SPREADING MY WINGS

April 29, 2011

I hate criticism. I mean the small niggling, fussy-mussy criticism, which thinks it can improve people by telling them where they are wrong, and results only in putting them in strait-jackets of hesitancy and self-consciousness, and wizening all vision and bravery. I hate it because of the potentially shining, gentle, gifted people of all ages that it snuffs out every year. - Brenda Ueland -

I am guilty of living and breathing just this sort of criticism. It was my nourishment growing up - it is what has held me in just such a strait-jacket of fear and doubt and self-loathing all my life. And because it is in the very cells of my body, it naturally is what I speak and breathe into my environment and into the people I love most. For this I am grieved and sorry. For understanding this, now, I am grateful. For becoming free, I am hopeful.

It seems that for all of us, great pressure is coming to bear on those areas in our lives that do not serve us in a healthy or loving way. I feel the Light shining on me...and I have the choice each day, to respond or to hide. When the Light shines on chaos and dysfunction and mucky yucky swampy stinking stagnant debris inside of me, I can choose to celebrate and get out the tools necessary to clean it up and clean it out so that Love can flow. Or, I can choose to succumb to my feelings of shame and despair at my despicable self and run and hide in my Cave in my personal swamp.

I've been doing this dance between the Light and the Cave for nearly 20 years now (well, really, my whole life...but...). The dance has become boring. I want freedom and healing. I want to spread my wings and soar into the skies, filled with Joy, riding the waves of Light, able to Love from that deep place inside me.

The lessons have come 'round again. This time I choose to persevere. This time I choose to finish the course. This time, I am spreading my wings and taking the skies. Watch me fly!