The Language is in the Knowing

We get all caught up in trying to describe stuff, label things or analyze something or someone, and we lose the real meaning of it all. Sure words are a useful form of communication, but often when we are trying to figure out an issue or facing a difficult challenge in our life, language just gets in the way.

Using language is what I have been doing for over a year now in trying to “understand” the break up, to get a handle on my emotions, and to try to quiet the demons in my head.
Analyzing all his issues, so I don’t have to believe my own self-defeating beliefs because he and the break up really TRIGGERED them.

Descriptions of all my emotions so I can better understand them and where they came from.
Replaying everything over and over again in my head to find the right words to describe my feelings at the time, to remember why I chose to walk away from that relationship….because once I did, the words of self-doubt and ‘not good enough’, ‘not special enough’, ‘not loveable enough’, ‘not worth fighting for’ were all screaming in my head.

Explanations of what went on and who he is to convince myself I did the right thing, that I made a healthy choice. But all of this language to understand and make sense of it all has just added to the noise in my head, the self-doubt and the confusion…more ammunition for the demons to play with.

It is true that ‘The devil is in the details.’

Our mind, and the way the brain functions, needs to make sense of things and create patterns to organize and understand things, which is all good and useful for it's purpose, yet we rely way too much on our minds and so little on our gut instinct or intuition. That inner knowing that doesn’t require all the workings of the brain.

In yoga, my teachers and myself, as well, talk about quieting down the mind in order to get in touch with your inner voice and your intuition. Your inner wisdom. It’s just a knowing. The heart and the soul does not work in language, it works in a deeper knowing. I even use words to try to help remember that I had the knowing and to try to remember what that knowing was! WORDS, so many words…almost like an addiction that I keep relying on.

I could go over my break up and his dysfunctional behaviours, what happened, why it happened, what I should have said, what I should have done (listen to my intuition in the first place) to get more and more understanding ,thinking it will help me in letting go . I could spin these words over and over in my head and in my journal for another year plus and I likely won’t get any closer to healing.

I need to stop using the language of the mind and trust the knowing of my soul.

Letting the Enemy In

I open the door wide and let them in.

Oh I try to blame others for it, spend my time analyzing the other person’s issues, how they hurt me, how I am the victim, but it is only I that let the enemy in. And I make the enemy stronger by repeating the same self-defeating thoughts and make the enemy stronger by continuing to believe these false self-beliefs. Beliefs created so long ago with an innocent child’s mind and sensitive heart.

Unskilled behaviours of the adults I looked up to, looked to for love, support and understanding and when it was dysfunctional, it created my sense of self, how I felt about myself and who I thought I was. And I realize I am still operating from that same place decades later! I am not who I think I am. These thoughts, these beliefs are what are creating the pain inside … nothing external. I am the one feeding the imaginary monster.

We let the enemy in when we are weak.
We let the enemy in every time we lie to ourselves and make excuses and justifications for our unhealthy or addictive behaviours.
We let the enemy in every time we listen to our negative thoughts and destructive self-beliefs and self criticism.
We let the enemy in when we try to control or manipulate a situation or person to feed our own unhealthy emotional needs.
We let the enemy in when we aren’t compassionate with ourselves and forgive our mistakes.
We let the enemy in when we don’t believe in ourselves and don’t trust ourselves.
We let the enemy in when we choose not to listen to our instincts, our feelings and our own inner knowing.

I have not been a good guard of my gateway to my heart and soul ... the gateway to inner peace … the gateway to my happiness.

Not taking care of ourselves, not taking responsibility for ourselves…we allow the enemy in. And when the enemy does get in we blame others, external things and allow it to beat ourselves up.

The real battle is inside. Not out there with something or someone else.

