Self Love, the key to everything

why is it so dang hard?

Photo thanks to Westview Studio, Costa Rica

I could feel it. I mattered. Really mattered.

My eyes were closed while I listened to the soft sound of Alex’s voice.

“Feel your body Terra. Feel how every cell is here as a gift for you to be here. Feel your organs, how your body works and you don’t have to do anything. It just works for you so you have a place here. You matter that much.”

And for a moment, I felt how loved I was.

It was beyond realizing that when I pray, I am also God’s prayer.

I matter.

Regardless of anything I do. Just to be me was enough. My cells were celebrating me and I had a place here. I was wanted. I was worthy.

That is a big deal.

You matter too but it can be dang hard to feel it.

This is the first time I felt it like this.

I remembered being three years old and packing a suitcase and heading off down the street in my cowboy boots. I was leaving. I had had enough.

My mom let me go.

She knew I would be back.

Homeless at three was not going to happen.

But I was that angry.

Now, in that moment with Alex, as I felt how even my cells and body loved me, I realized that this is what it means to be beautiful. This is what it means to own my value and to walk through the world knowing I was loved and it had nothing to do with money, or outer beauty, or age, or grades, or achieving anything.

If I could feel how loved I was, I would really live differently. I would leave the Matrix of the reality I was taught to believe.

Well, I have had an intention to find a way to age and embrace beauty through this life journey. I want to do this. I want to feel and be beautiful no matter what my body looks like or how old I am. Because why not? Why don’t we do that and see people as beautiful regardless of age? Why don’t I? It is just a human construct to see youth, or certain body types as better or more lovely. Why can’t every part of a person be beautiful? Every last thing. I want to free myself from a paradigm that judges beauty. I want to stop judging myself.

And I could feel that what Alex was showing me is how I could manage to age with love and grace. I could embrace and own my place. I could feel how much my cells care that I am here and how hard they work to support my journey. My cells absolutely love me. Their desire is to help me be here, so I can experience life and this planet and people.

This sense of myself is what I need to charge money for my services, or not, based on what feels good and aligned for me. This is how I hold a place of awareness and embodiment and say to myself, “Ok Terra, what feels good to you? What do you want out of life? How do you want to respond to these choices, people and situations?”

What if I can live life and know that I matter and am loved so much that my cells and organs and the stars, all want to make space for me? That they do even more than make a space. They care. They support me. They want me here.

A few days before, a shaman selling his creations had recommended a large black amulet to me. First, I had spied a lovely crystal bracelet. I am a sucker for stones. I love them. I feel them. They call to me.

He smiled when he saw his crystal bracelet catch my eye.

I took time to look at what else was there and saw a few other bracelets. Not as sparkly, but interesting. One had multicolored stones. He said they were real. He told me all the stones were real. The bracelets on the little hand woven strings were also all the same price: $5.00.

So I picked the two different bracelets both up, closed my eyes and felt the energy of them.

The smaller, multi-colored one with all the stones called to me more. My eyes liked the other but the energy of the less ostentatious one felt better.

When I opened my eyes he smiled at me with delight and said something to me in Spanish while he pointed at them both. I could tell he saw that I was one of “those” people who felt things.

That was when he pointed to a flat black stone in the shape of a circle with sparkles in it, surrounded with six black, macrame star points. He pointed at it again and pointed at me.

So I took it in my hands and felt it.

Black?

My teacher Beverly told me black was for witches. She said not to wear it because it picked up energy from the environment and if you didn’t use the energy correctly, it could age you. It could be bad for you. Black was what made some witches old and ugly when they misused it and cast spells that backfired on them.

She told me and her other students to quit wearing it and to start wearing bright colors.

Everything about this stone except the sparkles shouted BLACK. The string he had woven into the star shape around it was ebony.

I picked it up and closed my eyes as I held it between my hands. And I wasn’t sure about what I noticed. It felt unfamiliar. I said so and even though neither of us spoke the same language, he understood me.

He took the star-speckled stone from me and held it in one hand. He pointed his other hand at it like a wizard casting a spell and held it there very focused, for at least thirty seconds. It might have been a minute. Then he handed the pendant back to me to feel again.

And I was surprised because now it felt different. It felt nice.

“This is good for you,” he said. But not in English. I think someone came up and interpreted for me. It didn’t matter. I could tell the way he was pointing at it and at me that he felt I needed this item he had made and now infused with something.

So I bought it along with the bracelet.

He mentioned I shouldn’t let anyone touch it, so I tucked it under my shirt between my breasts, right over my heart and it snuggled right in. We became friends quickly.

Later, I found myself purchasing a black t-shirt with a butterfly.

I am not sure what it all means except a few days before, as I stood on the beach, I closed my eyes and did some chi gong energy movement that my friend, Clem, from the Awake Retreat Center taught me during her breathwork class.

