your journey:

1. Believe in yourself. I spent so much of my life not believing in myself because I didn’t quite fit in with the rest of my peers. I doubted a lot of my talents and passions because I spent so much time trying to get validation and approval from others and fit their mold. It was only when I hit my 20s that I started to realize that my talents and passions were a core part of who I am and that if I didn’t start believing in them, I wasn’t truly living authentically. I needed to believe that my talents and passions were so important to the vitality of my life that anyone who tried to tell me otherwise was not a source of growth or support.
2. Allow yourself to love and feel loved. I grew up in a household where we showed very little “loving” emotions. I understood what anger, sadness, contempt, and disappointment looked like, but was never really exposed to what “love” looked  or felt like. These experiences had a very huge impact on how I perceived love whenever I felt or received it. Anytime I felt love, I questioned it and denied it any room to open my heart. Anytime love was given to me, I was sure people were using it to manipulate me. It was only when I allowed myself to view love as a way to grow my understanding of myself and others that I could become a more wholesome and empathic individual. I hated having a heart of stone. And the only way to soften that was to allow room for it to break in several ways.
3. Don’t be a slave to age. I hear a lot of people say things like “I’m too old to do that now” or “I’m just too old, I don’t have time for that.” Society shames us when we want to do something that may seem out of our age range to do and I am not a supporter of that. If there’s something you want to do, you should do it. If you are physically able and willing, anything is possible. Don’t wait to do what you’ve always wanted. Your time on earth is finite.
4. Take care of your health. Health is my number one value. Everything that I love revolves around the health of my well being. If my health is not prioritized, my relationships suffer, my work suffers, and my passions and talents suffer. Prioritize your health (mental, physical, and spiritual) if you want to see healthy growth in the areas of your life.
5. Feed your curiosity. When you feed your curiosity, your inner world expands. When you ask a lot of questions and wonder about the world, interests, and people around you, you build a better understanding of the life we live in and your role in it.
6. Honor your values. When you know what you value, honor them. If there are people or ideas that question what you value, thank them for their concern and move on from them. Your values are the grounding pillars that will support everything else in your life. Be sure to protect them.
7. Be honest. Be honest with yourself and others. It’s so simple, but we often find ourselves beating around the bush or playing down the truth. There are ways to tell the truth with kindness and respect. Some truths hurt, and it’s ok. This is how you build resilience. Trustworthiness is something only we can teach each other.
8. Anything is possible with a willing heart and disciplined mind. Growing up, I’ve been met with many, “no, you can’t do that” or “that’s impossible”. It was a frustrating experience anytime I was told I couldn’t do something because I wasn’t allowed to or that it was just too hard to achieve. These kinds of limits that people placed on me only drove my ambitions further to find other ways to achieve what I wanted. It worked. You have to frame your mind to believe that what you want for your life is possible to achieve as long as you’re willing and disciplined to create it.
9. Get rid of your ego. Having pride for the work you do and things you achieve are ok, but don’t be an arrogant asshole. Your success is only possible because others have helped you. Accept the praise but thank others.
10. Explore the world and other cultures. There are other ways of life and cultures that make this world so beautiful. Explore and learn about them. Immerse yourself in a culture and surrounding unknown to you. This is how you build global awareness. Had I not traveled to other countries and immersed myself in their cultures, I’d be a far different person than I am today. Travel builds your character and humbles you.
11. Know your boundaries and respect other’s boundaries. I remember working at at tech startup in San Francisco and feeling like I couldn’t say no to an invite I received even though I knew it meant having to muster up the energy to socialize and be part of the team. I’m an introvert. I personally find social activities exhausting, and I felt uncomfortable saying no because I was scared of not being a team-player. Know your boundaries because when you disrespect them, you give people the permission to disrespect your boundaries.
12. Tell your friends you love them. When you have people in your life who know the deepest parts of you and would do anything in their ability to help and support you, tell these people you love them. Friendship is something I treasure deeply. These friendships have kept me alive and I owe them all my love and complete presence any time I am with them.
13. Always say sorry when you’ve hurt someone. This one is something that was hard for me to learn. My grandpa always told me to say sorry to someone I’ve hurt, but I always had too much pride and was too stubborn to accept that I was wrong. When you tell someone you’re sorry, be completely sincere. Saying sorry teaches us how to be tender with ourselves and others.
14. Stop comparing yourself to people. I used to spend a lot of time comparing myself to women who were more beautiful than me because I was always told I was ugly or fat by my relatives. This sucked to hear growing up. Ultimately, I decided that anyone who told me these things were people who didn’t like themselves. Now when I see beautiful women, I admire their beauty and tell myself that I’m beautiful too. Because if I can recognize beauty in someone else, that must mean I have beauty too and there would not be a need to compare because we are both beautiful in our own ways. This goes for achievements too. When you see someone who is excelling, you should learn to admire these people and become like them or better. Comparing yourself stunts your growth.
15. Love with all your heart. I’m not one to go in half-heartedly in anything. I’ve also learned that you shouldn’t surround yourself around people who give half-heartedly. When you do things with your whole heart, you experience life wholly and all the beauty and terror that come with it. Doing something half-heartedly is a disservice to yourself and others. You’ll never know the joys of living if you’re only giving half of what you’re capable of.
16. You’re only as good as your word. I’ve come to realize that people are really good at talking themselves up and making you believe in what they are all about. I’ve been a fool to believe people for their words at face value and not take a closer look at their actions. Be a person of action when you say something. Be true to your word and follow through. Inconsistency breeds doubt and consistency breeds trust. Be a trustworthy person.
17. Share your talents and passions. It took some time for me to feel confident about sharing my talents and passions because I am my most harshest critic, but I’ve come to realize that when you share your talents and passion, even if you do so little by little, that people respond in positive ways that encourage them to do the same. It made me happy to know that me sharing my own talents and passion encouraged others to do the same.
18. Accept that not everyone will like you. Be kind anyway. I used to get so hung up and obsess over why someone didn’t like me and try to figure out what it was that I did that would cause that. This obsessiveness would breed resentment in me and frustration which weren’t conducive to my well being. There are some things you can’t control and other’s perception of you is one of them. Be kind anyway.
19. Let go of grudges and past resentments. There is no way to move forward in life if you hold onto the past hurt. Healing and forgiveness require letting go of grudges and past resentments. Our time is so limited on earth that we should really try to spend our time in more positive states instead of hateful ones.
20. You can’t change other people, but you can change yourself. I’m guilty of trying to change people to fit the mold I wanted them to fit only to find myself extremely hurt and depressed. Accept that you can’t change people. You can encourage their growth and provide guidance, but ultimately, they are the only ones who can decide for themselves who they want to be. Instead, focus on who you can change and that’s you.
21. Face your fears and demons now. We spend so much of our lives running away from the self-work it takes to love ourselves. When we don’t face our fears and demons earlier on in our lives, we unintentionally affect our relationship with others. It takes hard work to understand and sort through the traumas of your childhood and the demons that grew from it, but the reward is that you become so aware of yourself that by doing so, you teach others how to love and accept your flaws. We’re all flawed humans anyway.
22. Be willing to adapt to change. One thing is certain in life and that’s change. Cultural changes, climate change, political change, financial change, etc., will always remain a constant throughout our lives. I personally think that a willingness to adapt to change is one of the keys to our human survival and growth. How else could we evolve as a species if we’re locked into the mentality that we can’t or don’t want to change?
23. Failure is a gift. Learn from it. I’m an over-achiever and a perfectionist and I hate the feeling of failing, but what I know from having many failures is that it offers you a gift and opportunity to reinvent yourself and challenge your thinking. How we react to failure shapes who we become. When we see failure as an opportunity to expand ourselves, we build the grit and resilience required for success and fulfillment.
24. If you’re unhappy, challenge yourself to learn a new hobby. Every month in 2018, I gave myself a challenge to try a new hobby. I remember reading somewhere that it takes 30 days to create a habit. For 30 days I’d try out my selected hobby and if my joy and curiosity did not grow within those 30 days, I’d simply take up a different hobby the next month until I found one that held my curiosity past 30 days. Happiness doesn’t just arrive in your life, you have to create pathways for it to arise from within you. From that exercise, I learned that taking photos using a film camera bring me much happiness. :0)
25. Think before you react. Think before you speak. If you know me, you know that I’m a very expressive person who does not shy away from showing emotions. However, what I’ve come to learn is that not everyone will appreciate or know how to process your expressivity. In stressful or tense situations, I often remind myself to think before I react or say anything. Because what you say and how you say things determine the nature of the outcome.
26. Offer help, but never force it. Some people don’t want our help and we shouldn’t force our help on them. We can only offer our help and remain loyal to the offer when called upon. As someone who goes through depressive states in and out, I know that people cannot help me if I don’t know how to recognize that I need to help myself. When I accept that I need help, only then can others help me.
27. Enjoy the adventure and spontaneity of life. I’m such a structured and orderly person that sometimes I forget to enjoy some spontaneity in my life. Meditation and playing music allow me to grow more accepting of random spontaneous events and activities to be more “in the moment”. When you allow for adventure and spontaneity in your life, I think it helps you grow more centered in the thought that your life is fleeting and all you really have is the here and now.
28. Don’t be afraid to start over again. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve hit the reset button and started all over again. When you do that, you don’t start from scratch, you start from experience and there is no shame in recalculating where you need to go next. Life is meant to be fulfilling not perfect so don’t fall into the trap of thinking you can’t hit that reset button. Dare to live your most fulfilling life.
29. Stay loyal to the people you love and the dreams you create. Loyalty is one of those things that are hard earned and easily broken. When someone consistently brings out the best qualities in you and is there when you need them, show them your loyalty by doing the same. When you create and plan out your dreams, take an active role by checking-in with smaller goals to see if these are pushing you towards fulfilling your dreams. Loyalty by far, is the most important characteristic I value in myself and others.
30. Be kind to yourself. When I work too much, I forget to eat because I get so focused and hours go by where I forget the time and skip meals. When I’m not understanding something, I beat myself up for not getting it quick enough. I am the most hardest on myself than anyone I know. I’m learning to be more kind to myself as I am to others because often times, I’ll find myself exhausted from giving so much of my kindness to others that I’m left feeling pretty depleted which leaves me more vulnerable to depressive funks and less kind to myself. So folks, be kind to yourself first and it will mirror the kindness you can give to others. And as cliché as it sounds, kindness is contagious.
31. Do the right thing, always. It shows you have integrity. Don’t cheat, don’t cut corners, don’t lie to get what you want, because people will find out, and if they don’t, you’ll know what you’ve done and it will haunt you for life. Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is watching. Choose to do the right thing, always. Sometimes it hurts and you struggle, but the reward is building a heart of gold and a head full of good morals that practices integrity, and you want to grow that.

