Timing is not everything, there is always a choice

Original photo from Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii

Today is my birthday; I have made fifty-eight oblong trips around the sun. Today I am choosing peace.

There is a lot going on around me right now. My mom, age seventy-six, is in the hospital again for about the fourth time in as many months. There are so many things on her chart at this time that I asked her if she was playing a bizarre hospital bingo, looking for the black out.

I have been at the hospital lots in the past eleven days and today I am choosing not to go. As an empath, the hospital is a lot for me to take in. In my mom’s current state, she is focused on dark stories from the yesteryears of her life and today I need a break.

I am choosing peace.

My greatest wish for her is that she would let the old stories go, forgive herself, maybe forgive or at least seek to understand the actions of others and find peace. I wish for her to find peace wherever she chooses to, in this life or the next. I love her enough to let her go if that will help her find peace. It must be torture to replay the worst parts of one’s life non-stop but not remember that her grandson was there the day before.

I woke up this morning at four, anything but peaceful. The habit of shoulding on myself had kicked into high gear. The night before, as I settled into the pillow my husband told me he had forwarded me two things to watch on Instagram. He wanted me to go to my hub of harmony, the room I see clients in that is filled with plants, crystals, books, and love to watch them first thing; they were the best gift he could have given me; reminders to choose myself, to choose peace, and that it was okay to take my birthday away from the draining environment that is the hospital.

I am choosing peace.

“Empathy has to be taught in two parts; how to put yourself in someone’s shoes and see the hurt they were given that made them to hurt you, and how to understand that you still don’t deserve what they are doing.” @theselflovequest on IG

I do not know if this link will work for the full video. It talks about letting down boundaries resulting in “being a safe house for someone else’s demons”. I can no longer do this. I must protect my own energy, wellbeing, and mental health. This requires a careful balance of being there in my mom’s time of need and keeping my peace.

I firmly believe that loving MYSELF is not selfish. It is self-care. If I am filled with love from the inside, it will spill out into everything I touch and everyone I meet. There is no big hole in me that needs to be filled by someone else. Because that (w)hole will never be filled with food, sex, money, stuff... It can only be filled when I find me, forgive me, accept me, and love me. It's almost full... there is a little mommy gap there that I patch but the patch falls in... I will continue to add layers of love until it is sturdy enough to paint the colours of my chosen life upon and that they will hold.

Today I am choosing peace.