I took my hands and drew energy from the sky above through my crown chakra and down through my body. Then I reached deep into the earth to do the same thing, and pull energy up from underneath my feet and up through my crown. It is something that feels good and that I have done many times since Clem taught me. Usually I visualize or “see” light when I do this. She said it clears things. I believe I have also been told it is empowering. It feels that way to me. It feels like I allow light to flow through me and the light forms a pillar of beautiful energy. It centers me.

That day I felt the light from above, but when I reached deep into the earth, the energy looked black in my mind’s eye. It surprised me. But I told myself, “Terra, black is not bad. Black is simply feminine energy and you are reaching into the earth. Just try it out.”

And so that day, I pulled dark energy up through my system from deep in the earth in addition to drawing in the light from above.

It felt fine.

Two days later, I had a huge black amulet hanging under my shirt infused with some new energy from the local shaman. Later I was also wearing a black t-shirt with a blue butterfly as well.

I didn’t know what it meant.

That was until I was sitting with Alex and he was talking to me about love and how much I matter. I showed him my new stone and he said it seemed like a talisman and suggested I think of it that way. He said it looked like the universe, with those beautiful sparkles of light on a black background, and to imagine how much the universe supports and loves me. Some of the sparkles look blue to me. Sometimes they have looked like butterflies. Some are golden. I find it incredibly beautiful.

It is good to feel the universe, which sparkles around me and wants me here, in this place, in this body.

Then I noticed the cells in my body again, all supporting me so I could be here, living. I felt the love and care in that.

My body is like a universe. And I am in the universe as well. So loved. So valued.

Less than an hour later a woman faced me.

“Are you upset Terra?”

And my response? My response after the shaman, the amulet, the guided love-meditation, and the recent solar eclipse I had managed to feel and watch?

My response was this:

“Yes I am F—ING angry! What do you think you are doing?”

Now, I know that is probably a shock to hear. Maybe disappointing even…

I am writing about really feeling loved and this is the new, evolved me?

Well, don’t lose hope.

All of this is a process. Life is a process. It is a journey.

And if you are going to love yourself, you may find your boundaries suddenly kick in. You may find yourself ready to leave situations that don’t feel quite right for you anymore.

That was happening for me. Just not gracefully.

My three year old in cowboy boots had not gone away. That part of me was very much alive and kicking, ready to offer her gifts now that I am a 57 year old with some skills and enough money to survive without relying on the current people in front of me.

I am sitting on my new deck now, overlooking the sea. The tide is high, maybe 30 yards away below, and a log is being tossed in, out, and around in the surf near the shore.

I can be like that.

Life can push me around and it can feel disorienting.

It is good to learn to relax and ride the waves of it all.

And sometimes it is good to have a boundary.

Sometimes it is good to simply get out of the water, put on your cowboy boots, make yourself a sandwich and head off into the unknown.

That takes some courage.

That is not necessarily easy.

It can take some practice and some getting used to.

As I said, my practice started at age three.

Last night I returned from a two day trip to Berlin, El Salvador, to attend a Bitcoin conference put on by my good friend @JeThoreau and another friendly acquaintance named Charlie. They and others are busy creating a new circular economy here based on Bitcoin, similar to El Zonte where I live.

@jethoreau and Charlie

I returned home after meeting a lot of people, with my new amulet, processing all the eclipse energy. I arrived in the early afternoon to my new cottage by the sea and settled into my living room where I curled up on the plastic patio furniture couch I was using inside. I folded myself into a small ball and watched the waves through the glass wall in front of me and let the breeze from the fan wash over me.

“This is amazing,” I thought.

I can handle the patio furniture couch in my living room. I can handle the tiny kitchen with ants and the drawers that don’t open easily.

I love it here.

I love living right on the ocean and I love El Zonte.

Later I went for a walk and then I had a good nights sleep.

I was back in my new, temporary home.

Before I had gone to bed, my attorney had texted me and asked for my new address.

She needed it to give to the immigration office here. I believe at some point they will come check on me to make sure I am really living in the country.

She also mentioned something else to me that both surprised and delighted me.

She asked if I had heard that I could get my permanent residency as soon as next year?

I had not.

As far as I knew, the process to become a permanent resident here in El Salvador takes three years and I need to be in the country 8 months a year for three years. Then, once I obtain permanent residency, I can travel much more freely and be gone up to two years at a time.

This butterfly likes to be free. This butterfly likes to have options, like going back to write in Ireland for a few months and visiting Bali.

So I felt so happy when she told me it might be even more quick and easy.

I don’t remember my dreams and I imagine they were soothing the night after that. The universe was surprising me and all this energy work with Alex was really, really working. Things were going great.

Alex and I had our weekly call the next morning and we only went over our allotted time by 15 minutes, which was huge progress for me. Last week our one hour call took two. Sometimes I think I am a challenging mentee and Alex doesn’t seem to mind.

