Life is all about cycles, just as one ends another begins. Learning to accept each one and to embrace the next, is what will help us thrive in life. We go through many different cycles or transitions throughout our lives, all of them helping to shape us into who we are, who we are becoming. Each one, bringing with it, an opportunity to learn and grow.
Celebrating each cycle, is something that most of us do, in one shape or another, marking the occasion. But we do not always choose the most constructive ways in which to do so. So many times, we turn to the easiest ways in which to celebrate.
Mostly in the form of Alcohol, so that our celebration is one that is cloudy, a foggy memory, where we know we had fun, but in the process, killed a few brain cells along the way.
Not really the best way in which to celebrate. Look at at how young people celebrate becoming an adult, how couples celebrate coming together, how we even celebrate the passing of a loved one or the birth of another. In western culture it is usually always with alcohol.
All of these rites of passages, are sacred, they need to be honoured, but in today's western culture, most people choose to celebrate by getting intoxicated. Because there is this desire to mark the occasion, a natural instinct, that recognises that it is important and yet, we choose to do it in a way, which does us damage. This is not what honour is!
I certainly have been known to celebrate certain milestones, by getting drunk, it seems right to have something in our hands, to raise a glass to the occasion. This is in itself a ritual, a mini ritual in which we come together with others, to acknowledge the passing of time, the new growth, the loss, the birth, or rebirth.
This is one pattern we really need to break. It is one that I have been working on,because with each new cycle, new rite of passage, we need to be fully present. To allow ourselves to really experience and feel what is happening and not drown our emotions. To not be so fearfully about what it is that makes us human!
So much of our lives have been diluted, to the point that we have lost a lot of connection with ourselves. I have spend the last few years working back to that connection, opening myself up and allowing myself to really go through and feel each emotion that comes up.
I have spend far too many years, suppressing certain parts of myself, instead of embracing who I am and what I have been through. Alcohol certainly helps us to do that, it also stops us from reflecting on what we have been through. Preventing us from seizing these opportunities for growth, as an individual and as a community member. Because it is important to celebrate these moments with others, to share and learn together.
This is one of the most powerful things we can do, to come together as a community and support one another. To allow ourselves to be guided by our elders, to allow ourselves to guide.
In the past couple of years, I have experienced my own fair share of loss, losing my sister, separating from my children's father. Having to redefine my role, as a sole parent/mother. Not to mention the whole covid story that we have all experienced, that has brought all of us a lot of loss in many ways. But each of these, have also brought us opportunities.
Opportunities to learn more about ourselves, to realize that our power lies in how we react to life. In the choices that we make, in taking responsibility for our lives and the way in which we live them.
I recently choose to let others guide me on my life (healing) journey and that really opened my eyes up to the gift of community, to the power that comes from asking from help and accepting it! Where before, I always insisted in going it alone because at the end of the day the only person you can really depend on is yourself.
This attitude, stems from being raised by parents who were incapable of being there for me, when I was growing up. Because they never got to break patterns that keep them trapped in their own pain and their own victim hood.
Just being able to recognize, that my parents were incapable of changing, brought me a lot of healing. Perhaps incapable is not the right word, maybe ready is better, because they could have chose differently. But their life did not come with all the opportunities that I had, but then again those opportunities have come from the choices I have made.
The choices that we make, they are what define who we are. The way in which we choose to react to each experience, whether we feed into the fear, or choose to feed love. It is all up to us, we are the creators and that has been my biggest lesson in life. The power I have to create, to honour and celebrate!