Lessons, Letting go and Love

Reflecting on 2009…

Lessons Learned

1.       I have codependency patterns in my intimate relationships

2.       I  take other people’s issues personally then create self-defeating stories

3.       I incorrectly base how I feel about myself by the  behaviours of others

4.       I have let unconscious wounds run my life

5.       I have come to realize my own worth

6.       I am not inferior to others

7.       I do have gifts and something to offer

8.       I can trust my own thoughts and feelings

9.       I am stronger and wiser than I think I am

10.   I can rescue myself

Letting go of:

1.       Self-pity

2.       Childhood and self-defeating patterns

3.       Victimization mentality

4.       Self-doubt

5.       Beating myself up

6.       Allowing my mind/demons to torment me

7.       Overanalyzing things and confusing myself

8.       Taking on other people’s issues as my own

9.       Low self-worth and lack of confidence

10.   My old self-concept

Love & gratitude for:

1.       Friends who have been there through difficult times and good times

2.       Family who have always been there for me

3.       My cats whom I learn so much about living peacefully from

4.       New friends in a new town who have been so warm and welcoming

5.       My good health

6.       Beautiful landscapes that surround me in my new home across country

7.       Writing from my heart in this blog and the words of encouragement from others

8.       Teaching yoga, which inspires me and allows me to inspire others

9.       My vulnerability and open heart

10.   The courage to face my demons/wounds

I hope to take all these lessons and love and step into 2010 lighter as I let go of all that was holding me down. Much love, happiness and peace to all in 2010!

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.”    T.S. Eliot

To Let Go Takes Love

As 2009 comes to a close, it's a good time to look in our hidden places where we carry our fears, our hurts, our resentments, our bitterness, our anger, and all our self-defeating beliefs and LET THEM GO! Clear out for 2010 and make some space for new possibilities and more love to come in and fill you up.

To Let Go Takes Love

To "let go" does not mean to stop caring;

it means I can't do it for someone else.

To "let go" is not to cut myself off;

it is the realization that I can't control another.

To "let go" is not to enable,

but to allow learning from natural consequences.

To "let go" is to admit powerlessness,

which means the outcome is not in my hands.

To "let go" is not to try to change or blame another;

it is to make the most of myself.

To "let go" is not to care for, but to care about.

To "let go" is not to "fix", but to be supportive.

To "let go" is not to judge,

but to allow another to be a human being.

To "let go" is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes,

but to allow others to affect their own destinies.

To "let go" is not to be protective;

it is to permit another to face reality.

To "let go" is not to deny, but to accept.

To "let go" is not to nag, scold, or argue,

but instead to search out my own shortcomings and to correct them.

To "let go" is not to adjust everything to my desires,

but to take each day as it comes, and to cherish myself in it.

To "let go" is not to criticize and regulate anybody,

but to try to become what I dream I can be.

To "let go" is not to regret the past,

but to grow and to live for the future.

To "let go" is to fear less and to love more.

Author Unknown

Allowing

As we approach the end of the year it’s a good time to let go of all that no longer serves us, all that is holding us down or holding us back. Let go of the heaviness of your past and move into the future lighter and more open. Let go of what is weighing heavy on your heart and make some space within. If you are holding on to something else you will not be able to receive what the Universe wants to give you.

Allow the Universe to fill this space with what you need. You don’t need to search for it, you just need to be open and allowing and it will come to you. Just stop resisting, clinging, holding on. Let go of victim mentality, defenses, blame and attachment.

Stay in alignment with who you really are and your truth. Just be open. Just allow. Then all the love, happiness and peace you are seeking will come to you.

All you need to do is embrace it. It is already here just waiting for you to accept it.

Set the Dark Alight

The passage from darkness to light. 

The Winter Solstice – daylight is the shortest due to the tilt of our planet, leaning it the furthest away from the sun - occurs on December 21^st.

The longest night of the year has long been celebrated and heralded as a turning point – the day that marks the return of the sun. The rebirth of the sun.

In darkness we turn inward and reflect on the past year – our joys and our challenges and garner the lessons learned. This earthly shift is the perfect time for creating and accepting change, and realizing our personal growth over the past year. Our own rebirth of sorts.  

Many cultures the world over perform solstice ceremonies. At their root: an ancient fear that the failing light would never return unless humans intervened with anxious vigil or antic celebration. In darkness we must face ourselves, our fears – the monsters in the dark and we must intervene with anxious vigil so the light can enter and dispel our darkness.

A celebration of changing dark into light. Celebrate who we are, our lives and all of our lessons.

The Winter Solstice is a time to release our fears, our pains and let go of our difficulties and as we do, the light of a new day can enter. A perfect time to set positive intentions for the year ahead.

Trust. Faith. Light. 
This is the meaning and magic of the Winter Solstice. 

Trust that at the very darkest moment, the light will start to return. 

