On grace and kindness. We are all as vast as the ocean.

I’m grumpy when I stop meditating and/or journaling. I hate that those two practices need to be my daily practices. I wish there were just once off things in life. One therapy session, one journal entry, one meditation session, one glass of water, one workout session, one portion of veggies etc. and you’re sorted for life!

I hadn’t journaled for over a week. I don’t remember the last time I had an hour long guided meditation session which is something I try to do three times a week at least and I could feel it. It starts as this tiny discomfort, I can silence it with noise and/or alcohol. Then it starts getting louder. I start hating everything and anyone and I just know it’s not anyone else but me. I need to do some digging within me and deal with all the things I don’t want to deal with.

This morning was the loudest. I was getting ready for a photo shoot which is my 30th birthday gift to myself. Boudoir photo shoot. Sexy hey. However I was feeling unsexy cos of all the unprocessed thoughts and feelings I was refusing to deal with. I showered thinking one more day of not journaling won’t hurt. After the shower I could feel I was not going to enjoy this photo shoot I was driving 40km away from the city for. So I took out my journal and pen, in my underwear, sat down on the bedroom floor and wrote.

I acknowledged the feelings of inadequacy I had left unchecked. My hurt. My anger. Disappointments. Every negative emotion I had been feeling but refusing to acknowledge. I sat with all those feelings, wrote them down, dissected them and understood finally why I had acted in certain ways which I thought to have been unkind when I could have done better. It was 5 pages long! I then ended with a reassuring note to myself and grace towards myself which I so desperately needed.

Listen, I’m having a good holiday. However, there are certain ugly feelings which have been left out of my holiday highlight reel because they are ugly and therefore not worth an audience. I wrote a collective goodbye letter as blog post to all the friends I chose to part ways with either by telling them straight up that I was done with them or ghosting them. After journaling I realized how unkind that letter was and I deleted it.

Listen, we are ALL doing this life thing for the first time. No one has everything figured out. We are ALL just winging it. So it’s no one’s place to judge anyone for any decision they make because I’d like to believe we all do what we think is best in the moment and when we know better, we do better. There were people I hadn’t afforded their well deserved chances to be human and I felt I needed to correct that.

We’ve all at some point had our own version of sitting on the floor in our underwear, journaling because we just don’t feel worthy of anything. I don’t know what the next person’s version of that is but we have all had and will continue to have those moments for the rest of our lives. Life is hard okay. Just because someone looks happy and appears to have a shiny life it doesn’t mean our assumptions are true.

It made me think of that quote. I’ve definitely been one to survive and talk about it. But right now I low-key want to survive and go silent. And that too is okay. We are all entitled to our processes. I made a conscious decision to be kinder and more gracious towards the people in my life because truly, the ocean is VAST. Whilst somewhere the water is calm, in another place in the very same ocean, there is a colossal storm.

So baby, be a little kinder, a little more gracious. The world desperately needs more of that right now.