What I Learned Each Month in 2018
January — Acceptance.
2018 was the year I stopped victimizing myself.
With each negative experience, heartbreak, misfortune, or little thing that didn’t go my way, I would constantly feel sorry for myself and curse the universe for the life it supposedly had given me. I was in constant resistance with my circumstances, and ultimately myself.
As I expanded into adulthood this past year, I had to face many internal demons. The unhealed wounds of my past, from early childhood to now — resurfaced and demanded I illuminate the corners of my soul. This was no easy feat and still isn’t. This journey of healing could not have started without acceptance. I began incessantly viewing everything that happened TO me as things that happened FOR me. This heightened perspective opened my mind and my heart, creating space within me to release my pain, and accept it all. When you finally take ownership of your life and your story, you become a champion of your life rather than a victim of it. Acceptance is the first step to healing as it opens you up to inviting love in and letting pain go.
The beauty of your life is determined by you, not by what happens to you.
February — Life isn’t a pursuit of happiness.
While living in great heartbreak for the beginning of the year, I realized a truth about happiness. Heartbreak always feels like its going to last forever, but it doesn’t, and we know that. Just like pain, happiness is fleeting. Yet, most of us are on this never-ending journey of “being happy”. Little secret — there’s a reason it’s never-ending…
We’re not designed to be happy all the time. We’re designed to experience happiness, and happiness is something we all deserve to feel, but it’s not something we will be all the time. It’s just the natural condition of being human. And that’s okay. There’s a lot of freedom that comes when the pressure of “finding happiness” is lifted.
What we should all strive for is joy. Joy is found within you. Joy is woven into the fabric of who we are. It’s something that is deeply rooted within us. It’s unwavering, unconditional, and it’s always with us. We must claim ownership of our joy. Your joy is your responsibility. No person, place, or thing could ever take your joy unless you give them the power to do so. When you tap into this wildly powerful ability to preserve and create your own joy, you can find happiness in even the darkest of times.
Ride the waves of your highs in full throttle so you’ll have fuel to drive you in the lows.
The joy is in the journey.
March— Being lost means you’re being found.
I first visited Colorado in March of last year, having no idea that just 7 months later it would become my new home.
Omniscient majesties blanketed in hues of light greens, the Colorado mountains appeared sculpted into the azureous belly of the sky. The forceful yet inviting mountain air breathed an oxygen into me that my lungs have long forgotten. Hiking in the most beautiful landscapes I bore witness to, I began ascending the mountains of my soul.
Inspired, I wrote this poem on the sunny peaks of my future backyard.
I know it’s been a while
Since you’ve felt present
In your own skin
But you find yourself again
It’s been a while
Since you wore a smile
That felt familiar
But you find yourself again
In dancing sunsets
A new light surfaces
Against city silhouettes
You find yourself again
That first morning
You wake with ease
In the arms of friends
You find yourself again
It’s in losing ourselves that we discover who we are.
April — Become love -> Radiate love -> Attract love.
This was one of my most life-shifting lessons. Since graduating I’ve expanded my spiritual journey in ways that now lead and guide my life entirely. Along the way I’ve learned that everything in our universe is energy, and everything vibrates at a certain frequency. The highest frequency one could operate at, the realm where you attract all your desires is love. In order to live your best life, you must be on a constant pursuit of vibrating higher. You must live from a place of love and nowhere else. We can only attract love when we become love itself.
Hint: becoming love starts with loving yourself.
If you want peace, light, abundance, joy, and love in your life you must first establish these facets within yourself. You cannot expand into these greater spheres of life without elevating to their equivalent frequency. Self love isn’t something you achieve. It’s not something you can gain when you accomplish x,y, or z. Loving yourself is a matter of self improvement, yes, but it starts with waking up to this simple truth: you are love.
Love is the electricity of our existence. It powers the beating of our hearts and the blood swimming in our veins. It’s the oxygen of our souls. Loving yourself is waking up to this love you were created with. When you wake up to this love within, your frequency vibrates higher, and you align with the circuit of love which powers our whole world.
May— Beauty is wellness of the body, mind, and spirit.
Our bodies and appearances are not congruent to our health and well-being.
The last couple of years my physical and mental health have undergone many changes. My senior year of college and after I lost around 25 lbs. This was due to severe anxiety and depression. I wasn’t regularly exercising, barely doing yoga, and I wasn’t dieting. My mental illnesses took over my appetite and my health. I had no intentions of losing weight. I loved my body prior. I received dozens of compliments from friends, family, and social media on how great I now looked.