A Winter's Night song

One day, if you are lucky...

...you will be in pain.

Why do we hang on so long after someone is gone or something is done? We go over and over it in our heads, rehashing the conversations, what we said, what they said, what we should have said. Keeping the story alive. Giving the “sad” story more power than it had even to begin with. We feed the demons, feed the sadness, feed the pain, feed our own story that we created a long time ago about who we are. Or rather, who we believe we are. Our conditioned self, the role we played in our family, our patterns of behavior, our way of coping and surviving in our family structure. And we take these roles and wounds out into the world, projecting them everywhere and on to everyone, especially in our intimate relationships. 

Whether we want to admit or not, or whether we are even aware of it, most of us recreate our family patterns in our relationships. We approach love the same way we did as children, whether that is through shutting down, acting out, seeking constant approval or trying to be really good to prove our worth. We keep chasing that wound. Searching out there so we can feel good in here.

And it works for a while; all the same familiar patterns over and over again feels strangely comforting, feels like home, feels like what you know even if it isn’t healthy. 

But one day if you are lucky, you will hurt so much that you will no longer be able to bear the pain of living these old beliefs, behaving from your conditioned self and allowing that wounded child to steer the wheel that keeps you from the path of finding who you really are. Keeps you from owning your own power and from living from that space. The very space that will provide you with what you are seeking out there for: love…happiness. 

One day, if you are lucky, you will be cracked open so wide that you will need to look inside and from there the real you will begin to emerge.

RIP - Pieces of Me

Rebuilding. I didn’t realize it would take so long to build a home with a good, solid foundation, but that’s what I have been doing for the past year – rebuilding from the ground up.

My old home shattered, fell apart, collapsed from a life storm, but it had slowly been crumbling over the years from many other life conditions. The hurricane swept my home away and took away everything I clung to, including my self-beliefs. This home could not simply be repaired; I could no longer live here safely and certainly not happily. All the mortar in the world wasn’t enough to fill these gaping holes in the foundation; it had to be torn down and rebuilt from the beginning.

Pieces of me scattered everywhere. Pieces I didn’t even know existed. Dark, ugly demonic-like pieces lay there claiming to be a piece of me. I couldn’t even pick them up and look at them. ‘No these pieces belonged to someone else, they belonged to the person who caused the storm in my home.’

But in the light of day, after the storm passed through and after the year it took for the dust to settle and clear, I could see that these pieces were indeed a part of me.I came to see that the dark storm lived inside these pieces and inside my home for most of my life. That these pieces were the cause of this destructive force.

And as I started to rebuild, these pieces just weren’t fitting in anymore, in fact they just kept hindering and delaying the rebuilding project making it extremely difficult to continue to build. I had to rid my home of these pieces of debris that caused my home to be weak and insecure even in the best of weather conditions.

A painful and arduous task to rid yourself of pieces that have been with you for so long, even if you have learned they are threatening your survival. They are a part of you, you believed them, you took comfort in them and they are so familiar after all these years that they feel right.

It feels like I am ripping pieces of my flesh away from my bones, reaching in and tearing out a living, breathing organ from inside of me causing me to want to hold on to them or else I will die. Yet this is exactly what needs to happen. A part of me must die, so that the healthy part can live … can thrive … can find peace.

Happy Birthday to Me

Today is my birthday. A time I usually look back on the year and reflect. Reflect on where I have been and where I am now. I'll start by saying that this birthday is better than last year's. Last year I was in a place of pain and confusion as I just ended a relationship with someone I adored. It ended suddenly, no time for falling out of love or getting tired of the person or arguing or not getting along. I felt alone, abandoned and heartbroken.

But the break up ended up being a catalyst for me in finding me. Leading me on a long and painful journey of healing as I began to realize where I was deeply wounded. A year of coming face-to-face with my shadow. Old wounds I had been carrying around unconsciously for my whole life and definitely what drew this person, this relationship to me in the first place.

I am very aware that it is my own wounds and ego that keep me stuck and holding on and that he was merely a mirror of my deep inner wounds. Wounds needing to see the light of day and be questioned and analyzed. An old story that needs to stop being told to myself. And, oh, did this person fit perfectly into my story. The break up fit into my story of “not good enough, special enough” even better. Yet he never said these things to me, in fact he adored me. All he did was be who he is: emotionally dysfunctional, codependent, insecure, fearful, cowardly and stuck. I am the one that made it mean something about me.