Today, after our guided journey together, I was happily feeling my place in the world and planning a walk on the beach followed by an omelette at my favorite eatery, an exquisite restaurant at the Puro Surf Hotel, now a short two minute walk away.

That is when it happened. The young woman who manages things here was strolling by to use the upstairs bathroom again, in the bedroom I had paid extra to rent.

There is a story behind this and I had agreed to some concessions as this place which under construction and she lives in a room here that does not have a bathroom. So I had agreed she could use the one upstairs for a short period of time. But I had noticed her use of the bathroom had spread to also using the bed and other things and I was feeling resentful about this. I had called the owner a few days before to discuss this with him. Earlier that morning, she walked across my porch during my mentor call headed for the shower and my resentment fired up again just a little bit. I felt the issues I was having with her were still unresolved.

But I wasn’t thinking about them too much. The call had been great for me. So many things felt great. I was busy feeling more loved and more like I mattered than I ever had in my life.

I stepped out of my house headed for my walk on the beach and that breakfast I was ready for to find her on my covered front porch removing the cushions on my outdoor sofa. I asked her what she was doing? She told me she was preparing the property for rain.

The cushions were being put in my extra upstairs bedroom along with the cushions for a lot of outdoor patio furniture on the property. She hadn’t bothered to ask me.

I told her I wanted my sofa cushions put back when the rain passed and she argued with me. We were approaching the rainy season it seems. So in her world, the property, including my covered porch, would now be cushion-free.

That was when I told myself it might be time to leave.

Things only got worse. After breakfast, I was going to do yoga on my porch and realized it was covered in muddy footprints she and her assistant had left behind.

I texted her.

It is not common for me to order people to do things without any kind words or an energy of request and I was really angry.

My text was this:

“Come clean the mud off my porch. I wish to use it.”

That was it.

I got no reply, so I set my yoga mat up inside my living room.

As I began my yoga practice, she strolled by to shower.

I opened my door and asked her if she got my text and she said no and asked if I was upset.

That is when the swearing happened.

I am not proud of it.

But I am not ashamed either.

Before I began my yoga practice, I went upstairs and took photos of the bedroom, with the messy bed, saw her things all over the bathroom and bedroom, and the piles of cushions covering the furniture in the room.

That was when I called and I told my landlord that I was considering leaving at the end of the month. I also took photos of the pool furniture and outdoor tables. They were lovely and five days before had been stacked in a heap and left that way. I had mentioned to her I would like to use them and she argued with me. It was the rainy season she said.

So there I was, doing yoga and really, really angry.

Yoga people are not saints. Yoga is not a bypass for me. I needed to move and I was having some strong feelings. I made some growling noises. I exhaled through my mouth.

And I gave myself permission to leave no matter how much I loved living here in my new little abode overlooking the sea.

In the end, it is not houses, places or people that make me happy. It is living free, aligned, in integrity, and honoring my boundaries.

My boundaries were not being honored and I did not feel that energy of care I desire to embody and manifest around me. Not from her. In many other ways, it has been happening and happening deeply. I am aware of that.

But let’s circle back to now. Things are working out. Mostly I think, because I am willing to be flexible and I am also willing to leave. I won’t cling to this place no matter how much I love it. If it is not in integrity for me, I will leave. Simple as that. And it will be fine. I will be fine.

Every time I say “No” to something, it is a “Yes” to something else.

I am not afraid to leave.

I didn’t get to El Salvador without learning to jump off cliffs sometimes.

So far, even when it has been scary or daunting, I am glad I have jumped when things really are not serving me.

I spent 22 years rationalizing things in a marriage that was not happy. Now I am less willing to settle when things are not in integrity.

Black earth energy, a magic amulet, a wonderful mentor, and a body of trillions of cells cheering me on allowed me to speak up for myself.

I might have done it like a three year old having a tantrum. I might have done it like a parent a 23 year old needed to hear (who might have done better avoiding the swear word). I might have done it because I matter too much not to.

What is integrity?

Is abuse ok?

Is it ok to let people take advantage of you and justify it in your mind or not?

Sometimes it is good to put on your cowboy boots, pack your bags, and leave.

And sometimes it is enough to speak up and allow things to unfold in more productive ways. Even when your delivery could have been more kind and less messy.

I think that is what is happening here.

I will keep focusing on my amulet and do my homework for this week.

I will feel how I have a place.

How I am wanted by my cells, on this planet, in this universe, in this body that serves me so well.

How I am even more than a prayer.

How I am celebrated, supported, and loved.

How I matter and which has nothing to do with anything other than me just being me.

How the way to step out of the Matrix right now for me is to simply feel how much I am loved and how I am actually supported and held.

And sometimes, it is not easy.

Alex mentioned it is good to embody fierce grace when expressing my boundaries and then to do so with absolute truth and kindness.

I will talk to my landlord tomorrow with no swearing and I hope, a little more grace and ease.

composing this post, overlooking the sea