How to heal from within

Energy. It’s everywhere around us and in every one of us. It’s flowing within the ocean waves, twirling when fallen leaves make way for new ones, beaming when we dance to our own crafted playlist. It’s a constant rise and fall on the rhythm of our heartbeat. It’s in each inhale and each exhale. Its presence is impossible to ignore and one that can tell you more about how you carry and take care of yourself.

Unfortunately, it’s not easy to let energy flow as how it should flow in this society. Energy can flow when we can express ourselves authentically. But as we age and move through life, there comes restraints and a lot of situations where we don’t feel safe anymore to express. Still, emotions that we feel and arise from our frustration, from anger, from sadness, and even happy emotions – should flow through our natural body, and out to the natural world. Only through this way are we able to properly go through whatever we are going through at that moment. It doesn’t even have to be something big, it’s about how you feel about it. It’s about setting boundaries when you feel like someone is overstepping yours, whether they meant to do it with intent or not. We can’t be understanding of everyone’s point and making our own self as an exception. That is just not something a self loving person should do, because

You are the vocal point of yourself, you are your own home base.

Understanding and acceptation starts within yourself, it’s a non-starter if everyone comes before you, because then you will get damaged before you are even aware of it. Then, we fall behind before we even have the chance to advance ourselves.

Energy that we don’t express stays in our body. Period.

When we feel angry with someone and gulp down the words we want to say, that same anger finds a place within, rummaging around, looking for another source to let out the steam. Anger has become your unwanted house guest. The same happens when we feel like we want to say no to someone but do not dare to. Even with positive energy, when we feel joy and want to share it but fail to do so – that same feeling of wanting to share your happiness get diminished and make its roots in our veins. Another unwanted house guest makes it way to our heart.

If you don’t do anything about it, it will lead a life on its own, growing more restless and restless as time goes by.

Until your whole body feels stagnated and cloudy because of all the unexpressed feelings you once had. It takes time and awareness to get them to move out of your home. If we put a stop to our tendency to please others and start to give respond to our own needs, that’s when healing start to appear. At first, it will feel like the hardest thing you will have to do, and giving up seem to come with more ease. It will probably take a lot of attempts to even jump start the whole thing. But atleast energy will be moving, and with movement always comes growing pains and change. It is healing from within by turning your attention outwardly by learning to express your opinions, your boundaries, your stories and all what makes you you.

What comes after is what it is all about, and that is coming back to ourselves in the purest form.

Flowing with the energy within and outside of you.

From the woman who rambles through life

To considerate yourself every step on your way

There are only certain feelings you are able to understand after some time have passed. We all have read about love, all different kinds of love; romantic, platonic, religious, unconditional and the list goes on and on. They all have someting in common,

Which is to love, is to considerate.

Consideration is not a word you will use often or even say a lot, because it has this subtle nuanced feeling to it that is hard to master, or even to practise. It takes real courage and strength to considerate one another without overstepping your own boundaries. And it’s even harder to put this kind of love towards yourself, because with consideration- it includes feelings of forgiveness, acceptance and careful presence.

The ones who have found the magic of consideration are the ones equiped to find peace within themselves, no matter what they have gone through in life.

Those who have got slapped with cold splashes of rejections, snapped like a twig and laughed at as if you are the clown of another man’s show.

Those who began to hesitate or even become afraid to take up space to show the world who they are.

But time always soften the air and harden your power. And you also will, and I definitely am.

So, don’t store away your love, your consideration. Don’t kill your singing soul and mute your dancing voice. Because one thing is always certain: you will never need something or someone that was not yours to begin with, to validate you in any way. But you yourself- you have accompanied yourself since day zero. The day you were born. So take a good look at yourself and validate that reflection.

Tell the recital of your heart to yourself, and let the praises echo all down your gut.

Time always soften the air and sharpen your willingness into care.

So care. A lot. And don’t stop caring. Care for yourself, so at one point on in life, you will understand the feeling of true consideration. So you would apply it on every step on your way.

