It's a bundle of contradictions. It's ebb and flow. Give and take. It's cyclical. Not absolute. Subjective and changeable.
What feels good can actually be bad for us. And what feels bad can actually be amazingly good for us.
It's our perceptions, our attitudes, our thoughts, in which we must turn to look deeper.
This is how it was with me this week....
Sadly I had my final coaching session with dear Tara Bliss. This amazing woman has helped to crack me open with her wisdom and intuition. These days I'm living with more and more vulnerability, taking more risks, feeling a raw edginess that's refreshing. In short, I'm playing safe a lot less and living a lot more since working with Tara.
And in the process of this last session, perhaps the most amazing of all, I admitted to myself that my heart is broken. Not by a person or a relationship, but by my love of teaching itself.
Teaching and education call to me and tug at my heart daily, and yet I've trained myself to push it aside, to cover the pain, knowing that I've evolved beyond the teacher that I was - but not knowing what or where to go next. It's been 5 years since I've taught within an institution with any gusto and yet my passion for education is no less diminished.
It's bringing me to tears simply writing this. I MISS teaching in such a visceral, whole-bodied way - I miss the curriculum design, the big discussions, the 'aha' moments with students (so addictive!) and being part of an awesome group of people making a difference in the world.
Without this in my life I've been struggling to live with even a moderate amount of joy.
And the real paradox here?
It was me who ran away. I left the relationship. I could feel my heart starting to be torn as I was heading in one direction and my teaching job was going somewhere else. And so I left, hoping for something better to come up, unwilling to face the pain.
But nothing did come up - to be honest I didn't dream big enough - and now that tear has travelled right through. The break is completed and I'm cracked wide open.
But here's the tricky thing - the gem that Tara helped me uncover...
The pain is raw but being heartbroken is a good thing.
All that joy and motivation for teaching is released again, flooding back into my life. No longer trying to hold it together, I can let it go into new projects and new educationally-focussed dreams. By re-framing my heartbreak into an expanded, raw, open heart I get to live, ironically, with the whole of my heart. And from a wholehearted approach I can only be a better teacher and have more to give to education.
Are you a heartbroken Mama?
Are you carrying around the pain of a love lost?
Can you reframe it? Can you feel that being cracked open is good?
Please, leave a comment below and let us all feel that rawness, 'cause we all got it Mama.
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