I’ll leave this post with a lasting wish for you on my birthday: that you find and love yourself enough to create a life that you want and feel fulfilled to have. Happy Birthday to you…I’m so thankful to have you as a reader of my thoughts and ramblings. Thank you for seeing me and hearing me and making me feel…alive.

 

Love,

Noemi

 

 

Beyond the Horizon of Dreams: Pushing Towards Greatness Requires Great Risk

Hello Dear Friend,

This is a long read, so if you’re here and ready to absorb this lengthy exposition, thank you for your time. Lately, I find myself writing about these deeper topics whenever there is a turning point in my life that I feel I should address. For those who have followed me for over a decade now, reading the course of how my life has unfolded and learned the lessons turned to wisdom, the heartbreak transformed to growth and strength, and all the adventures that have humbled me back to my humanity–all these things for which I write about, I write for you so that you will never feel alone in your life’s journey.

I write because I’m sure you need the same kind of guidance, reassurance, and acceptance I needed to continue choosing to live every day, knowing that at any point, my depression and fears could consume me if I let it. But I starve depression from taking control, and instead feed my life and soul with meaning and love. If you have been on this journey with me for this long, thank you for coming and staying. You are always welcome here with me.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned over the past decade is how resilient the human spirit and heart really are. That even through several heartbreaks which all look and feel different in intensity; through long distance relationships and insecurities; through derailed career paths and questions about one’s life purpose; through sudden deaths and watching loved one’s health fail; through abusive relationships that threatened your very well-being and existence; through momentary glitches of self-destructive thinking patterns; through proud moments where you’ve cared enough to get out and live and feel something beautiful; through extreme difficulties that brought profound change and gratitude–that through it all, we come out a more raw and transformed being, shedding the layers that held us down, and revealing to ourselves the true shape of who we are and the potential greatness of our life, one challenge at a time.

With this resilience in hand, anything is possible if you make a deliberate choice to make the impossible, possible. Creating the life you wanted. Financial security. Making a life with the woman or man of your dreams. Building a family. Experiencing adventure. Learning 5 languages. Taking up painting or swordsmanship. Don’t let time make you a slave to age. Master it by showing it the vigor you have for life and you will never feel like it’s too late for anything.

Having resilience cultivates growth-mentality and growth-mentality is what fear and rejection can never conquer. But you have to keep choosing to get back up and face all the messiness of life, love, and suffering head on, knowing that every choice is an act towards bringing greatness closer into your life. One thing I tell myself whenever I meet a challenge or faced with something I don’t always have the answer to is this very simple, yet profound statement:

You are always one choice away from having a completely different life.

I always think the choices we make in life are investments toward the kind of return we want in life. Of course everything that involves matters of the heart are risky, but anything worth having for a life of meaning is no easy task. You’ll have your ego shattered, your pride challenged, your heart cut open in different ways, and your mind fractured into pieces each time, but know that you are unbreakable when you have resilience because the payoff to see that view of you close to all this greatness is an indescribable feeling.

Personally, I make sure to invest in choices that expand my love and understanding first and foremost, my knowledge and intelligence of our world and people and the ideas that exist, and my talents and skills so that I can leave a legacy that inspires people to be better humans. The view I imagine experiencing when I get there will be filled with immense beauty and wonder and I know that I am worthy of it because I have turned down every opportunity to play it safe and steady my whole life.

Don’t just exist as a fact or mere participant of life anymore. Exist because humanity and the world demand that you fulfill your life’s meaning so that you can lead, inspire, and elevate our civilization.

This turning point I mentioned earlier is one I believe has been in the making for years for me. Many years ago I wrote about what I wanted my life to look like and how I wanted to go about designing it. I am a true believer that nothing is impossible unless you choose to make it impossible. It’s your frame of mind and attitude that will determine how your life will grow or shrink. So listen deeply to the words you tell yourself because those words shape your attitude and the quality of life you’ll get.

Recently, I’ve been given the opportunity to relocate to Phoenix, Arizona for my career and grow professionally to learn everything I can from my boss/mentor. While the job title and pay bump are nice, I go into this believing that whatever challenges I face and knowledge I gain, despite every potential risk that could send me back crashing down, is a key part of my journey towards greatness and achieving all the things I want in my life. I always knew that I’d leave California eventually and the timing was perfect when the opportunity was presented.

I already had 75% of my belongings packed at a storage facility for the last 2.5 years while I lived minimally working from home accepting that my chapter in San Diego was nearing its close because I could feel the same hunger I’ve had all my life, arise when change was needed to push me towards actualizing my dreams into reality.

When the opportunity was presented, the timing was right, my mind clear, my heart full of love, and my hunger ready to be satiated, I wrote to my future self,

“I am all yours. Surprise me and bend my soul so that I never break. Stretch my love and vision far beyond everything I know I’m capable of. Challenge me to fight earnestly with devotion and accept with humility, the losses I’ll feel so that my love is never hardened or disillusioned by failure and rejection. To You, I owe myself, everything.”

I challenge you to do something similar and write to your future self. Treat your future self like they already exist. Imagine the greatest version of yourself and tell them everything you need to work on to become them.

I cannot explain why, but I hunger for something more grand. Something extremely challenging that would throw trials at me so that I could forge the virtues and qualities that grand goals depend on. I want a life of something so exquisite and rare to experience and share, that the risks of not exploring how to make it part of my reality, outweighs the ordinary comfort I’d feel if I chose a more socially constructed life.

Sure, it takes courage and conviction to say ‘yes’ to opportunities that possess huge unknown factors, so this kind of thinking isn’t for everyone, but for those wanting more out of their life, any opportunity to grow and learn is a chance you should take. These are the signals from your future self giving you a window of choice to take the greatest risks for a future you cannot predict. For those who want this, you will constantly feel vulnerable to failure and embarrassment and there will always be spectators anticipating the moment you call it quits. The losses may be more profound and painful, but I promise you that the wins and the great heights you’ll reach are far more rewarding.

The view and the distance I’ve covered in my life thus far is extraordinarily incredible and even I am surprised at how things have gone for me. Life is a divine comedy that makes me laugh and cry at the same time, but I will continue to wipe my tears and love it anyway despite its complete mystery and strangeness.

But this isn’t just about me and where I’m going, I mostly thought about how to turn my story and wisdom into a spark that might be lit in someone else’s journey of self-actualization because there’s no better feeling for me than to hear from my readers how my words have shaped the success and journey of their story. Remember? I write for you.

I got to thinking about the paths I’ve chosen and the obstacles I faced for firmly standing with my dreams and idealistic visions because along the way, I met reality and it hit me in ways where I found myself financially struggling, moving from place to place, questioning my sanity and purpose for existing, being taken advantage of emotionally and physically, and hitting rock bottom several times.

I was suicidal and manic depressive in my early youth and throughout my 20’s. I felt misunderstood and rejected for having lofty grand visions and an idealistic temperament. I felt utterly alone with my thoughts, ideas and desires, and yet, the one crucial part that kept me hanging on was this insane belief that I was brought into this world to shape it in the most impactful way I knew: through my gifts as a writer and my unique ability to access the depths of my own love and speak with a whole-heartedness that touch people in a special way. Having felt and fought my emotional demons helped me recognize what I needed out of my own life and the outside world and by doing so, I created the engine for what would propel me to trust my intuition, use my talents and knowledge, and lead how I know best: by example.

You have to discover and be able to share what touches you and moves you to understand what you want out of life, and by knowing oneself and speaking up for what you want no matter what societal demands or circumstances you’re under, you gain a skill that so few of us choose to build: bravery, in living your truest, greatest self. Bravery is the engine that will propel you forward and upwards, going anywhere you want, so that you can find all the pieces to build the life you dreamed of.

Take a deep breath, because this small act of introspection and courage is the catalyst that sets off more acts of bravery. And when the wheels are set in motion and momentum begins, I promise you’ll start to feel the high and adrenaline that comes when you see the risks you’ve taken push your growth and finally transform everything you’ve ever dreamed of for your life, into your reality and future. You become the commander and artist, envisioning and designing what you want with pristine clarity and leading with the knowledge you have gained to take all these pieces and turn them into successes that become your life’s meaning and legacy.

As you continue to chart your course towards the destinations you seek in your life’s work with the resilience, bravery, and zest you’ve taken with you, something incredible happens that opens the gate to everything beyond the borders and atmosphere of your dreams and what we have known and achieved thus far. Your heart begins to soften, your senses become attuned to the compass of your love and desires, your fears and doubts go out the window, your vulnerabilities comforted with peace, your values and beliefs honored, and you watch as the master of your mind kneel and pledge its loyalty to the magnificence of your heart and its power to transform your life and the lives of others. And then…

We begin to live a life of meaning and we learn to never touch anything with half your heart again, because greatness requires the biggest gamble of going all-in with your heart and your soul, and a fierce unwavering love that no longer cowers to fear and the mediocre.