The woman who rambles through life

How writing poetry is one of the best things to express myself

I started writing poetry four years ago. Before, I only have written blogposts and longer essays, so to switch to poetry has been quite interesting for my writing journey so far. Overall, writing is all about self-expression, putting one’s thoughts on paper, extracting the essence from within into the external world. It’s a solidair practice that asks for an ability to sit still with yourself and to form your own voice. That voice has always been within you, it’s just with writing that it comes out of your physical self.

Writing poetry adds another layer to it in my experience. It’s a balance of artistry and authenticity. A beautiful play of the inside and outside world. My heart always feels full after having a piece of my voice written down in poetry form. Because it takes a beautiful mind to write beautiful poetry. It takes deep lingering thoughts to write layered poetry. It takes a bright soul to write soulful poetry. It takes deep digging into my own self to be able to turn it into a piece of art, to understand myself even more.

I think you can only fully experience feeling alive by being honest with yourself. And that’s what writing poetry or writing in general does to me. It makes me feel safe to write, to encourage myself more to be in tune with the inner voice that has been with me all this time.

It makes me want to do my best and show up for myself, just to discover how my next piece of poetry will show up for me.

I can’t stop writing even when I try, and nor can I pretend to be someone else with a different voice. And why would you want to pretend to be someone else, to pretend to have different thoughts?

In the end, it’s just me and my own wandering thoughts. And I am so grateful that I have taken upon myself to write, it’s one of the best things to have helped me to express myself, thus feeling more alive than ever on this peculiar, magnificent place of Earth.

The woman who rambles through life

Fruits reaped from the soil

Everything we encounter in life: our experiences, the people we meet along the way, are like fruits reaped from the soil. Sometimes it feels like our life is stagnating, as if we are looking at the same view every single day. However, even during these moments, we are gathering pieces of crops from past seasons. All of us experience joyful blessings, mundane moments, and sadly, also chaos and crisis. Whether you are having a blooming, an unpromising or even a decaying harvest this season – I hope you will embrace it, take it home with you, and make the best out of it. To take apart the rotten pieces and learn from it, to surrender to adversity and wholly appreciate the flourish.

The first step in healing is to admit you’re not doing okay

October is mental health month but it’s an important topic personally for me as I too struggle with my own mental health. 

With the ongoing covid pandemic, I guess it gives us an extra kick in the gut and puts a mirror before ourselves on how everything just feels like shit all the time. As much as we love to hide it and put up our well presented face to the world – it doesn’t really help to become better mentally. 

I have always been writing about feelings, emotions, our inner world but I never really properly wrote a piece that’s dedicated to mental health even though I have been working on it on a daily basis. I guess I too have been hiding behind my writings and pretend everything looks slightly better online than in real life. But the truth is, I don’t want to hide anymore. I have been struggling now for a long time, and just recently learned to put more focus on myself. 

But I’m not the only one, I’m sure of that. As I’m writing this, there are countless people suffering in silence. Social media especially doesn’t make it easy to be open about our struggles, because it always shows all the highs of people’s lives. You’re never sure what to expect when you start to get vocal about your internal battles. You might lose friends – or even family, because the things you will share will be heavy, uncomfortable and require a certain amount of empathy, patience and compassion to be able to comprehend the complexity of your mental state. It’s likely so that you don’t even understand half of it yourself, let alone someone else. That’s why we hide, so we don’t put ourselves at risk that it will get even worse, that we might end up alone in the end. 

But the thing with healing is – it only gets better when it gets worse first. Like physical wounds, it will get more painful first before it can get better. Because of its invisibility of mental health, it makes it much more difficult to know, when do you actually get better and how does that work then? There is no one clear answer and not one method that works for everyone. But one thing I’m sure of and that is

You can only heal when you first start to admit you’re not doing okay

That in itself is extremely difficult to do, but once you have overcome the feelings of shame, of your own ego and all that blocks you from healing, you will finally admit to yourself “I’m not okay”. If you have reached that point – be so proud of yourself because it will be half the battle. There is so much strength in that that shows willpower for betterment. That’s not nothing. And that is exactly the confirmation that you need – that in times of self-doubt, remind yourself that you are strong for taking the first step in healing. 

