Tag: Relationships
{blood and years don’t matter}
I’m experiencing deep emotional pain right now. I’m going to acknowledge that, let it be until it leaves, and also keep in mind that I’ve done my very best.
Self-awareness doesn’t mean that you’ll never make mistakes. It means that even if you did, you will pick up on it and respond in a way that best aligns with your highest self.
It also means that you walk away from things and people that take away from you.
Trust me when I say this — it doesn’t matter how long you know someone or if you share a blood relationship with that person.
What matters is how much you and them evolve as people, how you communicate and whether you’re truly there for them.
This year has taught me that no matter how much healing work of acceptance and forgiveness you do, some dynamics never change. You do the work for yourself; so that you can create a life and relationships that are supportive.
It doesn’t excuse their behaviour and all the nasty things they may have done to you, but it frees you from the suffering of it. It frees up time and energy for better things in life.
In the last two days, I’ve reached a completion with two relationships in my life. I am very peacefully convinced that I have tried my best and that I no longer need to keep anchoring the relationships.
I am not longer available for it.
I am letting go, with love, what I thought I shared with them.
❤️
{deep waters}
People can only meet you as deeply as they can meet themselves. If one can’t handle the complexities of your being + experience, they probably can’t handle the complexities of their own.
I’ve learnt to let go of, with love, things and people that no longer serve me.
At first I used to think that my health, apart from taking away things that I loved, took away people I loved. Today, after a decade of dealing with the ups and downs of my health, I’ve realised one important thing: my health is a beautiful filter for all relationships in my life. My relationship with people as well as things. When it takes away, it keeps aside the best of the best.
I’ve lost people I thought I couldn’t live without and also gained people I least expected would show me so much love and understanding. The support and guidance that has shown up in my life in the last four years has been immensely helpful for me to make peace with where I’m at.
I don’t mean to say for a moment that those who are no longer in my life are bad people. But, they were incapable or unwilling to swim in the deep. They preferred the shallow waters. Not everyone’s realities are the same and some of us are more aware of this + willing and capable of accepting it when it comes to people we care about.
My health has also taught me another thing: the importance of healthy boundaries. Drawing boundaries with people is not the same as building walls between you and them. You get to decide who gets to visit the garden you’re growing, how long they stay and what they take with them.
If someone had told me these things years ago, I think I might just have suffered a little less. I would like to think I had to learn these lessons through personal experiences. Looking back, no matter how painful it was to let go of things, people and the idea of a certain kind of life, I would say it has been an eye-opening experience which has now aligned me with a life more supportive of who I am and my reality.
I’ve always believed in quality over quantity in most areas of my life. Today, the people I am surrounded with are those who listen, try to understand and also do their own research when it comes to having a loved one with a life-altering illness. They also trust my experience when I speak about it and we’ve learned to have a more open and honest communication.
Grateful to be back home after spending a day at the hospital. I had a random and severe episode of syncope two afternoon’s back but thankfully nothing life-threatening showed up. The cause remains unclear but from our understanding, it could’ve been anything from dehydration to my gastro symptoms to extreme fatigue.
Thank you to the kind souls who reached out. I feel so loved and care for. A much bigger thank you to those who’ve stood by me through the thick and thin.
❤️
-M
I don’t see a reason why we need to entertain toxicity or things/people who trigger us in our space. I do believe in self-reflection, though, so I make sure to sit with my thoughts for a bit. three things I keep in mind are:
1. People are the way they are for their own reasons and their judgement or behaviour has nothing to do with you. More often than not, it’s a reflection of their own insecurities and sometimes they may not even be aware of it
2. It’s your responsibility to maintain your sanity. Do what needs to be done to protect it, whether that’s to say a clear no or a yes. Show up for yourself.
3. Do the self-reflection. Ask yourself what is triggering to you and why because that’ll give you some insight and show you where work needs to be done.
#friendship
I’ve been practicing setting healthy boundaries for over three years now. Initially, it used to feel scary, the thought of setting boundaries even with your loved ones or those you once loved but over time, I realised that it is okay to feel terrible about it and yet want to draw a line between yourself and anyone else.
It is important to protect your space; both internally and externally. That fear, that terrible feeling which sometimes feels like guilt is usually temporary and when you do in fact start seeing some positive shifts and change from learning to set healthy boundaries, that temporary feeling does disappear. Soon, you experience a very light, freeing feeling. I know this for sure.
I found peace in knowing that I’m doing what I’m doing for my the sake of my well-being and it always seemed worth it.
Setting healthy boundaries in your close and distant relationships is an integral part of self-care. It does not mean that you don’t tend to others. It means that you learn to tend to yourself first. Shifting your focus and attention towards what or who really matter frees up space and energy which can definitely be directed towards other greater things. There were many times in my life when events and situations around me made me feel helpless, as if there was no form of separation between me and others. I found that I was running low on energy for myself and that it was affecting my entire being.
It took me years to learn to set healthy boundaries and say ‘no’, firmly and politely where necessary.
Sometimes I catch myself slipping off my practice as well but I’m quicker to find my space and bring myself to stand my ground. You are allowed to go to any extent to ensure that your peace, solitude and sanity are well taken care of.