I honestly believe that love, and any shape or form of it, can transform the quality of life we’ll have. To be worthy of your greatness and full potential, you have to be willing to give 100% of your love, honesty, and devotion to all the pieces that will carve your path to growth and greatness.  Love gives us the vision and purpose. Knowledge gives us the tools to guide us to fulfilling that vision.

I’d like to believe that each and every one of us have this untapped intensity that is laying dormant in our heart until someone or something can electrify it just a little bit so that when we do feel it, our mind is lit with the abundance of possibility and the hope that we can become more than what we know and have experienced; that we can love and be loved immensely; that our goals and life’s work can be achieved; that we can reinvent ourselves and take as many detours as we want; that we can break societal norms and build a better world.

When we become self aware of this in ourselves, we can help others ignite the fire of bravery in themselves and altogether, we can elevate our existence to become a race that accelerates towards great, positive change and serves with loyalty to the magnitude of our heart’s power to transform. When you make the choice to believe that you are worthy of something greater in your life, taking the right risks could be the difference between living an ordinary life and living an extraordinary life.

“Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being. If not, leave this gathering. Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty.” – Rumi

You’ll know when you want something more when you begin feeling lost in your steadiness and routine. You’ll know the ache of hearing your dreams and goals suffering when they aren’t being met. But I believe in you, because I believed in myself through all the adversity I’ve faced. I believe you can pick yourself up and make the only choice that is required of greatness:

To go beyond the horizon of your dreams.
And soar higher, and farther
than you ever imagined going.

I believe this because the challenge has already presented itself to me. And now, I present it to you. I challenge you to reach your potential and pass through the gates of greatness because I know I’d love to see you there and celebrate you.

Go on. Take courage. Take risks. Love whole-heartedly.

Go all-in for everything you want.

And if none of this is for you. Keep going. Stay curious.

Bravery is a choice and you’re one choice away from having a completely different life.

Yours,
Noemi

The Truth Untold: How You Can Save Someone Thinking About Suicide

Note: Graphic details covered here. 

When I checked my phone this morning to see what daily news was trending, I saw a familiar face that I so loved seeing posts on: Anthony Bourdain. And then I read and reread several times, the heart-wrenching headline of what happened to him. My heart fell deep into a pit so cold and hollow that I was left feeling an aching twist in every part of me. I was immensely devastated to hear that someone who inspired me to travel, explore life outside of my realm, and encouraged me to cultivate compassion and wisdom for humans, was gone, just like that. I cried for a solid 20 minutes, grieving for him, his family, the people who were close to him, his colleagues, and all the people who were touched by him in some way. I also cried because I know a feeling that all too few people understand or want to engage in.

In between moments of wiping my tears for his soul and taking deep breaths to reflect on my own journey through living with depression, anxiety, and experiencing suicidal thoughts, I felt my heart soften back like the wings of a bird settling its feathers after a long flight. In my reflection, I knew that I had to talk about something that isn’t so widely covered in our responses to suicide. I asked myself, “What can we do to help? How can we change this so that we don’t become a society that just tells people to call a hotline for suicide prevention?” Without hesitation, I felt an answer rise up underneath from me that prompted me to write this.

There were so many responses to Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade’s deaths and the many deaths that came before theirs that were just too similar in pattern: “If you or you know someone who is thinking of killing themselves, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.” In so many ways, I know this to be so insufficient to begin changing this sad epidemic that’s taking over our society. While I do believe that in some ways, talking to someone does help, but it is only just the foot in the door. In my own past experiences, I’ve called that hotline for myself several times. Sometimes it didn’t help. Sometimes it did. It’s nice to have another voice listen to you.

But the truth is this. What I wished so badly was that my own friends or family could answer their phones or text me back if I needed to talk. What I wished so badly for instead of calling a hotline were people who came to help me without any expectation of how I needed to explain myself or why I felt the way I did. It frustrated me so much that I felt so much emotional intensity and wanted to find a way to help myself, and yet I was told by society that I needed to “just call the suicide prevention hotline.”

The truth is, most of us who feel this way, feel like ending our lives because society has become so numb to actively engaging themselves with people who aren’t able to just “get over it” or “move on” or “be positive, it’s ok”.

These people tell us, “go to therapy”, “take prescription medication”, “call if you need me”, and it goes on. The truth is, while we want to do all those things, what we want most is to have someone just listen to us quietly, console us by making us dinner or lunch, maybe even brushing our hair–all without any expectation of telling them what’s wrong with us. When I am feeling depressed or suicidal, all I want is for someone to let me lay on their lap and have them caress my hair or my back, without any talking. Just quiet comforting.

When I talk about these things, please forgive me if I seem insensitive. The truth is, the people who often take their own lives tend to be extremely sensitive creatures filled with so much intensity inside them, whether it be a light or dark intensity, and sometimes that intensity can just be too much for one person. I know this feeling too well because I feel it everyday and it is so easy to stay shut-off around people for fear of shame or pestering by society’s solution of “just focus on yourself”. The last thing a person who is experiencing depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts wants is to focus on themselves.

The truth is, we would love for someone to reach out a hand and help us–teach us–show us how to love ourselves and that we are loved.

I am reminded of a story I read about Parker Palmer, a poet and religious thinker, whose work I love so much and am inspired by. Parker Palmer went through a very long and extreme depression in his mid-50’s and when describing his experience with it, he talks about a neighbor/friend who noticed that Parker was depressed and this neighbor/friend began going to Parker’s house everyday for an hour and would simply massage Parker’s feet. There would be no exchanges in conversation between he and the neighbor/friend in that hour, just the act of a neighbor being of service to someone in need, quietly and compassionately. Reading about Parker’s story had me in tears because I desired that same experience and understood so well how important it was to just be cared for by another being. Sometimes, it really helps to have others help you tend to the wounds you can’t face yourself, yet. 

With Anthony Bourdain passing, I felt so angry towards society. How could we let this person choose to end his life? In many ways, I understood how. We live in a society that has no idea what to do with people who are experiencing struggle, depression, anxiety, etc. We live in a society that does not know how to engage or be compassionate towards people who have mental illnesses. Instead, we tell them to check into rehab, or take meds, etc.

What if change began by just being of service to those who are suffering?

What if change began by a small act of selfless kindness towards someone you know or don’t know?

What if I told you that the truth is, more than anything, someone who is suicidal or depressed or has anxiety just wants to be comforted with a warm plate of food or hugs that last for 15 minutes?

The truth is, so many of our own closest friends and family are just not equipped with the compassionate tools to do this. So many are afraid to be vulnerable towards people who are suffering because they fear that  “bad energy might affect them”. Perhaps my thinking is distorted or that you don’t quite understand how someone like me can talk this way. I only aim to be honest for those seeking to learn where and how to begin to understand how these thought processes work inside people who have suicidal thoughts, are depressed or have anxiety.

In a world where our attention spans are limited to 3 seconds because of technology’s hold on us, people only have time for you when it’s convenient for them. I ask that you put your phone away when you are with someone who appears to show signs of distress.

Listen without interrupting.
Listen without judging.
Console with a slight touch or a warm bowl of ramen.
Every small act of kindness helps guide those in painful places, back to a place of trust–a trust in oneself, in others, and in humanity. 

I feel as if Anthony Bourdain had had enough of the emotional intensity that he felt and could not bear to live with the burden of unloading this onto his friends, family, and loved ones. I say this because I feel this way quite often. I often think that the burden of unloading my emotional intensity onto friends and family is just a nuisance and that I should just take care of it myself. I went to see a therapist for nearly 3 years, going once a week, and while it definitely helped rewire a lot of my thought patterns and provided me new mental tools to trick my brain from going down the spiral of negativity, I often felt it wasn’t enough. That even though I was “acting out of love” to show myself that I could manage and control what I felt, it was all too easy for me to think of just turning my wheel abruptly while I would be driving and think “even if I change, the world is still the same, so I should just end it right now.” Again, that was my distorted thinking happening, but I wanted to show you how easy it is to fool people into thinking we’re alright even if we have an amazing job, financial security, family, love, etc.

To a person who is depressed, none of those things matter because the world is still the same. And that’s what breaks my heart now with Anthony Bourdain’s passing. The world will grieve his passing and honor his many talents and gifts that he’s brought into this world, and name the suicide prevention hotline, and people will carry on next week in their same patterns and routine, and the world will still run the same way.

What we, as a community, need to begin doing and taking part in, is engaging in acts of kindness and selfless compassion towards people who are quietly suffering. Because in all honesty, the things that a person who is depressed or having suicidal thoughts would love to feel and see from the community are so simple and fundamental to any human’s well being. Here are just a few ways on how to show those who are suffering that you are selflessly there to begin the process of saving them:

1. Acts of selfless kindness towards us
2. Listening to us without interrupting
3. Comforting us without judging or prying out information
4. Consoling us with the slightest touch or affection
5. Calling or texting us every now and then to let us know we’re loved
6. Not waiting days to respond to our efforts of reaching out to you (i.e. texting back several days or weeks later)
7. Being consistent with your presence whether its face-to-face, through Facetime/Video, letters, or email.
8. Not comparing our problems or delusions to others or yours
9. Playing with us when we’re feeling a little bit happy through laughter, imagination, or games.
10. Say “I love you as you are, now.” and “We’ll get through this, together.”