Just because you’re afraid to lose people doesn’t mean you need to lose yourself first to keep those same people around by keeping silence, by hiding for your own battle. 

You come first, always

Read this if you just feel like everything is insanely pointless

So many things we do in life could be considered to be pointless. Many of us have learned to set goals for ourselves to plan for the future. As time only is limited, we tend to do things that are higher on the priority list, than to just do ‘’pointless’’ activities.

And so, everything that has no direct connection to our goals, become pointless.

When we relate everything with our goals, day-to-day activities began to feel pointless. Living in the present becomes harder and everything in between just feels unnecessary.

Since when is it only worth living life when it is tied on the mere fact of productivity? All the things you feel like is pointless, are things that we shouldn’t take for granted. All the things we seem to think are pointless, only shows how privileged we are. It only shows how grateful we should feel to be able to think that something is pointless.

Especially in these uncertain times, ‘’pointless’’ things are the things that keep us afloat.

It’s those same things that keep us going when everything else you thought was stable, wasn’t so stable after all. It’s what keeps us sane during the day. Not everything we do has to have a point. But if you do seek for reasons why we shouldn’t avoid doing pointless things, it’s because it makes us human. Unlike animals, we don’t have to do everything to survive. And that in itself is a gift we all have and should be grateful for.

We are privileged enough to have hobbies for enjoyment and to do nothing another moment just because we can. So, we shouldn’t take that for granted. We shouldn’t have to be so strict on ourselves every second of the day. We are placed in this world to live, to enjoy the little things, and to do stupid pointless things to make memories. And that’s something worth living for, the fact that we can make memories with the people we love while doing pointless things together.

The fact that you feel like that everything is insanely pointless is because you are not at that point yet where you can see the things that you have manifested during those ‘’pointless’’ moments.

Take a moment and think how all of our lives would be if we stop doing all the things that won’t lead to more productivity and work. It would be pretty boring, right? Life shouldn’t be all play but it’s so applicable for the other way around. Which means life shouldn’t be all work. We shouldn’t have to analyze and dissect everything we do or what we are planning to do. Sometimes letting go of control is just what you need to live in the present and stay mindful to appreciate all that the day has in store for all of us.

From the girl who rambles through life 

Forgive, but never forget

Emotionally healing is a complex and confusing journey. It does not have a linear process and it’s definitely not a one-fits-all approach. There are times when you think you made it to the other side only to get dragged right back into the tangled web of your own consciousness. A lot of this back and forth behaviour says a lot of where one stands in this emotional healing process. ‘’Letting go’’ is a phrase I’m sure lots of us have heard about. In order to move on with life, one needs to let go. But let go of what exactly?

Once you start to heal, you will travel back into your own past life, seeing fragments of your past playing out before you. Especially and sadly, only the fragments that have been traumatizing and haunting you until this day. Those fragments you still remember vividly, including all the dialogues that have been said or not have been said that have partially led you in this today’s state of mind.

What we deem to do what seems logical to heal from those experiences, is to erase those fragments forever out of our system.

Been there, done that. However, that’s not and will never be an approach that will help yourself to heal from your wounds.

Because we have lived in the past, we have experienced those things in reality. We have been at those moments, microseconds away before it made permanent damage to us. It has been intertwined with our lives, it has been connected to us at some point. Which means we can’t deny that it never happened to us. You can’t possibly live a life erasing things on your way when things or people don’t go your way. Pretending everything is okay only goes so far as your body remembers trauma. It remembers every fibre of fear that has ever been triggered. Healing starts when you allow space to lay out all the fragments of your life and being okay with it. Yes, even the bad ones.

Healing goes further into another layer that requires the act of forgiving.

It’s not the first thing what comes in mind when let’s say some people of your past were once hurtful towards you, then why would you ever be so kind to them by forgiving them? Because forgiving is not per se an act towards others, in this case, it’s an act of kindness towards yourself. You owe it to yourself to forgive and to let go. The emotions that keep us from healing are those that keep interfering with us if we don’t forgive those who are still has a say in distressing us at the most random moments in our day-to-day life.

