So 12 and something years ago, I decided this would be how I would live: https://aquaticstatic.blogspot.com/2009/12/ritual.html and then I forgot about it. Or, I went about living my life with this tucked away in the back of my mind, not really invoking it as life began to nudge me, tongue-in-cheek, into uncomfortable spaces rife with fun shit like crossroads and existential dilemmas.
On my 43rd birthday this year, as wishes poured in, a dear friend called me courageous. In the last couple of years, I’ve been hearing versions of this characterisation and it’s left me confused. Because for much of my early life the word most used for me was ‘nice’. A safe and bland word said when people didn’t know how else to describe me. General decency and a compliant nature was what people associated me most with. Woohoo. What a legacy. She was….nice.
Bravery of any kind is not what I’ve ever felt on the inside. I am, if anything, an encyclopaedia of fears seen & unseen. Every worst case scenario is my reality. Everyday I make decisions to not pick them as I get ready to go out into the world. If that makes one brave, then ok, the Decade of No Fear did its job.
I’m 3 years late to the next decade - or at least blogging about it - but hey, the last one turned out alright so do I dare paint a dream for the next one? I’m 43 and the downhill express is picking up momentum. They make you fill up with hope for 40 and to be honest, if you’ve lived a relatively healthy life, it feels like anything is possible. At 43 shit gets real. The body slows, you’re working with people 20 years younger and no you cannot keep up with them. Or dream like them. Dreams change when you’re 43.
Dare I make this a Decade of Love? Of loving and being loved? The core work remains the same as it did when I turned 30. To trust. I feel like I've let more and more people and ideas into my circles of trust recently and now just the last fence remains - the one around the most intimate parts of my heart, where I am my most woman, my most child, my most sacred and pristine. If I don’t do the work or delay things, this part will wither and rust. Nothing I do then, will be able to protect it. New awareness is beginning to flood me - I can’t protect this place by hiding it away. It just doesn’t work anymore. I have to dismantle the fence. Or else, whatever it protects will die.
Just like when I started the Decade of No Fear, I honestly don’t know how to make the Decade of Love work. I have no roadmap. I’m riddled with uncertainty and the wounds of the last many years loving people who didn’t love me back. Maybe I start with honouring all the love that comes at me. Maybe I start with not measuring love but allowing it to exist. I meet children & people everyday who make my heart burst with unbearable joy just by the mere fact of their existence. Maybe I start with believing that I can do that for someone too.
Maybe.
Let’s see.