If our community could begin to learn these simple ways of showing selfless love and engaging in it as if it were second nature, I honestly believe we would not have so many suicides. We need each other whether we like it or not. In order to survive and evolve as a human species, we need to learn how to grow into our heart and become steadfast in compassion so that we no longer have to suggest calling a suicide prevention hotline to people who are struggling, but instead, become the first responders to any signs of sadness and depression, with arms wide open and a commitment to serving their aching heart out of kindness and love.

To Anthony Bourdain, may your memory and gifts continue to inspire and move people towards places they’ve never been to in the world, the way you did for me, and most importantly, may your wisdom and love teach the human race to travel deeper into the beautiful mysteries of our heart and spirit. There’s a saying I’ve heard somewhere that, “a person only truly dies with the last person who remembers them.” I find solace knowing that Anthony Bourdain will never die, because his grace will always have a mark on the human kind.

Being someone who still struggles with depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts, I do feel hopeful for so many things. I am finding that the world is slowly changing, even if I only see it in a few places, and that people are catching on. At some point, the human race will reach a point where enough is enough in our material-based, superficial world and the journey inwards to understanding our heart and emotions will take the forefront for our species’ survival and evolution to become something greater than technology, machinery, consumption, war and division, and ourselves as we are now–and that our evolution begins with the journey into “the part’s unknown”, which Anthony Bourdain’s wisdom introduced us to explore.

To you, who has read this far: Thank you for reading. I love you.

Noemi

 

 

Growth in Time.

Today marks the spring equinox. After a strange winter filled with what seemed like weeks of rain and short days met with sunlight and clear skies–metaphorically speaking too–we have this beautiful season ahead that brings blooms of life and spirit back into nature and us. We know summer is near and we feel a little bit happier, a little bit more motivated to get out and be active, we get out of our “winter” selves and start planning our summer, essentially, our overall mood becomes a reflection of spring itself–a reflection of growth and abundance. Have you noticed that in yourself? I’m beginning to feel this myself.

I love the seasons so much because they remind me of our true connection with nature and how beautiful it is to see and feel nature run its life cycles every couple of months. In a way, it reminds us that all things have a life cycle and that we should and can learn to accept and be comfortable with the changes happening around us and within us. Something that I’ve been feeling a lot of lately since my last post is this realization that life can be made, and remade, again and again, even when the harsh winters (or in my case my divorce and trauma from the abuse) of our life come and go and leave us with nothing.

We need to remind ourselves that we are exactly like nature–resilient, beautiful, and in many cases, needing the time to heal and regrow our seeds and water our own roots, because in time, we do begin to live again. I was living with depression for months, slyly hiding it beneath my smiles and laughter, but I knew something was off. I knew deep down that I had stepped away from watering and nourishing the passions and dreams that set my soul on fire. I became too immersed in saving the marriage for the sacred reasons that you don’t break your vows. Instead, I broke my vows to my dreams and passions, momentarily of course.

However broken we may feel or so far away from healing ourselves can be, there’s always just enough left of yourself, your heart and spirit, to live and grow again.

Doesn’t spring remind us of that? I took the pieces of my broken self and what was left was exactly what I needed to start all over again: my dreams, my passion, and my immense love for them. I remember thinking, this isn’t the first time that I’ve felt this way. In fact, it’s probably the 5th or 6th time that I’ve felt this way–broken, no idea where to go or what to do, with a feeling that always returned to remind me of what I should do. Somehow, in the moments of our deepest pain and dark periods in our life, a tiny little feeling of hope can be found in the things that had always pushed our heart to strive for more, to beat more passionately again for the things we love.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking, as I always do, and remunerating over these endless possibilities I have now. One thing that I want to point out is that each of us have our own path to follow and our own lifestyles and gifts to discover and nourish. The safe-path, the one we’re taught to strive for in our lives (think: buy a home, get married, have a wedding, have kids and maybe a pet, have a career, be financially secure, climb the corporate ladder) is definitely one that many of us are seduced to working hard for. While I believe this path is a good one for a lot of us, I feel that it’s not often the right path for some of us.

I struggle with trying to adapt to this safe-path and every time I reach a point in my life that feels stagnant or empty, I am always reminded by what has always brought me joy and drive: writing, telling stories, inspiring, and being able to communicate a language that I feel is so foreign to us now in our culture and time; a language lost in the moments where we wonder what our purpose is in life; a language only understood by way of our senses to understand this world we live in; a language that we all wish to communicate, but don’t know how. It’s what I call the language of the sentient being.

Have you ever felt a need to be more connected with friends or family? Or maybe it’s a closer connection to nature or craving the experience of arts or music? It’s those things that we do that somehow lift our spirit by way of our senses. Have you ever felt this desire to see what can become of you? Or a thirst to understand why you’re even alive?

We’re sentient beings. We feel things because we’ve been given this gift that we don’t always like to use when we try to make sense of our place in the world. I am often reminded that not everyone has the privilege to be born with a dream or a known purpose of what they are truly meant to do in this life, so they take the safe-path because it’s a path that can provide if we follow it. The other path of course is the risky path–usually the path that artists, entrepreneurs, musicians, etc., take. The one we’re advised not to follow.

But I have to take a risk now. Because if I don’t, I will regret it later on. And I have to keep trying and getting back up, even if it means having to start all over from scratch every time I get beaten by my fears. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?

A few things that have helped transform my perception about this risk-taking are people who have followed their intuition and worked incredibly hard to bring their dream to life. These people you’ve heard like Steve Jobs, J.K. Rowling, Jeff Bezos, Salvador Dalí, Susan Sontag, maybe someone you know, etc., were always convinced and driven by the one thing that their heart always knew: their gift or purpose in this world.

In order to grow your dreams and make them come to life, you have to be clear about what you want, why you want it and what you’re willing to do to get it. You have to do it because you care deeply about it. You have to care deeply about it because not everyone in this world is born with a dream or a purpose–that itself is beyond divine comprehension.

Can you believe in yourself a little bit more because of this? I think so.

After weeks and mostly nights where I couldn’t sleep, I could feel this ache again to do what I always knew was my god-given gift. WRITE. While it’s not what I do for a living yet, I do believe that future exists for me so long as I continue to beat my own fears and assumptions about failure. Perhaps marriage and buying a home or having a corporate job are not part of my path right now. Because ultimately, if you have a dream or a passion you’d like to pursue, you are called to do the hard work, time and time again after every failure or obstacle that you experience. I know this to be true. I’ve lived in 3 different cities, had 5 jobs, and still, in moments where I’m lost and have no clue what the hell to do with my life, a quiet whisper comes to sweep me up and remind me of this dream to be a writer and storyteller.

Dreams are not to be taken lightly. Everything takes time, but you have to be willing to fail gracefully and be willing to work so so freaking hard. You have to be willing to answer these questions when you start taking your dreams and passions seriously:

What do you want to do?

What are you doing instead?

What are you afraid of?

What are your biggest assumptions?

You have to be willing to cry and feel all sorts of emotions you’ve never thought you were capable of feeling; You have to be willing to push yourself on your own when you don’t have any bit of inspiration left or have $200 left in your bank account; You have to be willing to delay gratification for the integrity it takes to build respect for your dreams; You have to be willing to be so resourceful and creative, but honest, in order to create the momentum needed for your progress; You have to be willing to sacrifice certain notions of the safe-path so you can remind yourself that you’re still doing the hard work that is required for your dream to come true; You have to be willing to sit with depression, sadness, madness, and jump through hoops of fear, and be able to face it head on because ultimately, the risk of not living your true self and the dreams and passions you have is far worse than the fear itself.

In a couple of months, I have an exciting journey ahead of me. I feel the stir of an engine in me, ready to meet my heart’s drive and experience the journey of where my talents take me. In a strange way, I really do feel that the Divine has perfected this imperfect path for me to take. In hindsight, some of the things I have experienced and learned have an eerily strange way of connecting itself back to the things we know most true in our heart. We should learn to trust the cycles and beat of our heart just like how nature trusts in the cycles of our solar system to create magic and abundance every year.

Where do you begin? How do you begin to feel your sense of purpose or know what your dream is? Start with curiosity. Pick up things that interest you. Challenge yourself with a new hobby or language. I promise that doing this will get the gears going for you. I began learning French and downloaded the free app, Duolingo.

I spend an hour every morning after breakfast and coffee entertaining myself with the app’s clever ways and methods to teach the phrases and vocabulary. I hired someone I found on Craigslist to teach me how to drive a manual transmission (stick shift) because it’s a useful skill to know if you’re traveling to other countries. I bought myself a Passion Planner because I got sick of trying to manage my goals with check-lists or scribbled thoughts in a notebook when I had NO REAL MAP of goals and what I needed to do to take steps to bring my dream to life. I minimized my belongings (again–5th time now) so that I wouldn’t have to worry about being tied down to having too much stuff and its maintenance and put everything I don’t even use in a public storage. I currently use a 40-liter Osprey backpack full of clothes, 4 pairs of shoes, my laptop and PC computer, and some books to live my day-to-day. I’ve accepted that I can live with only a few things right now and be completely satisfied and able to do my job and keep myself well-balanced so that I can focus on my dreams and my passion. Again, these are things I am doing out of my own curiosity to see how my life can transform and my habits change so that my dreams can start to feel confident to take center stage.

As you go through this season of spring, I hope that you can find comfort in the thought that your life will go only as far as you want it to. Growth takes hard work and patience. We have to be willing to understand ourselves better in order to make better choices that benefit our ability to grow for our dream, our purpose, our passion, whatever. We have to allow ourselves to feel a little bit more because it’s the language that allows new pathways for our heart to better serve and direct our soul to its reason for life.