So, I guess I could say in the past year, where I have been is Hell. In my own dark, self-created hell. Where my shadow, my wounds, my fears, my insecurities, my obsessions and my codependency dwell. In hiding, yet were the silent but deadly drivers of my life.

Over the past year, I lost my relationship, lost my job, got rid of my car and moved across country. And where I am now is in a new home, a new car, new friends and in a new job that I love – teaching yoga. I am in a much lighter place, perhaps not Heaven or a place of peace yet, but I have escaped the captivity of my personal demons. I have the key in my hand to unlock this cage, now I just need to figure out how to use the key.

My ex wrote a very heart wrenching, soulful song when he escaped his substance addiction years before we met, called “Happy Birthday to me, I think I’m finally free”. My birthday wish is to be free of the deep hurt this relationship brought about in me.

Looking forward to my new journey this year.

Happy New Me

Just as today, November 1st, marked the New Year for the Celts: the end of one cycle and the beginning of a new cycle, today also marks an end of one cycle and a beginning of a new one for me.

One year ago today, I ended a relationship I really didn’t want to come to an end, but something inside of me told me something was unhealthy. His extra close relationship with his ex, although healthy in some aspects, seemed really unhealthy and bizarre in other aspects. And I knew it, felt it all along…but I tried to ignore it or allow his dysfunctional logic to override my own thoughts and feelings. Upon hearing that his ex was now sleeping over, so he could help her recover from cosmetic plastic surgery was the last straw.

Amongst the many other situations that I won’t bore you with, this was the two by four I needed to be hit over the head with. This is codependency, an unhealthy attachment, a non-letting go. I should have known there was codependency at play here, so I told myself as self punishment, after all he was an alcoholic and drug abuser for 20 years of his life and all during his marriage. She stayed with him through drama, selfish behavior, violent lifestyle, lies and whatever else goes on in those types of relationships. A part of him I had never known, but only heard about from him. It was only when he became sober, that she fell out of love with him and in love with another heavy drinker for 4 years. Yet she and her ex, my ex, kept on carrying on like a happy little family, or maybe for the first time as it may not have been so during their 16 year marriage.

Now living a platonic marriage? They would even celebrate each other's birthdays together and Mother's Day, Father's Day with their son, but still.... where is the separation in this scenario? Besides not sleeping together anymore or having "romantic feelings". Is it not just a platonic marriage now but still a marriage like, bizarre, unhealthy thing? No?! She even had a key to his place! And all the while she was living with another man and leaving him at home for these ex-husband excursions! So why did I not listen to my first instincts? I was so confused with my own thoughts and feelings (still am to this day). I suppose because I cared for him so much I pushed away my inner knowing. I should have listened to myself in the first place, continued the self punishing voice.

And this day marked my own descent into codependency, obsessive behavior and my own inner addict. A year where all my own deep, dormant wounds came to wake and wreak havoc with my life. Self-pitying, self-doubting and self-loathing. Along this dark, long, winding road I learned a lot about myself at an even deeper level than I had already explored. I seem to be low on self-value, self-respect, self-worth, self-trust. Why? Where did this come from and how has this affected my life? All these questions were answered through painful bouts of sadness and loneliness and immense inner turmoil. Old wounds, old beliefs and subsequent old patterns were exposed.

Dragged out of the comfort of darkness kicking and screaming into the harsh light of day. No longer able to hide and subtly control my life from an undetected place from deep within. Wounds and beliefs and patterns that now had to answer to these questions because they had nowhere to go anymore; their shelter had been exposed and demolished. Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. I had to sit with them for a year, calm them, interrogate them and then embrace them and learn to love them.

So why did this happen? Why did this relationship, with this person whom I had such strong feelings for, such a pull towards and vice versa, end? Or happen at all? I conclude that it is because he had all the “right” qualities, wounds, dysfunctions to awaken my deep wounds. It was because he had some wonderful qualities that I adored and commonalities that we shared that drew me to him, but it turns out he had all the similar dysfunctional characteristics as the person who originally wounded me and lead me to create these false beliefs about myself in the first place ... so I learned through lots of deep, painful self-reflection.