It’s anger that keeps us from healing. It’s the sadness that keeps us from healing. It’s the feeling of disappointment that keeps us from healing.

Most importantly, it’s the wrath that keeps us from healing and keeps us from living in the present.

It goes without saying that this also implies forgiving yourself. We are always hardest on ourselves, beating ourselves up for even the most mundane mistakes.

If we try to forgive, we allow ourselves to enter into a space of inner peace. Within that space, we can see the days ahead of us as an opportunity to heal and evolve, rather than to get stuck in the past, reliving the moments that have crushed us.

Forgive, but never forget.

From the girl who rambles through life 

 

 

Life is not only deadlines and to-do-lists

Somehow we have this idea that we got all the time left on this planet. You can see it in the way how some people live their lives, moving along the flow and never taking on control over their own time. You wouldn’t think living would be such a difficult thing to do when you were once a carefree kid, roaming down the streets and exploring the corners of your neighborhood. We were all once pure, lively spirits, all living in the moment. But then, adulthood came and living in the moment became so much harder than before. Over time, we got conditioned to think that we are only allowed to live once we have all our goals sorted out and perfectly executed.

Which means that in between, we are not really living, but checking off to-do-list after to-do list.

The problem with this way of thinking is that it’s easy to get spiralled down into a rabbit hole of even more to-do lists. This is because once we have achieved a task, we would feel accomplished for a moment. So what do we do to make ourselves feel that way again? We do it again and again. Eventually, this way of thinking will get ingrained in our system, by thinking that having more things done will lead to a better future and life.

By thinking that doing anything that has an aspect of Return on Investment will give us more allowance to finally start living.  

The only person that is stopping you from living your life is yourself. Since the day you were born, you were allowed to live. Not the day after you have graduated. Not the day you get your long-awaited promotion. Not the day after you have achieved all your childhood dreams. I’m not saying don’t invest in anything that holds dear to yourself. I’m not saying don’t have any goals, because if you put yourself in a situation that you only got time to survive, then it’s not ideal either.

The keyword is balance.

There is no deadline that you need to hand in before you can finally get through the gate of life. No, you are already in it. This is it. Stop waiting and start living. Don’t put off living just because certain things haven’t aligned with each other yet. What does it mean when things will never really aligned just the way you have imagined it would be? Would you wait forever to finally take the first step to let go and start living?

Remind yourself how it was to live as a child. Do things without thinking about what you could get in return. Do things out of sheer joy. Do not only focus on things that can advance you in your career or in your personal gain.

Life shouldn’t be constant hustle where you need to weigh in the pros and cons before you do something.

Life is not always mendable and that in itself is something beautiful. Because the unknown and unexpected can teach us to truly live, it can teach us to live without fixed patterns and restrictions.

Through this way, we all will become more grateful for the days granted to us instead of taking life for granted.

Stop waiting, start living.

From the girl who rambles through life 

It will pass when it passes

Breath, this will pass

This is for those who have its portion with bad luck and hopeless days. For those who have troubles getting out of bed each day and those who don’t seem to see the use in life anymore; this is for you.

Life seems even harder to live by when it hasn’t been your day, month or even year. It’s hard to stay hopeful when nothing really works out how you have planned out to be. We all are winging life as we go through phases of warmth and love and empty phases of loneliness. It’s the sunny days that we all long for all year long, but it’s the dark days that can teach us something to make us into a more resilient person. Each day is a new chance again to take on the challenges that life throws at us. And even obstacles in which we can’t seem to overcome within a certain period that we put ourselves on it – it doesn’t matter.

Life flows as it flows,

though sometimes some people have more luck than others – it doesn’t mean that the Universe has something against you. It doesn’t mean everyone is out to get you. We are only able to see things from our own perspective, hence thinking that there must be something wrong with ourselves when we go through some traumatic experiences. And no matter how horrifying and devastating those situations are, it will eventually pass.