I feel so much warmth and belief right now for myself and for you. We’re all in this together if you think about it. We all have moments where we ask ourselves these hard and time-tested questions from the heart and that’s good, because if you aren’t asking, you aren’t truly living your authentic self. How else could we experience the answers unless we live the questions themselves through our curiosity and actions?

In spring, I find that the the flowers and plants never bother to find the answers for why they exist because they already know they have gifts to gift every season. They live only to bring forth themselves, year after year, through drought-stricken weather and floods, inch-by-inch. They exist because their purpose is to be constant reminders for us all that we too, can rise in the faith that our purpose will grow more and more clear every season of our lives.

With love,

Noemi

Featured Photo Credit: Official Tourism Blog of San Diego

 

Emptiness in Time.

Two years ago, I wrote about understanding the power of presence and how to stay in line with our self-love, reminding ourselves to recognize when something or someone does not serve our higher self and is toxic to our growth.

Two years later, after experiencing what I thought was the love you knew was meant for you, I sit here with an immense amount of emptiness—both a good and cruel feeling measured by time. I fell deep in love, or what I thought was love, and devoted myself to the person who would unknowingly become a person I feared, loved, resented, and was heartbroken over so many, many times. It has taken me awhile to truly sit down and write my thoughts and feelings about where I’ve been these last two years.

I lost myself. I let who I love consume my life. I forgot how to love myself. I became a victim of broken promises. I lost respect for myself. I allowed the person I loved to continue harming me emotionally every time I accepted his apologies. I didn’t listen to myself. I second guessed my intuition, when all this time it kept telling me the truth. I was empty. I became so empty that I couldn’t function in my daily life, in my hobbies, in my passions. I became depressed and sought nothing more but to end my life because my relationship wasn’t working. Where did I go?

Two months ago, I experienced the most terrifying thing in my life that I could imagine. After two years of what felt like a slow emptying of myself through tears, arguments, late night drives to cool off, and constant forgiving and believing in someone who promised to change, I became a victim of abuse in 20 minutes of the most traumatic experience of my life. How could someone who says they love me do this to me? Writing this isn’t easy, and the anxiety and stress from the trauma still creep into my spirit, but I hope that my story can help you understand what it means to get out before it’s too late and how you can find hope in this tragedy.

My life was threatened by someone I loved. In a fit of sudden rage, he turned into a monster. His hands gripped my neck so tightly that I could feel my muscles collapsing and the weight of his body became too much to fight back. There was a clear moment where I could feel my last breath was near and in those 3 breathless seconds that I experienced, my mind flipped a switch and a rush of adrenaline surged into what was about to be my last breath. In that quick moment, I thought, “Not today. Not like this.” My life became more important to save than the love and broken relationship I was in. I managed to fight him off with all the adrenaline in me and ran out of the house safely to report the incident to the police. Soon after I moved my belongings out.

Where did I go? I went to heal myself and protect everything that has ever made me full of the love that has given me my life, my soul, and spirit.

“Where did I go?” was a question I asked myself countless times throughout the day, ruminating on the past and what signals I should have taken a closer look at that got me to this place in my life. I stopped writing. I stopped feeling. I stopped expressing myself through love in ways that brought me joy. And for what? To be with a man who did not even know how to understand his own source of love, and falsely propose to give you what you needed in a partnership?

I blame myself for not having taken the time to truly test the waters and swim in the ocean of love long enough to know that a person I was going to devote myself to was someone I could trust in turbulent and calm waters. I was a complete fool for believing so quickly in eloquent words and in the ideal that he would come to learn how to become himself through me. That he could grow with me. But ultimately, I did not have that kind of influence or power, no matter how hard I tried to inspire and motivate him to be the best version of himself that he could be. No matter how hard I tried to set an example of good habits and values, it was of no use if he didn’t care to practice these things in his own life.

At one point, I thought I was the crazy one. He would tell me I was crazy and was overly sensitive and should just “sleep things off”. I wish I had known not to have given so much of my love and effort to someone who was incredibly stubborn and prideful. The toxicity sucked every ounce of my empathy and compassion for myself that I became so disillusioned by the state of my relationship. In essence, I became a reflection of him during that time—picking up his habits because he wouldn’t compromise with mine, suppressing my emotions because he couldn’t express himself, not speaking or hanging out with friends or family as often because he felt uncomfortable around the people who knew us, becoming a complete hermit because he didn’t have any interest in making friends or hanging out with mine, making excuses for his absence at family parties or events because he was too anti-social, and all of this in hindsight, I see now, was enabling his behavior every time I forgave him and protected his way of living. I felt so unloved and neglected.

This was not a relationship I could tolerate any longer.

I had wanted so much to be in a long lasting relationship, but this was not the relationship the Universe and the Divine had intended for me. I wanted so much to believe that all the things he shared with me were true, and maybe some of it was, but our love for each other was displayed in two different ways that could not grow together.

So often we forget to heed the wisdom of those who come before us and have felt love. While some are lucky to really know when they know the one, I find a lot of comfort and value in the thought that you cannot know unless you both have felt the treasure of time separately, first, and then, together. That with the treasure of time, you each would choose to live with intent and awareness in growing your self-love and learn to understand what compassion and empathy look and feel like because when you have that, the rest is simple when you choose to commit. When you have a sense of self respect for your love and your values then you already know what you must do to protect the love and values of the one you choose to spend the rest of your life with.

I regret having devoted myself to this relationship and then disappearing for two years from my passions. I regret not leaving sooner when the relationship was at its breaking point several times. I know that I am stronger than I feel or think and I am happy that I got out when I did, but how did I miss the warning signs? Signs that my intuition had pointed me to look at closer, but then I’d second guess myself. Warning signs found in the constant refusal of a substance abuse problem, lies masked in wordy excuses, denials and circular conversations, financial mismanagement and disorganization in goals and ambitions, broken promises and emotional neglect, refusal to understand on an emotional level, and pride that was prioritized first before the love and feelings of your partner.

So many promises were broken. I never thought someone I loved could emotionally and physically hurt me so much. In moments where the anxiety and PTSD creep in, I tell myself,

“I am so sorry, Noemi. I am so sorry this happened to you.”

And in between the moments where my eyes well up and my throat is in a knot, I exhale a deep breath and hear my soul whisper,

“But you are immensely loved. Do not forget the gift I have given solely to you in this life”.

I am crying as I write because I feel so sorry for having turned my heart away momentarily from what has always sparked my life and spirit: my own source of love.

It is an ever growing source that will never betray me or hurt me as long as I continue to believe and nurture it.

The end of this relationship has also reminded me of the one thing that has stayed true and constant in my life thus far: that my intuition is part of the gift I have been given to understand and express the truths of love and life in my time. This gift is who I am and what makes me, uniquely me. In hindsight, it has been the silent compass of my soul, directing me to what I know is my divine purpose in this world. While the route that it is going in remains a complete mystery to me, I can trust that the direction will always be that of growth if I choose it to be. My heart and soul were emptied by this traumatic experience and left me extremely depressed in the duration of my two years of absence. I have drowned and have been broken in love, and after all of it, here I am, alive and breathing.

I am a survivor.
I am stronger than I have ever been.
That there is hope after tragedy.

I am always reminded by the resilience of nature and how life and death are a cycle that can be seen in the seasons. This was a profound and turbulent season of my life. It has washed away so much of what I had grown and yet there I was in pieces, scattered throughout the soil of my broken heart and soul like seeds, waiting to be nurtured and grown again—that in time, I would rise and become the gardener of my love, once again.

I am so grateful for the friends and family and strangers who have shown me so much love and support during this difficult time. They are the ones who help water the soil of your brokenness while you take the time to make sense of the chaos of it all and heal from it. They are the ones who are truly heaven-sent to ensure your path is always comforted by reminders of real love and joy.

Having endured this momentary absence from my own life and the traumatic experience at the end of it, I realize that the process of my emptying in this relationship was necessary for me to learn from so that I could understand how to grow myself again when destruction and chaos come to uproot everything.

It was a necessary emptying so that all I had left was everything that I began with—the foundation, the soil, the earth, the nothingness and everything, the messiness, the beauty and hope of starting all over again with the only tools I needed: my hands, my heart, my mind, my soul, my faith, my choice to live again in this emptiness in time, where darkness can be abundance if you let your mind see it, and death can bring new life.

I see now. How important it is to empty ourselves, whether that be emotionally or spiritually. I see now. How time is our silent friend in all matters of life, death, and love. That this emptiness in time that we all experience at one point in our lives, is one of the greatest reflections of love that call to the depths of our inner self to feel the incredible lightness and plasticity, magic and resilience of our divine soul.

The Power of Our Presence

Warning: Contains graphic details on the topics of abuse and suicide that may be uncomfortable for readers.

Illustration by: Mandy Tsung

A week from now, I will be turning 27 years old. I usually like to reflect on how much growth I’ve experienced and what areas I need to improve in. This year, however, the gift I want to give myself is the gift of surrender. Surrendering is a liberating feeling. For so long, I have conditioned myself to believe that it was ok to be quiet and mum about the details of the experiences of my past. That if I were quiet or vague about my experiences, it would make others believe I was strong and that if I talked about those things it would made me weak or disrespectful towards my loved ones.

But after 27 years of accepting that what happened to me was just “another form of love”, I have reached the edge of a world I no longer wish to appease and realize the power I have when I acknowledge my presence in my life. It has taken me several years to write about this subject, but I feel, in my process of surrendering, becoming, and accepting towards my self, that my story is now, more than ever, relevant and necessary in a society that secretly craves truth-telling. If you have experienced any of what I am about to share with you, I hope that you find the strength in yourself to recognize the power of your presence and walk away from the things and people that do not move your being forward.

