I know the urge to drag your finger across the tender seam until it bursts.
To walk down paths you know you shouldn't.
Into rooms your heart is trying to tell you not to wander into because it knows the damage it will have to withstand there.
I know the desire to indulge the darkness because it requires too much effort to hold up your face to the light any longer.
I know you see the pattern in your ways and long to change them.
How tired you have grown of casting your eyes over the aftermath of what has been left in pieces.
What is barren because you could not help but take fear's hand and walk away with it.
I know the hollow you feel,
Seeing the confirmation of every fear brought to life by your own hands.
The untrue thoughts that coaxed you into the corner and convinced you to believe in them.
I know how empty it is to feel that life is escaping you.
All around you but out of your reach somehow.
And when you do get within steps of it your fear adheres your feet to the ground beneath you as your dreams become smaller over the horizon again.
I know it hurts to live in the fold of what you are experiencing and do not want and the life that exists in your moments of peace.
I know the pain of knowing who you are and having those closest to you not experience it because you have been hurt too many times.
To simply allow the light of the surface to expose it.
I know how it feels to wish you could be safe in love but not know how to trust it.
To know you have breathed fresh air and total trust before and long to feel the sun on your face and trust it is kind again.
I know that it feels like there is no fresh place on your heart that hasn't been scarred and wounded and that you at times find it hard to move without any certainty of what is next.
I know that when you think of all of the loss it feels paralyzing with no way to control what's coming.
I know it can be hard to breathe there.
That you reach a place that you decide you can no longer be out here and must return to the shallow ends,
Shallow breaths and remain removed from your deep.
Forgetting there is an unending calm in you.
For fear that you will not have a sight on the surface of what's going on so that you may control it.
I know there are things underneath your surface that you do not love.
The things you try and conceal with the depths and that your efforts to keep them submerged steal your joy and freedom.
I know you look for them sometimes hoping they have dissolved in the tide.
I know you live between these places of deep love and trust and inescapable terror.
I know you can hear the deep that whispers that you can come home and that you want to find where it is coming from.
If only the fear did not clatter and scream to keep you apart from its sound.
If it did not seek to drag you under to the familiar landscape of doubt and pain.
I know when you are there it feels the sun will never again shine through the dust and you fear you'll never outgrow this existence in the tear between the two places.
I know you can see that you spend more time away from here than you used to.
That your face still knows the sun so well it has freckled your heart with hope that one day it will be your last spent in fear.
I know you can feel the cadence of this pattern come out of sync with the echoes of times past and that your visits are fainter in your memory.
I know you recognize now the things that call your heart from living between trust and distrust,
Acceptance and resistance,
Ease and worry,
Faith and fear.
You are human my love,
You are allowed this grace to be in both places,
To come and go freely,
To be whole and wholly lost at times while you wander back home.
You are not wrong because you step off your trail,
You will find your way.
Be gentle to yourself when you find the ground beneath you is only raw wilderness and you have strayed into the dark woods of your being.
Take kind care of your vulnerability when you feel lost.
You are innocent dear one,
The times you stray offer you the chance to love all of the places within you that you would not see without straying.
The places you hide and deem unfit for the surface for being too tangled and too raw for sunlight.
Know sweet one that you are worthy of kindness no matter what place you stand in.
That when you are departed in the darkness you deserve more love.
That where you ache to be loved is where you need it most.
You are where you are now innocently.
Tell yourself what you so long to hear.
That you are deeply loved no matter where you wandered.
As a whole in all of your corners,
All of your cracks,
They are inlaid with gold and you are still one piece.
The moments that you become aware that your cracks filled with gold are what make you more sturdy will replace the days that you thought you had to hide the treasure that isn't clean.
Soon the days you judged yourself for being in the wilderness will come less often and you will find your feet taking fewer steps across the terrain into the depths.
Soon the wilderness will be a reminder that you never lost your way even if you take its hand.
It will assure you that you cannot lose love because you are composed of it.
Your light will always lend itself to where you are and find you gazing again at its face.
Know that it is kissing you and the wholeness of the universe pours itself out to teach you how to love.
Your journey both above and below guide you to this same place.
Close your eyes.
Feel the ease of your breath.
The weight of your eyelids.
Here in this home of your heart both the light and the dark places work to guide you home.
You contain both in the ever expanding experience of who you are.
You are always becoming,
Always moving where you need to move.
Place your hands over your heart and be here now with yourself.
Give yourself permission to be wherever you are.
Let everything around you stay in place and breathe yourself full again.
Know that you are learning to love yourself wherever you are.
This is a practice to bringing yourself through all these places within you while fully enveloped in your own guidance and acceptance.
Lean into its whisper.
Let go of wishing you were anywhere else and gaze at the magic you are awakening to.
How perfect your inner being is to guide you here and that when you let go it is freely able to move you through and trust in yourself.
You have everything you could ever need in your deep and your light.