We’ve all been taught that skinny is healthy and that weight is correlated with health and fitness. But at my lowest weight, I was the unhealthiest I’ve ever been. I share this personal anecdote to remind everyone that there is always more to people than what’s on the surface. We must strive for wellness and understand that beauty is wellness of the body, mind, and spirit. Now at a weight that is reflective of my diet, exercise, and mental health, I strive to maintain this size. I now desire to improve myself physically coming from a place of wellness, a place where I understand that to love my body is to nourish it and strengthen it.
Our mental and physical health must coexist.
Love your body for what it does, not just what it looks like. Strive for wellness in all you do. You and your body have always been beautiful, and it always will be. Treat it right and love it right.
June — We are the magic we seek.
In June of 2018 I journeyed with my best friends, old and new, to the wild Midwest of Michigan, US, for the music festival Electric Forest. In the heart of the luscious and dreamy Sherwood Forest, the light of the world opened its arms to us and brought us home.
Electric Forest epitomizes the world we were designed to live in. This festival created by artists, dreamers, lovers, and believers held within it the simple truths of how we are meant to live in the world, and live with each other. I’ve never felt such community, love, kindness, openness, and pure human spirit in my life. The powers and systems of the world have divided us with labels and identifications, expectations and judgments, that have ripped us away from who we are and away from each other.
Electric Forest showed everyone that if we all felt safe and encouraged to dismantle the barriers of self and break the labels the world has placed upon us, that if we truly step into the infinite moment of presence, and just BE who we are — there is nothing more magical and powerful than this. We are spirit beings. By our nature we are meant to be free. By our nature we are meant to just be. Your existence is the miracle. Your life is the meaning in it all.
We are the magic we seek.
July — Nature adds infinite value to your life.
Nature is the paintbrush to God’s canvas.
From every breathtaking mountaintop, to each thread of a spider’s web, from every golden sunset, to each sprouting wildflower. Nature is a godly creation, and so are we. Being immersed in nature aligns your spirit with something greater, calmer, and fuller. In the arms of another godly creation, you restore this higher connection with yourself.
Imagine the branches of a tree in the wind. The tree doesn’t fight the wind’s gusts, it simply moves with it. Trees don’t have to achieve anything outside of themselves to fulfill their purpose, which is to exist. Nature is a grand reminder that our sole purpose is to live. Our spirit is freed in this truth. Time spent in nature can truly bring such clarity about all aspects of your life.
Get up, get outside, and just be — as the trees.
Coexist.
August — Everything you want for yourself is on the other side of fear.
In the cage of my 5ft by 5ft corporate cubicle, I wrote the poem “Jailbreak” which should illustrate the sentiment of August’s lesson.
Jailbreak
My spirit seeks freedom,
It’s a prisoner of my mind.
My dreams are held captive,
In my fears they are confined.
My passions burn inside me,
Flames with no trail to blaze.
My diseased disposition,
Is a soul which is caged.
My heart knows it’s salvation,
Is in and of itself.
On the other side of fear,
Is where I free myself.
Read the full article I wrote about the root of our fears and how we overcome them with love.
PS: I became an Aunt in August!!! I didn’t believe in love at first sight until August 16th, 2018. :)
September — Peace is a right and a responsibility in adulthood.
There comes a morning, one you didn’t particularly imagine, one that kind of always seemed like a distant dream. A morning where the sun sings you awake with a different tune of life you haven’t heard in a while. A better tomorrow that simply consists of making your friends pancakes and drinking coffee together in the Autumn sun. You have to believe in these mornings. You have to believe that peace is possible for you and your life.
Peace is a right we have in adulthood, but it’s also a responsibility. No one is going to give you peace and happiness, as nothing outside of yourself can do this. The path to higher ground isn’t something you find, it’s something you create, and it starts by walking in the valley of yourself. It’s supposed to be hard. Most of the time life is going to feel like an uphill climb that’s never ending. Keep climbing. Keep reaching, peace is always possible.
October — The magic of life is birthed in the unknown.