Up until the age of 17, I had been a witness to domestic and emotional abuse at home, was a victim of both, bullied by my peers at school, and what people would call, a “cutter”, during my self-destructive years. When you grow up never feeling what it is like to be comforted or praised for your accomplishments, or even complimented for your changing looks, a person grows up to become really numb and fearful of others giving compassion and love to them. I’m always told that it is just an “Asian” thing, and while that’s partly true with upbringing, I do believe that the presence we are surrounded by when we grow up greatly affects our understanding of ourselves and the relationships we create with other people. I never grew up with parents who expressed compassion or emotions. It was always known that if we defied our parents or showed emotion towards what they were telling us, that we were disrespectful and knew nothing. I grew up with constant yelling, and at times, plates and other objects being thrown violently across rooms. I was just a kid then, but I remember everything so vividly. To escape the pain and violence I was witnessing and sometimes receiving, I would create imaginary worlds in my head that I would take refuge in, playing “pretend” with the creatures and people I created in my head or drawing until my tears blotted the colors away.

Growing up Asian, you learn to not cry in front of anyone because doing so would signify your weakness. You also learn to grow a thick skin–taking in the most degrading, humiliating words you can imagine, sitting silently and nodding in agreement when it was all over. You get used to being thrown into the flames at any moment and deal with the new burns that fester on top of previous burns still healing. For so long I’ve been told, “that’s just the way Asian parents show their love. They don’t know how to be compassionate.” I would allow this excuse to override the actual pain I was feeling and I would tell myself, “It’s ok that this is happening to me. It’s just their way of showing me they love me.” I was a fool to believe that this was true. What society and families miss in the shaping of children’s future’s, are the soft skills necessary to create sustainable relationships with ourselves and others. I was taught to believe that putting my head down and working hard and never acknowledging my feelings would put me on track to a successful life. I am finding that this is all wrong.

When I started to “experiment” with different personalities and dying my hair and evolving my “self”, I would come home to my mother telling me I didn’t look pretty that day or that I was fat or worse, that I wasn’t doing anything with my life. I was just a kid. Of course we don’t know what we’re doing with our life when we’re that young. In high school, I was told that I was a “waste of beauty” when I dated women for a brief period and that God would punish me by sending me to hell to burn. What idea can we shape of religion when who you are (at the time) is punishable by a God you’re not wholly aware of or understanding of in your life yet? You’re just a kid. You have no idea what God is yet. You only have what you’re being told. And why would anyone want to burn in hell? We are just trying to learn more about ourselves and our place in the world by living it in our way. I was put down plenty of times for any achievements I had in school and if I did something bad, I was acknowledged as “useless”.

Emotional abuse is still abuse. Do not think that just because they do not physically harm you that it is not abuse. Abuse is abuse. When you berate someone constantly and put them down, it is not coming from a place of love. It is not LOVE. People will tell me that “they just have your best interest at heart”. Those who have your best interest at heart would not put you down or make you feel useless or ashamed to be an imperfect human. These are toxic people who take satisfaction in seeing you fall and crumble just so you can yield to their righteousness. They may not ever admit it, but toxic people find their fuel in the energies of budding hope and change in someone. If something wasn’t done in the way they experienced it, what you do will never be good enough. In these instances, stay present with yourself and what is really going on around you. Listen closely to the words being said and the actions being displayed. The affects of having to experience emotional or physical abuse is that it does begin to numb you and chip away at your soul. You question your humanity and you begin to question if receiving love is something you’re worthy of. You question how to behave when you’re in relationships and sometimes find yourself behaving just like the person who inflicted the abuse on you. It took me a long time to realize that love didn’t come in the form of cuts and bruises or mental beatings, but it only happened when I found the voice of my presence.

From junior year of high school up until my sophomore year of college, I was in a physically (and emotionally) abusive relationship. I was lied to repeatedly, cheated on multiple times, wounded, and felt a low in my life I had never felt. I remember thinking at times when we’d fight, that this was their way of showing me love. That this was my way of showing how much I loved them back in return. That love was something we fought for, literally. There was one fight in particular that damaged me the most which sent me towards a very dark time in my life. The anger inside of me had built up having found out that they had been emotionally cheating on me again. I felt so unloved and just like in my childhood, unworthy of receiving love. “But this was their way of showing me love”, I thought. I wanted to show them how much I loved them. I wanted to show them that I was willing to bleed for them, and so I picked up the sharpest object I could find and dug the sharp end into my skin and slid it across multiple times. This is how much I love you. That I would die for your love. I thought. I watched the person I loved watch me bleed and do completely nothing to stop me. It was a devastating experience for me.

At the time I felt, “I must not be worthy at all to anyone.” I had taken my experience as a child and added this moment to equate that I must be unworthy of life and love. I was broken. Completely shattered and broken. I was so far away from feeling human that pain became the only friend I could trust because it was the only thing that felt real to me. Anytime friends and my new partner at the time tried to help, I would lash out and go in full disaster mode, thinking everyone was out to intentionally hurt me. If you have ever been through a physically or emotionally abusive relationship, you subconsciously begin to deny yourself of the good things that happen in your life that are meant to heal you. I pushed away people and created false stories of infidelity just to rouse my partner, because I had defined that love meant fighting. That love meant chaos. And if I wasn’t experiencing that, then it mustn’t be love. Experiencing abuse is something that I wish for no one to experience. Some people think that words don’t hurt, but in reality, they do more harm in the long run because these things stay in our memory. And our mind loves to spin the wheels of memory.

Eventually, I overcame the darkest time in my life. It wasn’t easy–it still isn’t easy–to detach myself from those memories and experiences, but eventually, you get better because somehow, the light still wants to shine in the dark rooms of your heart whenever you’re hurt. Acknowledging the presence of your own self-loathing and destructive tendencies is not easy, but in the moments of despair and desperation for some kind of love, there is always something that saves you. I was saved by my own self.

In my darkest hour, having cried for 8 hours straight and lying on a floor, damp with a mix of my tears and blood, I found the presence I had been looking for in 22 years. I heard a voice inside me that whispered kindly,

“Get up. You are not who they say you are. You are not who you say you are. You need to live and tell your story. There are many others who feel the way you do. Only they are scared. You are their voice. Go on now. Get up.”

It is a presence that still finds me on days where I feel completely lost and alone. It is a presence that I believe people need to recognize they always have in them. The only reason it took so long to appear is because you had been surrounded by toxic people who were stifling your growth, but no matter where you find yourself in life, the presence will always be there with you, waiting for you to water and surround it with the good people and places that aren’t afraid to support you with their love and compassion. I want you to know that your presence, is also at your will. Establish what is love and what isn’t. Love isn’t violent. Love is comforting. Love isn’t bleeding. Love is healing. Love isn’t hurtful. Love is wishing for the best for you. Remember that, please.

Now that I’m reaching my late twenties, I am understanding my transformation and past experiences a lot better. I understand what love is and what it isn’t and I understand when I need to welcome love and when I see it disguised in manipulative and toxic people. While I am still working through a lot of things, I am learning the true gift of presence in our life. The presence and importance of compassion, of telling people you love them, of helping someone feel better even if you don’t understand their pain, of recognizing when something or someone has crossed the line of your self-love and respect, of knowing when to let go and walk away from people and places that no longer serve your highest self, and recognizing the presence of who you are–whatever it is becoming–that wishes for you to continue living and expanding in your own way of life and love.

Love is growing. Love is up-lifting. Love is your presence when you are weak. Love never doubts your courage or scorns you for trying. Love is not a score of who will fail first. Love is the highest belief of you.

And so you get up, and go on.

I promise you, there is a place where your love is deserving and worthy. It might take some time and detours to find it, but they are there. Just believe that you are enough and deserving, first. Remove yourself from whatever toxic environment you’re in, because there are people who will never berate you or bring you down. There is a place where even friends and acquaintances can be family and provide the love and familial comfort and support that you need. I am fortunate to have found this and grateful that I can continue to discover it, even if it means letting go of the people and places that we might consider our closest friends and family.

Your presence in this world is worthy of life and it is worthy of love. The recognition of the power of your own presence in this world is something never to be doubted. You are a head full of will and have a heart made oceans. You are beautifully, human.

Don’t you ever give up on that. Don’t you ever give up on you.

Yours,

Noemi

Love: A Constant Journey You Choose to Create

There is one feeling in the world that we all want in life and yet it is the one thing that we unknowingly fear the most: love. The phrase, “to fall in love”, carries both the terror and the bliss that happens when you meet someone who softens your heart and strengthens your soul. Isn’t that exactly what we truly want to feel when we fall in love with someone? That other soul and human being who is just as frightened yet courageous enough to hold on to something worth living and dying together for? My eyes well up as I write this because a very special human being came into my life and has shared with me, the most magnificent and sacred feeling that we humans are so lucky to experience. To experience love with another human being is absolutely breathtaking and marvelous. It is life elevated and is a dwelling place of true, heavenly felicity.

When I think about the journey I’ve made to discover my significance in the world, my divine purpose, and the love I needed to grow in order to create the life I wanted, I realize that all it took was a constant awareness of all that was happening around me and a choice to always choose that which was greater in love than in fear. As you move through your one human life, you are given gifts of love that are all around you. We are born into a world that already teaches us how to love and be present in the breaking and growing of ourselves as lovely human beings.

Nature teaches us this through the seasons. We cannot know or experience the beauty and blossoming of life felt in the spring without winter. We cannot know presence without knowing absence. We cannot know courage without knowing fear. And with every season, you see just how resilient nature is in its love to show you how tender and forgiving love can really be. We have to learn to open our eyes and heart and choose to feel the love that is all around us. If you want love, you truly must be love, no matter how many winters you may go through. Love could never be terrible or unkind, that is the role of fear. Love is always giving even in your darkest moments. I know this because I was close to death once.