And I realized I needed to be wounded in the same way so that I could process these dormant, life-stealing wounds with the awareness and wisdom of an adult mind. It’s like homeopathy; you need to be given the same poison such that a greater healing can occur. In retrospect, maybe I should thank my ex for setting me free … but I am not quite there in my healing yet. It is said that the people that hurt us the most are our greatest teachers.

My ex had all the key ingredients to unlock my self-created cage and set me free. Free of my wounds, free of my false self-beliefs, free of my self-created limitations.

Free to fly.

Let the New Year begin….

The Unveiling

Halloween is the time of year when we put on masks and go out and be something, someone different than we are.

Yet this annual event of becoming someone else by putting on a costume or mask, is something we subconsciously do every day of the year and perhaps a different mask many times a day depending on where we are, who we are with, the role we have assumed, etc. We often choose the mask that matches the mask of the person we’re trying to please. The masks we have chosen to wear in our varied experiences are a way to keep us safe, but hides our true self from others and ourselves.

And that is exactly what the Celts were doing on Hollows Eve … trying to hide their identity to keep themselves safe. Celts who lived 2000 years ago, celebrated the New Year on Nov. 1. This marked the end of the Summer and harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold Winter. The Celts believed that transitions, times when things change from one state to another, had magical properties.

They, thus, believed the night before New Years was a powerful time in which the veils between the two realms was thinned , allowing one to move between the two worlds with ease. October 31st they celebrated Samhain or Hallow’s Eve, when the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. Afraid the undead would harm them and cause trouble, the Celts left out food on their door steps to keep their homes safe from these ghosts.

And if the Celts people needed to venture out on this eve, they would dress up in costume and don masks in hopes of being mistaken for one of the ghosts' fellow spirits. Just as we do with the masks we wear every day. To hide our true identity, to keep ourselves safe, to fit in, and pretend to be something we are not.

Indeed October 31st - Halloween – is a magical and powerful time. A transitional time. A time to get in touch with our inner spirit, to observe ourselves more clearly as the veil of illusion is thinned. As the lines of our two worlds, our inner self and our outer selves (our own ghosts), are blurred. Opening up the realms so we can move with ease into deeper regions of ourselves and begin to remove the masks.

This Halloween I am going to be someone totally different than I, or anyone has ever been...

I am going to be me!

Happy Halloween!

When you are falling ... Let Go

This is what I learned in Yoga class tonight as I went into a pose I have went into successfully many times before – headstand.

I was getting up into my headstand at the top of my mat, my right leg was up and as I began to bring my left leg up in line with the right I started to lose a little balance, but that didn’t stop me, I kept going. I can do headstand! I’ll balance myself out as I keep going in this already unsturdy foundation, I thought. And as I started to sway more, the more I tried to get up into place. It wasn’t working, I was struggling and starting to fall out of it yet I continued to get into the “right” position rather than just go with it, to just fall. Go where I was going anyway. It would have been easier, less painful and certainly more graceful.

Wish I had this little piece of wisdom in my pocket about a year ago during a break up that caused me so much inner turmoil … I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t let go of the pain of breaking up, couldn’t let go of my expectations of the relationship, couldn’t let go of why he couldn’t understand, couldn’t let go of analyzing him, analyzing the relationship, couldn’t let go of the love we shared, the words he said, couldn’t let go of the why’s. Why did he do this? Why did this happen? Why couldn’t it work out? Why? And the more I held on, rather tried to hang on, the more suffering it caused me. My mind, my ego had a grip on me so tight that it was squeezing the life out of me. Yet it was the trying to hold on that caused the inner turmoil, the pain, the suffering more so than the actual break up, the fall.

Then I fell … awkwardly. Not awkwardly in a humiliating sense (although I am sure humility would have served me here instead of my ego mind), but in a potentially physically harmful way. My left leg fell over to the one side and I came crashing down on the side of my heel, my other leg fell forward over my head and my neck twisted sideways, while my hands were still grasping to hold on! When I fell, I felt a little stunned but I also had this weird sensation … an exhilaration. I had felt, for a very brief moment, like I was flying. Then I landed ... not so gracefully.

So, instead of all this time spent thinking, doubting, questioning, trying to get it right; instead of all these mental acrobatics that wouldn’t change the outcome anyway, all I needed to do was let go. LET GO. Just let go and land. On the solid ground beneath me. A stable place. Then try again from this new landing place.

