A few months back on a warm sunny afternoon, my kids went to the playground with friends after school. While playing, a little boy we didn’t know suddenly hit Sami, my 6-year-old. I asked Sami what had happened. The boy had hit her for no reason. After some discussion we realized there had been some misunderstanding. While playing the boy had playfully grabbed Aiko. Sami trying to protected her sister told him to go away. The boy still thinking this was all a game hit Sami. His punch was not meant to hurt her but it did. When his mother came over she immediately started to yell at her son. I lowered down to his level and told him it was ok that I know he didn’t mean to hurt Sami and he was probably surprised by his own strength. The boy went from anger to tears. I could see his mother was taken aback by this and because of my calmness she was able to be more gentle towards him and recognise his fear in all of this. Up to this moment in my life I have not afforded myself the same compassion to recognize that I am not some horrible being but really someone in a great deal of pain and fear. I have brutally chided myself that I should have know better. I am aware that this is not just a feeling I have but we all have. We get wrapped up in this idea that we must be perfect at every turn. That we can never have a bad moment or make a mistake. But this life is for exploration and in every exploration we will take a wrong turn or make a bad choice. When we take those moments to stop and see ourselves through love we are brought to understanding and a place of wisdom and through wisdom we can make better choices.

In writing this blog my feeling of shame arise that this work of self-love was not fully address before, that it somehow takes away from the work I have done with other people or the work I have gone thru myself. But I must remind myself that I did not have the self-love to go deeper to heal the wounds that were causing the choices I made to create my bad moments. I must remind myself that my journey is not to become perfect but to become whole. When we are holding back from expressing ourselves we lock ourselves up. There is no drug or drink or prison that can prevent this stuff from erupting at some point. It is inevitable because we all came here with a voice that needs to be heard. My self-love is helping me to express myself and to find the me that I had locked away for most of my life. I no longer react to situations the way I would have before; shutting down and creating a fight later, or doing something to push that person away from me. That way only led to exploding somewhere else where I didn’t want to.

This journey of self-love is reminding me of the beauty that I am, of the light within me which is within everyone else. It is reminding me to look to my light not my darkness, for darkness is only the absence of light.

With love,

Oskar