I am sitting at my kitchen table, staring deep into these big beautiful sunflowers I bought yesterday at the farm. I am waiting for the oven to pre-heat so I can cook my daughters hands. Don’t worry, the clay kind. We did this make your own hand mold clay project the other day. They have been sitting on the countertop for days and finally I asked, “why haven’t these solidified?” Whelp, because I didn’t read step 12: Bake them.
Oh.
Right.
So, here I am on a Thursday morning, eating a yogurt, preparing to bake my daughters clay hands. Truly, it’s about the follow through in all things, and sometimes that requires us to follow directions.
If I have learned anything over the years it is that self-trust is built upon the foundation of predictability. If we learned that love is hot and cold, and let’s face it, most of us did, then self-love must become consistent.
How do I create a loving home for my daughters where love flows like an open river, free of debris of any kind? I create it for myself. I show up for what I say I am going to do, and I do it. It’s not meant to be glamorous, though some days it can be. Like the divinity of these sunflowers, or the chatter of the birds outside the window, or the refreshed feeling of a cool shower on a hot summer’s day. It is flawless; presence.
We expect a lot from ourselves on this journey, especially healing endeavors of any kind. We think a return to love will be easy, as if removing boulders doesn’t take labor. It does. We have been conditioned to have unrealistic expectations of self-discovery. Sometimes instead of appreciating what we uncover and learn about ourselves we ask instead, “but what will this get me?”
We ask this, as if the journey is not enough. We ask this when we ought to be asking, “how does this make me feel?” “Does this awareness bring me more peace in my life?” “Is there a feeling of wholeness in my body?” We must stop making it about the chase to find treasure. Not all gold is meant to be retrieved, but rather embodied. It is meant to simply glow.
Love is consistent, it is unconditional. Transactions are not love. We still have a tendency to do that with ourselves when that is what we learned, don’t we? Maybe we have cleared away those relationships in our lives that are only based on exchange, but we must pull up the root within ourselves that makes us do that within. The if, then. It takes away from being. It takes away from allowing ourselves to be ourselves. To move, to float, freely along thing journey.
I said to a friend the other day, when we were talking about healing work, “I don’t know. I think the more healing I thought I did, the closer I would come to knowing. The more answers I would have. But the truth about healing is that it simply makes us more and more okay being in the unknown.” This. Moving with more ease and love into the unknown. Because that is where new experiences exist. That is where I wish to dwell these days. In the presence of the unknown. And I think, following through, and showing up for my love is exactly the path that will lead me there.
See you out there.
Let’s rise,
ah
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