Try again. I recommend falling, in fact, because it is your chance to really experience freedom, but try to fall with grace. You do that by letting go.

It is from falling that I have started to learn how to fly.

Caterfly - Freak of Nature?

There it was on my dining room floor of my apartment, a half caterpillar, half butterfly – a caterfly. Not fully metamorphosized into what it was intending to be.

Crawling on my floor, flapping its wings you could see the beginning of aesthetic beauty, the bright orange colours of a monarch butterfly at the centre of its otherwise faded brown and underdeveloped wings. But this creature could not fly.

Assumedly blown into my apartment during a torrential downpour, the blustering winds tearing it from its home on one of the trees out back. Breaking open its cocoon that was created for shelter from the inner storm of transformation. It’s self-created protective device to keep it safe while it goes through the agonizing discomfort of change. Not unlike our own self-created, eventually self-destructive, protective devices intended to keep us safe from the storms of life.

This caterfly was unceremoniously cracked open far too early for it to reach its full potential, to fully transform into a butterfly. Ripped from its shelter, while in transition from beast to beauty.

But this caterfly did not come to me by accident. Propped on my apartment floor six storey’s up, the wind guiding its way through a small opening in my balcony doors seemed like an extreme feat even for nature …. not to mention that it had not been eaten by my cats, who were in fact just merely staring at this “odd” creature in awe and curiosity just as I was.

This creature torn from its cocoon, its comfort zone during its most fragile transition was symbolic of me, of my life … able to crawl, but not quite able to fly yet.

Yet this caterfly survived the storm, seemed to be accepting of its limitations, not frantically searching for its cocoon of safety and needing to fearfully crawl back into it, rather it appeared to be at peace as it continued to crawl on and attempt to fly.

And it is with this observation of character and perseverance that I realized it is exactly these imperfections that make it beautiful and unique … perfect in its imperfection. And it is here in this transitional stage where we find our own way, who we really are and develop our own wings to fly.

But I wanted to keep this caterfly, to nurse it, help it grow and become what it should be or so what I thought it should be, but I knew I couldn’t. It would wither and die and never be what it is supposed to be in this life if I tried to hold on to it and force it to become something it couldn’t and, perhaps, something it didn’t want to be. I knew it could only be what it is and realized there was nothing wrong with that when I saw it find comfort and joy as I placed it where it belongs … in the garden. I watched it happily crawl up the stems of the plants, proudly spreading its wings and showing its unique beauty to the world.

I knew it was flying on the inside.

Beautiful Freak

Tides of Change

The change of the season can be felt in the air, with the days becoming shorter, the nights growing cooler and the waters turning colder. It is said change is a constant; something we can always count on. We often view change as good or bad, depending on our own wants, desires and perception of things. We tend to notice change more when it is something we don’t want, and then we have difficulty dealing with it … accepting it. We think it should be different or it’s not fair. We resist, sometimes even deny it’s happening at all.

As I resisted “unwanted” change in my life, I felt I was swept up by a cyclone, spinning me around, spinning me down into a dark well of stagnant water with walls so high I could not climb out of. Holding on, not wanting the change to take place (even though it already had). My mind gripping on ferociously to what was already gone, already done. My resistance and the not accepting what was, created a dam inside me; blocking the natural flow of the river, the flow of my life. Not letting anything in, not letting anything out. Being sucked down by the undertow.

It wasn’t until I let go, stopped resisting and accepted the change, that I found some peace, a glimpse of joy … the very things I was searching for in the first place. Though in an attempt to calm the raging rivers of emotions that change brings, I clung, resisted, not realizing it is just that which kept me from what I was seeking.

Perhaps we resist change because of the fear of the unknown and our primal need for security and safety. And sometimes it’s just easier to stay with our limitations and with what doesn’t work. To keep things the same. Keeping us in a state of inertia, yet one of familiarity and comfort, even if it isn’t ideal. But things will never stay the same no matter how hard we resist or stay in denial; we just prolong the struggle.

Just as we can’t stop the trees from growing, the flowers from dying or the rivers from flowing - all the natural beauty and wonders of nature - we can’t stop change. And when we can learn to accept change – “good” or “bad” – perhaps, then, we will be able to embrace the beauty and wonders within ourselves.