Goldie Hawn once said, “The lotus is the most beautiful flower whose petals open one by one.” I strongly relate to the lotus and see myself in its story. As a child, I endured abuse, maintained my strength, and rose above difficulties.
In order to grow and blossom, the lotus seed must have the mud. Like the lotus flower, we all encounter difficulties from which to grow, no matter what our situation in life may be. Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: pain, sadness, fear, loss, illness, and death.
There is no need to think that one kind of pain is worse than another. It all hurts. Who gets to say if your pain is more important than mine? Or mine is more important than yours? At the end of the day, we all experience the same pain. We simply receive the pain in different ways. All of life must have some amount of suffering. What counts are not the obstacles themselves, but how we respond to them.
“The true wonder of life is making something beautiful out of the muck.”
For as long as I can remember, I have had an inner knowing, a space within my body that tells me if something is true or not. At the same time, my life was determined by the people who were abusing me. I was so often confused because the inner knowing did not match what others were telling me—the very people who were here to love and take care of me. I was told that what I was experiencing was love, yet I didn’t feel that inside. My early life showed me that my inner knowing must be wrong and the outside world must be right.
Most of my life, I sought outside myself to understand my truth. I struggled to know when I was sick and needed to get help, when a relationship felt funny or didn’t line up with my inner knowing, or when I was pushing my body past the breaking point. I was in constant conflict as I navigated life and love.
Most of us hide from our muck—our “darkness”—out of fear, perpetuating our experiences and feeling disconnected from who we truly are. We look outside ourselves for answers, truth and validation. You ultimately hold all the answers. Through a willingness to get curious and to share what we find, we can regain our life power—our light.
It has taken me many years to know where my safe place is—where my inner knowing and decisions line up. Now, I can see how I am hardwired to stand in truth and help direct others back to their own. How do we get to the place where we can stand in our truth unwavering? To not seek outside ourselves for the answer? Not to need validation in order to believe in our own dreams? Even when we are triggering others’ insecurities, how do we not waver in who we are? How do we come back to ourselves? Questions like these guided me to begin asking even deeper questions and, eventually, emerge from the muck in order to better hear the voice within.
When I started to listen to this voice, not the fear of the world, I started to see life in a new way—a beautiful way. Learning to listen to our inner knowing is a lot like learning to walk. We fall, we get back up. We don’t listen, then we do.
As I made my way through the mud that was left by my past with love and curiosity, I found the importance to stand in my truth despite my doubts. To own my crazy. To listen to my inner self. To face the crud that would play on my fears—like when I see myself as an outsider, or feel that I am not liked or loved, or don’t feel enough, or fear that I might outshine another, or fear they feel I may be stealing their thunder.
My resolve has been tested many times as I learned to stand in my truth despite what others think, to rise above the mud when fears are lurking around every corner, to shine my light despite how others might feel.
For many years, I turned to others to guide me and then became lost or sidetracked. I would listen to others and the amazing things they had to say—but I took their words as the ultimate truth, the end-all be-all. I have since learned I need to reflect on what is said and see what is true for me. I have learned to seek out my own inner knowing and ask questions in order to find my way.
We can look to others for guidance, but we must then return to what is true for us. This can be quite difficult, especially for those of us who live on a foundation of fear and trauma. So how do we do this? We start building a foundation of love by allowing our inner knowing to guide us. We come back home to ourselves.
The purpose of this blog is to help you do just that. My desire is to help you find your way through the mud in order to uncover your gold, your gems, your blossoming lotus. I am here to help you look within, feel out your gifts, understand your purpose for this life, and regain your light. If I can do it, anyone can.
Anyone can do what they have been called to do. What are you passionate about? What do you feel that you are being called to do? How bad do you want it? No matter how thick the mud might seem, you are worth living—and living out that calling within you, that thing that lights you up and excites you, that which you are naturally good at. I can’t tell you what it is, only you can. You don’t have to have the same story or gifts as me; my purpose is to point you back to yourself.
Being led to our greatness starts with facing our darkness. I learned that as I faced my past, I exposed it, owned it, and then was able to release it. There were many times when I felt undeserving of such greatness and questioned myself: “Who am I to have the life that I have imagined?” One day, the answer came quietly from within:
“At your truest core, you are worthy. The very fact that you dream it and want it is proof that you are worthy of it. The vision and longing has been given to you directly from the Divine through your inner self. It wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t meant to be realized. We are only attracted to the things of our deepest longings.”
So often we judge our inner voice and inner longings. How can we own our greatness when we are caught up in worry, judgment, and the muck of it all? Are you ready to leave judgment at the door and look at your deepest desires and listen to your inner voice with an open heart of compassion and love?
I am choosing the voice inside more and more each day. Taking what I’ve learned over the years, I want to help you get acquainted with your gut feeling and to listen, once again, to that inner knowing. Life with your Self (call it God, Divine, Universe) has direction and purpose. Life without your Self is meaningless.
As I have gotten reacquainted with my inner knowing and what I am here to share with the world, I am faced with looking at all the things I have been through in this life. Sometimes I have to take a step back and acknowledge myself for my strength and courage to keep growing. I did not allow the elements on the outside to define me. I stayed securely anchored in my beliefs and values and, like the lotus, emerged from the darkness. I continued to grow until I rose above the fear and sorrow that defined my early years. I am finally starting to understand the cross that I was asked to bear. The life I endured has a purpose—and so does yours.
I am here to be a lighthouse—to shine light in the darkness. I am here to hold you up and validate your experience while directing you back to your own soul to find the answer. I am here to listen to and honor your stories, to encourage you to own them, just as I have learned to do with mine.
“Each of us is a gift—not just the light parts, but also the parts that appear so dark.”
The suffering that surrounded my early life provided the motivation to do what I now do. In that respect, my story resembles that of the lotus, which uses its muddy surroundings to grow into something beautiful. The lotus flower, which gave me inspiration during the roughest times, now serves as a permanent reminder of hope. If we desire to rise above and gain more wisdom, more kindness, and more compassion, we can look to the lotus for inspiration to rise above the mud and open our petals one by one. May we all find the lotus flower of our inner heart.
As the anonymous spiritual teacher, Anon I Mus, wisely noted, “Out of the mud of your fears, struggles, pain, and confusion, the lotus flower of your inner heart will spontaneously grow.”