In the darkest hour of my life, I spoke to death so calmly and begged to understand my role in this world. I cried for hours to the point where tears no longer fell. I hadn’t eaten a real meal in weeks and survived off a slice of bread a day as my punishment for not being good enough. And when choosing life seemed so far away, the next morning I woke up and heard a faint voice fill my heart. It whispered to me lovingly, “Noemi, you exist for a reason. I am sorry you feel that life isn’t beautiful, but your ability to feel this intensely is why you must live. Live so that you can be a light and loving source of strength to others when they read or listen to your soul speak in words.” It was in that moment that I realized, love was the only choice I needed to make. Since then, I have devoted every waking moment that I get to choose a life that grows my love and fills others with it. It hasn’t been easy and I’ve had my heart broken plenty of times, but the truth is, the pain that passes through you is the moment you seize to give yourself the tender love that you deserve. You give yourself this love by maintaining your presence in the pain, awareness of your unhappiness, and you communicate with yourself and your partner what you would like to do differently and how you would like to grow through it.

Part of the problem of why we fear love so much is because we spend so much time equating love to being able to fulfill the ego’s needs. We don’t spend the time to truly listen and act in a loving way to ourselves and our partner. We desire the closeness and loyalty of intimacy that love brings, but choose instant gratifications that soothe our minor aches. We don’t understand that love isn’t a stagnant thing.

Love is a constant and growing force that requires full awareness of the self and the other. It requires sincere, hard work to grow and move towards a love so heavenly. It is equal parts oxygen and magic. It keeps our eyes dilated and throats laughing and dreams birthed and hearts alive. It gifts us wonder and energy and helps us thrive. It is truly the great motivator in life.

When we begin to love ourselves and can accept that sharing our vulnerabilities with each other is not a frightening task, we begin to allow love to enter in our home. Many people may enter and come and go, but only few will stay and create a home with you. Choose love and choose it always. And when you are lucky enough to meet someone who is brave in their weakness and yet steadfast in their choice to love and hold onto you as you both walk to the edges of the earth and fall together for a love so utterly captivating that even time and space tremble, you choose. You choose love over fear, always. You choose because even if you fear being hurt or shattered into pieces, you choose because growth requires breaking out of our old selves and routines to become truly alive as a human being for love.

I hope that you who are reading this, may go on and begin to create your place of felicity, wonder, and solace with yourself and whether or not you are ready to share that with another human who may just be courageous enough to build something with you, take it, choose it. Grow for love and all of its intoxicating beauty.

Always to the stars,

Noemi

Carnal Presence: Underneath It All

We long for it constantly: the need to feel loved, a hunger for another being to touch our deepest selves; a warm heart and a kind ear to release our selves to; a hug we can fall apart in; laughter we can feel rising from the veins of our skin; other humans we can share our darkest selves and feel safe with; the ability to feel free to live and create our lives the way we wished when we were children; to be extremely honest with ourselves and others and still share a love so fierce with passion.

I was drawn to an article about falling in love and how it took 36 Questions and 4 minutes of staring into another stranger’s eyes to fall in love. The article went viral of course and I studied how people reacted to it. I was amused by how people treated this “breakthrough study”. Some understood the underlying reason for it, but other publications I read wrote about it as if it were something so completely unheard of. Human vulnerability? Having a conversation face to face, eye to eye? Sharing your story and self with another human? Unheard of–in the age of hyper-connectivity and artificial semi-connectedness, that is. It blows me away how we’ve conditioned ourselves to live in a world where human connection, and I mean real human connection, is now a scarcity that we’ve built ways to commodify it through Tindr, OkCupid, Match.com, EHarmon(e)y, etc. Now more than ever, you will most likely hear, “We met online”, “Our first date was through Tindr”, “We just hit it off on EHarmoney”, “I couldn’t believe I found the one”. Now, some connections made through these sites can actually become something really awesome, but I find that to be rare. Have we really reduced love to mere exchanges on Tindr? Yes, we have.

To have love and feel love, you need to have connection. Connection with one’s inner self and true sensory and temporal connection with another human being. You no doubt try to stay “connected” when physical distance keeps you and your loved ones apart so you use the phone, text, Facebook, email, and that’s important. But your body–your human, carnal body and raw (soul) self, sculpted by the forces of natural selection over millennia, was not designed for the abstractions of long-distance love, the “xoxos” or “lols”, no.

Your body and your soul hunger for more. You hunger to feel wild and beautiful with someone. You hunger to feel safe and free with someone. You hunger to feel and share an experience so moving that all the layers of you, unravel.

There is a carnal presence that exists in us, and it’s found in all the hungers that we crave to express and feel. We crave to feel connected, yet we fear sharing our honest selves with people and strangers. We crave to feel understood and comforted, yet we fear the embarrassment and humiliation we might get for feeling what we do. We crave to fall in love and find a partner who will run wild with us, yet we fear facing how to love and explore the depths of ourselves. We crave to follow our dreams and passions, yet we cower at the thought of criticism.

One of the scariest things that could happen to humanity, is the loss and scarcity of what it means to feel a real human connection. We are already experiencing this now. We get a little anxious when we receive a phone call instead of a text. We get a little surprised when a stranger tells us a story on the morning commute to work. We hurry into relationships and expect instant growth and years of love jam-packed in a few months, and feel heartbroken that it didn’t unfold fast enough. We’ve forgotten that things that are worth growing, take time and require our patience and full awareness–our full carnal presence–to create the rooted connections we want. To bear fruit on any tree, you must water it. You must frequent it with your presence and nurture it. To strengthen and expand the deep rooted connections with yourself and others, you must show up and care to bare your soul and real-time presence to the effort of growth, however much it hurts. The amount of love and connection you feel and receive depend on the frequency of your carnal presence with yourself and others. Are you extremely honest and wholehearted about what exists in your mind–the thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, the whole thing that adds up to what we call “me” or “I”? No one else can really sort out what opens up your world or what seems to keep you going in circles in some kind of repetitive misery but you. Choose to be a better human. Allow the presence of your true self to shake and settle in your skin.

You can choose to live a life fearful of your carnal presence and all that is underneath your skin or you can choose to live a life that is wholly you, wholly everything that you feel inside your heart and soul. You can choose to surround yourself around artificial semi-connectedness, or you can get outside and explore, say “hello”, start a conversation, tell a story about something you’ve experienced, look into another person’s eyes and laugh together, share a time where you were sad and lonely with a complete stranger, and maybe, just maybe, spark a mutual shared sense of deep aliveness and attention to the world.

I ask you please, do not be afraid to pour yourself, and express with paramount, your wholeness, your rawness, your vulnerability, your soul’s longing to be human in our artificially connected world, your fearless yet compassionate carnal presence.

I would not ever wish for this world, after we are long gone, to look at love as a myth or real human connection as an archaic thing humans no longer need. When you are aware of yourself and who you are, and you follow your heart and intention, you give this world and the rest of humanity another chance to make things better. You give the world and yourself growth to cultivate real human connections and real presence. When you show unwavering kindness to others and are honest to the core, you give others an opportunity to feel what hope and love are like. Please, I ask you, don’t be afraid to live your human self on a deeper level. Go deeper into yourself and discover that darkness, that lightness, the things that burn, burn, burn you to the ground like ashes and lift you like smoke. Pay close attention to what you choose to be aware of in this world and what you are aware of about yourself.

I hope that someday, you’ll understand that the only thing worth earning, growing, and experiencing is a life filled with real moments of human connection with yourself and with others. Underneath it all, we long to feel the nature and force of our carnal presence, loved and protected by another soul brave enough to share theirs. Understand yourself underneath it all, and be aware. Create a kind of awareness to yourself and the world that opens the hearts and minds of others to this awareness, but most of all, project a kind of feeling that awakens the consciousness of other souls longing to understand and feel this human life.

Yours,

N

A Deeper Kind of Journey

For most of us, the New Year means setting new goals and resolutions to: get out more, be more active, lose weight, get a new job, work a little less and spend a little more time with family, meet new people, find the “one”, get a new look, whatever. Reaching the edge of the end of a year and the view of a new one is always a perfect time to reflect on all that we’ve been through this last year and see the places we’ve left behind and the horizons we have yet to conquer. For me, 2014 was a year of growth and risk. I felt myself truly grow creatively, spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually. There were moments of pure bliss and ecstasy whenever I reached a surprising height and a view so breathtaking I wanted more of it, and then there were moments where everything inside of me felt emptied out like a dry river bed aching for the winter snow to melt and bring in a rush of water. There were people I met who lifted me and others who drained me of my source of love, and when the last few hours of the year came near, I understood then, that everyone I met, and all the things I felt and places I’ve seen, were all part of my journey–my ascent–to see the beautiful horizon that lay ahead of me. I climbed and trudged through difficult terrain and braved through many storms to reach this breathtaking view, and even though I am proud and happy for having done so, I know that these mountains will not be the only landscapes I’ll journey through.

I spent the last weekend of 2014 camping in the Anza Borrego desert. It’s a different kind of feeling from hiking in the mountains where you have a goal in mind: to summit to the top and see the view.

Life is that way: ascending towards the ultimate view and that captivating feeling of awe with all that surrounds you at the top.