Slow down for a bit, breath, this will pass.

For the sake of your own well-being, you should let go of things that have hurt you in the past. You should be able to let things pass in a way that it could serve you in a healthy way. Be angry when you need to lash it out, but don’t stay angry forever – it will pass. Be disappointed when you have miscalculated your expectations towards certain people, but don’t stay disappointed forever while others have probably already have moved on with their life.

Be and feel anything that you need to feel in order to properly progress what has happened, but don’t stay forever in that space where you don’t allow yourself to pass on with your life.

You are not doing anyone a favor by letting old wounds pass. Instead, you are doing it for your own sake, you are doing yourself a big favor.

Breath, whatever you are going through now, this will pass.

It will pass if you allow it to pass. It will pass if you pass off your ego and the belief that you are a victim in life. Because you are not. You have control of your life, maybe not everything that happens. But you do have your perception of life in hand by deciding to believe that everyone goes through stuff. And that you go through the same too in another context. It doesn’t mean you can’t feel demotivated by it when can’t seem how to navigate through this messiness. But don’t drown yourself in a pool of self-pity, because everything eventually will pass.

It will pass when it passes.

So give yourself a pat on the shoulder, be proud of the things that you have overcome. All good things may come to an end, but please remember, it goes the same with those moments you wish you could erase and pretend it didn’t happen.

Breath – this too will pass.

From the girl who rambles through life 

 

Avoiding negativity won’t make you into a positive person

I’m sure all of us strive to be a positive person eventually. With 2019 almost coming to an end, new resolutions will be made again, each goal to help us get closer to become our own best version of ourselves. That includes becoming more positive in our skin as well, that goes of course without saying.
When positivity becomes a focus, it is logical to not attract negativity to practise positivity in life. But there is a fine line between attracting negativity and avoiding negativity and it is precisely that very fine line that determines if you are walking towards a brighter future or a slightly grimmer one.

So when exactly do we know if we are doing the correct thing? You will know if you are attracting negativity because the consequences will show it to you. Attracting negativity is something you do within your own control.

It is seeking unnecessary drama that put you into a spiral of more negativity.

It is filling our life in with white noise because we can’t seem to satisfy ourself with the quiet around us. It’s quite clear that by doing this, it won’t help you to become a positive person at all.

On the other hand, avoiding negativity doesn’t necessarily turn you into a positive person. It also depends on what kind of negativity it is and if that personally influences you. If you pile up problems on problems that affect you in your day-to-day life and don’t voice it out, it is sure that you will reach a certain point that your bucket will get full and a single drop can make you spill out everything you have been holding in all that time.

By making a space for your obstacles, you make it visible and a part of yourself.

By making space for a conversation, the obstacles reached into a safe space where embarrassment and feelings of shame can find their way out. By making it visible, you will live side by side with your struggles, but meanwhile also finding the courage to make it better for yourself.
By giving your “negativity” space instead of avoiding or hiding it, you are admitting that it’s not going so well, and yes it totally sucks, but it also means that you got to a point that you are willing to face it with your head kept high.

From that point on, keep your head high and your heart in a good place, because your baggage can only get you down for so long, but by confronting it – you are giving yourself a chance to work it out this thing called life. Avoiding negativity won’t only make you into a positive person, it makes you into an even more negative person as well. And because hiding will become a comfort at some point, it only will get harder each time to open the door and face the cutthroat cold that forces you to see the truth – your truth.

Negative energy won’t just disappear just because you don’t talk about it or pretend it doesn’t exist.

Negativity, in general, is still a stigma that has not been talked about enough. Instead, we hear that we need to get over it to become happy. But isn’t that “getting over” part really means to face it instead of jotting it down into a bottle and throw it away into the far ocean where you hope your secrets won’t ever get revealed? I don’t know about you, but I have avoided enough so far and I think it’s finally time to break some taboos in the new year! Here is to making space for conversations that are so so needed to make this world and the people living in it – so much better than before.

From the girl who rambles through life