Happily Ever After Enough

Happily Ever After Enough

My Spiritual Director has helped me define four foundational touchstones (so far) in the several years that I've worked with her.

I'd never heard of a foundational touchstone before I met Becky. I knew about core values and in fact, in my work with my friend and phenomenal coach, Alisha, I'd identified my five top core values: integrity, connection, wisdom, grace and harmony.

Where core values can be used in setting goals and mapping out how to reach them, foundational touchstones are what you know to be true, deep in the marrow of your bones.

They are the solid foundation that everything in your life rests upon.

I use use them to keep me grounded in my truth and when I find myself feeling untethered, or distracted and off course, they remind me of my true north.

All I have to do is call them to mind and I immediately find my footing again.

As some point, I'll share all of my foundational touchstones with you, but today, I want to focus on this one:

I dwell in the Oneness and the Oneness dwells in me.

Last week, I began a month of writing my reflections about relationships.

And as we're also spending a few weeks getting reaquainted and I'm telling you more about how everything, and yet nothing, has changed in my life, I want to share how my relationship with the Divine and my relationship with myself are woven together.

When I was a kid, I had the gift of roaming.

I grew up at the end of a mile-long dirt road; the woods were my backyard, and the river was my front yard. I grew up in that wildness and was able to experience my own wildness. Granted, it wasn't the deep wilderness, but I was deeply connected to Mother Nature.

There wasn't a single second of any moment I spent outside when I felt like I didn't belong.

I've always known there is something larger than me that is pure LOVE.

I've always known that I belong in that Love.

And I've always known that a part of that something larger lives inside me as pure LOVE. 

I dwell in the Oneness and the Oneness dwells in me.

I didn't get that from church.

I got that from growing up outside.

Sometimes, everything changes in big and bold ways: we move, we change careers, our families grow . . . or shrink. All of us experience monumental changes. But those are usually few and far between.

Most of the time, changes happen in more subtle, even imperceptible ways. I'm thinking of a bucket under a drippy pipe; the water drip . . . drip . . . drips for hours or days until, suddenly, the bucket is filled to overflowing.

Maybe it's a change of perspective, a moment of clarity, or, as in my case, something that's always been the in the periphery slowly comes into view.

About five years ago, I began to understand that I'm a queer woman.

I didn't turn queer; I've always been queer. It's just been outside my field of vision.

Nothing about me changed, I simply became aware of another facet of who I am.

I spent much of 2022 sharing this part of who I am with my husband, my family and closest friends because, once I knew the truth, not to live in that truth would mean living a lie. It would mean having to live a shrunken life.

Knowing and believing with every ounce of my being, that I dwell in the Oneness and the Oneness dwells in me allowed me to share this part of myself with those I love so dearly because I know, without a doubt, that I belong.

And I know, without a doubt, that you belong.

We all want resolution. And if we're honest, we want the assurance of a happy ending to each and every story.

We want a happily ever after.

For the most part, each time I've opened up about this part of myself, I've been met with more love than I could have imagined.

I don't know what happily ever after means in terms of all my relationships.

There are still a lot of unanswered questions in my life.

But I do know, happily ever after means that for the first time since I was that little kid hanging out with Mother Nature, I feel like I'm fully in my skin and living into the truth of who I am.

And that is happily ever after enough, for now.

My wish for you this week is that you experience a sense of happily ever after in the here and now.

My final project for both my Spiritual Direction and Focusing certifications was my hand stitched Cloak of Truths. On the inside, I embroidered my Truths. The photo is one of my Foundational Touchstones.