You don’t have an ascent or a peak that you hike to in the desert, no. The desert has something entirely different. It has a sacred depth hidden in the vast emptiness of its nature. The mountains surround you from afar like a comforting friend keeping a watchful eye on you, but the desert offers something more than friendship. It offers a journey to find the beauty of a dry land so immensely quiet and bare in its naked skin. It offers a journey to listen and hear the sounds of the gentle wind and the crackling of a star dazzling in the cold night sky. It offers a journey to understand what it means to be in awe of everything and nothing, at the same time.

I peeked out of my warm sleeping bag a couple of times to surprise the stars with my eyes and I felt like they were giggling at me as they twinkled across the velvet blackness of space saying, “Don’t be so afraid to come out and dance with us. You are one of us, too. Warm and bright. Get out of that silly heat bag.” Despite it being nearly 30ºF, I laughed back and in a rush of adrenaline, hopped out of my sleeping bag and danced underneath the light of my distant friends. It’s a beautiful feeling to surround yourself around the serenity of a landscape that is sparse with vegetation and immensely enchanting.

Life is that way. And you move through time and your days in that way: not ever really knowing what lay ahead in the sparse nothingness that surrounds you. So when you walk through a desert and admire the resiliency of life when things are bare and naked, you understand that life can only really be lived in such a bare and naked way–a way that allows us to go deeper into the vast emptiness and create with our unique magic and love, an inner life rich with vegetation and enchantment from the stars we shine.

You begin to understand that even though life is an ascent towards something, life is also a vast and infinite horizon that we must keep moving forward in. 

My word and anchor for 2015 is deeper. In the desert I felt a very deep connection to all that was around me: The nothingness. My skin, cold from the unforgiving sand underneath me. The quiet whispers and tenderness of the wind in my ears. The children in the stars, playing and taking their turns to shoot and dazzle for the moon. The way nothing felt so comforting like a blanket keeping me warm. I danced until I couldn’t feel my fingertips or toes on the sand, and let the desert take me deeper into myself to feel a real ecstasy that only surrendering to love could make you feel. This last year was a very challenging year to ascend and climb through, but I understand now, that deeper is where I need to go. In the desert, you find that deepness, that rawness and bare nakedness that summons you to go forth and move towards the depths of living.

This year, I want (and I hope you might want to do so too) to love more deeply in such a way that stirs up a chaos of fire and new life inside another soul that a society where love is matched through online dating sites, Tinder, and Ok Cupid, fall to its knees and beg for a deeper love like that; to kiss more deeply and hug more deeply in such a way that society stops and wonders what it’s like to feel a real human bond–stomach to stomach, heart to heart, lips to lips, eye to eye, soul to soul; to connect with people more deeply in such a way that the only value exchanged is our laughter and the memories we create together; to gaze and appreciate more deeply in a society that has lost what it means to have patience in a fast-paced instant world where we can have everything at the palm of our hands; to create and make art more deeply in such a way that breaks old grounds and stirs up a new kind of consciousness; to learn with a deeper curiosity in a society that no longer favors exploration of the soul and mind but rather, the exploration in possessing and amassing items that do not serve our highest selves; to speak and think more deeply in a world where very few understand what it means to really connect and share yourself with another human being; to live more deeply in such a way that my unique soul and magic can manifest and grow to inspire others to do the same.

I want you to understand, that in this life we will climb plenty of mountains. Most of us see a peak that challenges us and we make our plans and set out a course to get to the top. But in this life, we cannot avoid the deserts we must walk through. They exist in us the day we are born and can only be appreciated when we turn our eyes and heart into ourselves and see the vast emptiness we’ve created in our lives through hiding our talents and magic, fearing our passions for comfort and security, turning to our phones for passionless connections, and being a coward to living the life that wants to live through you in this time and space. Your soul and spirit are infinite, but the human life you have is not. We live in a time where we are planning ways to make the human body live forever as if such a thing is natural. There is a season for everything–take a look around you. Your soul and your passions, your talents and unique magic are aching to be lived through your human life. They want to manifest through you in a way that their other star siblings were not given a chance to do. We are truly are an impossibility living in an impossible Universe. How magical, crazy, and enchanting is that?

Turn your eyes towards yourself, darling.

Climb your mountains and grow strong enough to love and see the world when you reach the top–the Universe needs that from you, but it also needs you to be empty enough to sit down with the sparse nothingness and terror of the desert and be humble at the same time with its worse horrors. Turn your eyes towards the horizons and depths of your inner-self and love, and all the passions that burn within you, darling. When you walk through a desert and feel the comfort of the wind grazing your skin and the lashes of your eyes, and find your two feet on a solid ground that will keep you steady at your own pace, remember that you are on a deeper kind of journey that only requires you to move forward along the horizon, in any direction that your heart wants to follow.

That is how you grow. You keep walking. You keep moving. Closer, deeper, going further into yourself, going further into your art and magic, going further into your love and light, going further into your passion and ambition to live your human life the way your soul has wanted it to for so many decades.

This is what it means to live with full awareness of the nature that is within you: the mountains and the desert, the ascent into everything and the movement towards the abundance of nothingness.

What a feeling it is to sleep under the winter stars in the desert. A free and wild yet comforting kind of feeling. You hear nature in its most rawness, and it hears you in your journey towards a deeper kind of love. And when your cold-rimmed eyes shut and you hear the sound of your pounding heart burning through your veins and your thoughts escalating towards the heavens and your soul reaching for the infinite, listen closely.

This is when you will discover what it means to be a soul living and loving. This is when you will understand what it means to live a truly human experience.

Yours,

N

My Stars My Destination

I used to crave love and fall for the person who gave me the care I wanted as soon as it was given to me. I used to think that just because someone wanted to spend time with you, it was automatically a gesture of potential interest. I used to think that kind actions and charming words were the right way to love me, but then I learned, over and over again, through many people who never earned my most true and raw love, that a love that is worth it, will be earned honestly and whole-heartedly by someone who is fearless enough to handle me. I’ve had my fair share of strong-willed and passionate individuals, but as we float in the endless ocean of possibilities when it comes to love, we find that we settle for what we think we need and work towards creating a powerful chemistry that did not wholly exist in the beginning. I used to think that my love was a little strange and a little too intense for anyone to handle, but then I remember, how amazingly special it feels to experience something so intense it is indescribable. Not many people will get to experience that kind of intensity that love brings, but I am lucky to have tasted it in my heart and my thoughts.

I want you to remember, that in your journey to create yourself and discover the abundance of love that exists in you, do not ever settle. Do not ever settle. It is worth the time and care and love that it takes to discover that most intense love you will be given. We will meet people who may come close and pique our intrigue or say sweet things and send smiley faces at every end of a message, but understand this, your love–that source of infinite terror and beauty–is worthy of only those who earn the loyalty, safety, and care that it needs to grow. You will meet people who will sweep you off your feet with their gentle words and kind mannerisms, but do not be fooled, anyone can be charming. Anyone will say and do what they need to do in order to get what they want, and you will never know their true intentions until after you’ve learned more about each other.

Relationships take time to create. Real ones will last.

You’ll be given love, and you’ll be taken care of. 

It takes discipline, but I understand now, how important it is to save your heart for someone who would be madly in love with you, for years and years. It is unfair to the spirit of love to give and share anything less than madness and the infatuation that comes with passion and rawness. People will come and go and take you out to nice places and give you sweet kisses that you long for everyday, but that kind of love is practice. We practice love with different kinds of people to learn what we like and the qualities and traits that make sense of the chaos inside of us. But the truth is, when you meet someone who makes you feel like the world is a better place because you’re in it and you exist, love becomes what it truly is: infinite. I like to think that love vibrates at different frequencies for everyone. It’s all around us if we listen closely.What we all aspire to have is a love that vibrates at a higher frequency–a kind that pulses with symbiotic waves that complement each other and produce a melodic harmony that both individuals benefit from, separately and together. It is a melodic dance that we crave to experience and hold.

We do not know it, but we crave to be vulnerable with someone who would accept us for all the things we are. We want true love, but we don’t know how to appreciate or be considerate of the other person’s time. We want true affection and a nurturing kind of love, but we don’t know how to put down our phones or say “I love you” just because or say how we really feel. We want to feel real human connections, but we don’t know how to let go of our anxieties and insecurities and feel comfortable in our own vulnerability. We want to spend more time together, but we make up silly excuses to avoid getting closer and sharing in each other’s lives. When we create a space based on fear, we grow further away from love.

You must understand that it is possible to be who you are and be honest about it, wholeheartedly, while protecting your most rare source of love that should only be shared for those who earn the presence to be around it. I am learning this as I move through the practice of love. I must constantly remind myself how important it is to who I’ve become and all the things I value, that I meet someone(s) who dare(s) to show me the protection and passion a lasting love deserves.

Your time here is precious. Your love, even more. Do not waste it on those people or things that do not grow your light. Spend your time around people and places that earn your rawness and your most passionate love and loyalty.

The people that do this are the stars you should be surrounded by, because these are the stars that will bring the best and brightest out of you for years. And if you don’t already know, these stars already exist in you. Be careful of those who dim your light, there will be plenty of them that question your burning truths and rawness. Burn anyway. The universe needs more stars to fall in love with because without them, we would have no destination or depth to reach for. Without them, we would not see the reflections of time and how beautiful it can be to burn brightly through the ages.

So please, reach for your stars. Surround yourself around them. Burn brightly and seek those who fuel your flame. Let that be your destination. The journey, is just practice you should enjoy. You will know when you have reached your destination when you feel your love becoming brighter and stronger from the protection and loyalty to your growth given by someone who will earn and care for your love.

You’ll be given love and you’ll be taken care of. It may not come from the sources you’ve poured yourself in. It may not come from the direction you’re standing in, but trust your inner light, and burn brightly all around you. Nature has a way of sending and giving you the things you ask for when you least expect it.

Yours,

N