Twenty years
I am filled with so much love and gratitude for this place, it’s hard to even express. And despite the fact that the positive emotions I feel for this place almost equal the negative memories I am still working on letting go, my heart aches knowing that I am leaving a place I called home for the last twenty years.
I made mistakes here.
I experienced pain and suffering here. I was young and naive.
I made friends here. Real friends I’m so grateful to have come across.
I fell in love here.
I spent sleepless nights here. Crying, laughing, secretly believing in fairytales.
I made promises here.
I saw dreams here.
I set goals and achieved them here.
I was betrayed here. By near and dear ones, and by strangers.
I learned to protect myself here.
I was diagnosed here.
I fell apart here. Completely shattered into tiny pieces, I couldn’t myself anymore anymore.
I put back myself back together here.
I faced my very own demons, alone, right here.
I learned to trust again here. Myself and people.
I found my medical team here. My support system, without whom I couldn’t have come this far.
I dared to recreate dreams here.
I learned the art of letting go, here.
I finally found my true voice here.
I learned to speak my truth here and encouraged others to do the same.
I learned to be of support and service to the world, right here too.
I came across my tribe, people like me, right here.
I felt safe here.
This is where I wilted and learned to bloom again. This is where I learned to own my story, fully and wholly.
While I can’t lie that recreating a similar lifestyle and routine else where is going to take time and more patience than ever before, I do genuinely believe that it’s not entirely impossible. Somewhere I trust that the process of wilting and blooming over and over again has equipped me with the ability to deal with uncertainties of all kinds and be okay with not knowing.
You know that feeling when you look back and think perhaps everything happened to prepare you for something that is yet to happen? That’s kind of how I feel right now. As if I have levelled up in this game called life and now need to put my skills and tools to use in order to handle the next level; the next phase. There’s a lot I still don’t know but perhaps I am able to find peace in knowing that I have made it through incredibly painful times before and probably can do so in the future too.
Singapore, thank you for all the blessings and lessons.
Look back…
If you ever forget how strong you are, pause for a moment and look back – look at all the times you fell and stood up, not just stronger but courageous enough to try over and over again. Look back at the times you could have shut yourself to love and pain, and built a wall around your heart, but you chose to remain soft and let light in anyway. Look at the times you showed up; for people and yourself. Your story makes only a part of you, and the lessons your learn and how you evolve, make up the rest of you. Ask yourself, “how has my story changed me for the better?” If ever you doubt your strength, your ability to love, your discernment and authenticity to walk your own path, look back… look back and see how far you’ve come. It’ll make it easier to continue moving ahead if you realise how unstoppable you’ve been up till now.
#strength #soft #courage #grow #love #acceptance #life #chronicillness #relationships #chronicillnesswarrior #ehlersdanlossyndrome #hypermobility #friendship #pain #suffering #family #illness #rare #light #journey #pause #unstoppable #keepgoing #faith #trust
#2013
It’s been four years since this photo and yet I get goosebumps just thinking about where I was at, both physically and mentally.
I was falling #sick with a cold or a stomach flu every other week, reacting to medicines which were supposed to help, afraid to be alone in my own bedroom, finding it hard to eat, needing help to wash my hair and sometimes even to brush my teeth, hating on my body for being fragile and weak, struggling to protect myself from people, fighting with school because they had no policies in place for people with medical issues, crying myself to bed every night, falling asleep with a strange emptiness in my #heart, waking up to feeling suffocated, hating on my creativity because I couldn’t pursue it the way I wanted to, feeling like every day was an absolute drag… I was claustrophobic in my own #body and #mind.
I wonder if this photo says any of that.
2013 was the year I knew I was done with everyone and everything around, including myself. Something needed to shift and I didn’t know what or how. All I knew was that life couldn’t possibly feel the way it did. Despite feeling like a hostage to my own #existence, there was a glimmer of #hope, a constant knowing that nothing was going to change until I decided to step up to where #life was heading. Stepping up at that point meant pausing and for once allowing myself to let it all sink in. Nothing was going to be anything like I had once imagined and I had to come to terms with that. I couldn’t distract or push myself anymore and I felt horrible. Who thinks about pausing/stopping at 23, right?
The thing is, some of us reach a point in our lives when we are faced with circumstances so real we simply can’t look away from them. Greater things are at play and our personal plans and effort make no sense. Life keeps finding ways to force us to look at what’s being presented and leaves us with two choices – to keep #suffering by avoiding pain OR to acknowledge pain and learn to #rise from there. #trust #acceptance #health #mentalhealth #pause #rest #recover
Looking back, I suppose there were things I had in 2013 which lead me to be where I’m at today. The daily struggle and fight have definitely added to all that I have become as a person and in some ways I’m grateful for it (not for the fight but for what came out of it). Of course, gratitude seemed like the last thing on my mind at that point in time because I was in this terribly dark space. Practicing and expressing gratitude, learning to accept whole and broken parts of me and making choices that honour my health (both mental + physical) has taken time and conscious work. I still have rough days but I’ve made peace with the fact that harder days are part and parcel of learning to live with a chronic illness. Today, I know better than ever before that while life is capable of giving you 5 reasons to fear, hate, complain, it will give you at least three reasons to trust, love and grow.
My Tape Story 