“There will never be an ‘us’ if I play small.”

A quote by Sharon Preiss that was on today’s passage in the ‘Book of Awakening’ by Mark Nepo.  I don’t pick it up every day, but some days, intuition or whatever, it is brought into my consciousness and I pick it up from the stack of books.

I loved today’s passage, and so pleased I read it for the 2 minutes it took.

“Hard as it is, we cannot shrink from our relationships or we simply become an audience or gofer for the dominant partner or friend.”

It was only when I started to read ‘I love me’ in July last year, and started my journey to rebuild my self esteem and my back bone to stand up to myself, I started to become less of an audience to my life and the gofer for everyone who was able to see my vulnerable state to want to please.  That few months of self exploration, in hindsight, laid an invaluable hard surface for the ensuing events, rather than a wobbly, uncertain one.  I had started to believe in myself again, my value and perhaps that is why I have been able to refind it again, after it had been ‘lost’.

Martin Buber, a philosopher believed “before there can be a true relationship, there must be two separate beings who can relate.”

I have become my own person again.  I am no longer submissive.

Whereas I used to see us all just as a family, I now see us all as individuals, all connected and all related; our roots connected and intertwined but growing in our own personal way, giving each other the space we need to ‘play big’, rather than suffocating each other to ‘play small’.

It feels good.  It finally feels good to recognise that.  And to recognise that we are outgrowing where we are, our branches spreading higher and farther, rather than being restricted by limits set by ourselves and implied by others.

It feels good to feel the house emptying, ties to the old being released.

It feels good.  It feels good to know our roots are still entwined despite it all.