On October 12th I quit my soul-sucking, dream crushing, “Marketing” job in northern Virginia. On October 15th I filled my tiny Ford Fiesta to the brim with everything I own and embarked on a 3 day journey across the country from Washington, D.C. to Denver, Colorado. This was terrifying and exciting and most importantly it’s what I knew I needed to do. I left the east coast for the first time in my life. Leaving behind a vast ecosystem of friends and family and all that was familiar to me. I had no job lined up, no place to stay besides the springs of my girl friend’s couch, and no known income.
As someone who battles immense anxiety, facing such uncertainty every day was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I reached my breaking point more times in the last quarter of 2018 than ever before. The job search was excruciating mentally. The constant rejection and ambivalence left me in a perpetual state of apprehension and self doubt. As days, weeks, and months passed by with no progress, my savings account began to dwindle and so did all hope that I would ever transcend my current reality. Something kept me going, however. A voice of truth silently echoed within me, urging me to release all my anxieties and fears once and for all and leap into faith.
This voice, my true voice, came to me in my exasperation and reminded me of what I know to be true. I knew that all this struggle and uncertainty I was facing was a resistance I was required to experience if I really wanted to achieve my goals. The unknown is a terrain that only gets harder to climb with each step you take. It’s scary and challenging and seemingly never-ending. This is the cost of pursuing your dreams. This is the cost of a great life. The more you reach into uncertainty, the higher you will climb. Security guarantees only one thing: security. The unknown guarantees nothing, and in that, you’re granted everything. The cost of anything you face in uncertainty will never amount to the cost of staying where you are, secure, always wondering…what if?
November —You are not the darkness, you are the person battling the darkness.
The people I’ve had in Colorado have aided me in every trial I’ve endured. Even in my power struggle with the universe, it always brought me the soul friends my heart needed to stay afloat. The friendship with my new friend Christine, was of true serendipity. In a conversation with her, she recited a quote which elevated the perspective of my struggles.
As pools of amber swirled her shining pupils, her soft voice warmly echoed: “You are not your thoughts, rather you are the person battling your thoughts,” Inspired by her and our conversation, I sang November’s lesson into the cadence below:
Warrior
You are not
The pain
Or
The heartbreak
You are not
The darkness
Or
The wound
You are
The heart
And
The skin
You are
The light
And
The soul
Fighting against it all
December — Live in the space between effort and surrender.
I spent the holidays alone for the first time, and in this solitude I realized that life will never be exactly what you imagined it to look like. You can visualize and plan and work your ass off to achieve what you desire, but the universe operates in divine chaos. By this time of the year, I expected myself to be in a much different place than I was. I was putting myself and my dreams on a strict timeline. I allowed no room for the natural disorder of life. My vision was narrow and lacked divine perspective. I had such attachment to my desires I was suffocating them.
If we want to manifest our greatest life, we must strive to co-create with the universe and its chaotic nature. We must learn how to live in the space between effort and surrender. I began learning to let go of where I thought I should be and what I thought my life should look like to just show up for all that it was. I realized that I don’t have to know, I just have to believe that the universe is giving me everything I need to bring myself where I want to be, and in that, I found true peace.
January 2019 — Sheer human will and perseverance will bring you wherever you dream of.
On January 10th of the new year, I became submerged in one of the darkest nights of my soul. It felt as if every mountain I was climbing got 1,000 feet taller and that any possible line of sight would be out of reach, forever. Have you ever wanted to escape yourself? You find that you can’t. You find you have nowhere to go besides within. This was one of my final battles. I knew it. And I knew there was no escaping. I knew I couldn’t surrender. Buried deep beneath my sorrows, I knew I had something to fight for — myself.
The very next day on January 11th, I got offered my dream Marketing job. The day after that I secured the first place of my own in Colorado. For the first time in 5 months I could say that I would have a room, a bed, and a closet that wasn’t a suitcase. For the first time in 3 years, it was here. The light. The peace. The truth I searched for as a little girl all those years ago. That this world is not darkness. That we are not victims of what happens to us, that any wound can be healed, that we can endure ANYTHING and rise above. That sheer human will and perseverance will bring you wherever you dream of if you are strong enough to push on.
It’s so cliche but you can’t give up. You just can’t. You deserve everything you desire and it’s all out in the world waiting for you, but you gotta fight for it. Fight silently and gracefully, and strengthen your resolve each time life seems to urge you to give in. Because that’s the divine test, and most people give up right before they reach the light at the end of the tunnel.
Life is a constant act of moving forward.
