Love Is A Mess

Love Is A Mess

Love is a mess
I said to my friend
She agreed, nodding her head
It’s disruptive, untidy and sometimes unclean
It will completely mess with your head

First you’re up
And then you’re down
It’s not like the fairy tales
Those sweet stories didn’t account
For the vagaries of male and female

And what about the pain we inflict
On the dear ones who we love
We do it so carelessly
Love doesn’t always feel sent from above

Sometimes it rises from the bowels of hell
It tears your soul in two
Before the next second lifting you up so high
And filling you through and through
With a lightness so golden
And so incandescent
You wondered how you did without
All its glory and boundless joy
It turns you inside out

Then there’s the errors
The plain misunderstandings
We don’t know how to correct
Instead we watch our lover unravel
Sometimes not even sure what we’ve said

We screw it all up
We throw love away
Even when we desperately want it
We crave another’s touch
Yet turn away
We think they couldn’t possibly want it

We’ll go out and sleep with so many others
Who’ll never come to close to our heart
Yet avoid talking to the one who does
For fear they’ll tear us apart

We’ll be struck down so maudlin
Then lifted so high
With hope coursing through our veins
Then in the next second we’ll plummet on down
And hit the dirt again

And for those who shake their heads
And say
Come now
Love is so simple
I challenge you to look at the truth, my friend
I know that love ain’t that simple

It twists and turns
Its trails unexpected
Sometimes rocky and sometimes so smooth
Just when you think you’ve got it all worked out
It’ll throw you out of your groove

Roller coasters, jumps
Endless joy and succor
You’ll feel like you can fly
Before explosions make you less secure
You might feel like you could die

But what you learn
Along the way
Is really so very delightful
Unconditional love looks at you
And doesn’t see the potential minefield
It cares not for the past
Or the challenges that have been
It sees only what is possible
The love within
The crazy impossible dream
It doesn’t believe anything’s impossible

It sees past your flaws
Those dents and grazes
You think are so very unsightly
Even when you feel like it’s darker than pitch
It still sees the sun shining brightly

Love is a mess
A glorious mess
And I’ll take it every day
Over the safety of living without, my friend
You know
I’ll take it every day

The Moon and the Stars

The Moon and the Stars

She called for the stars
He gave her the moon
He gave ‘til there was no more to give
But she didn’t see
She was looking at the stars
She hadn’t known how to forgive

She didn’t know
Had never worked out
That the moon and the stars combine
To light up the heavens that stretched above
And she’d had both all the time

The stars were hers
She put them there
She didn’t need the stars from him
But he held the moon
Which she also needed
And it was offered to her by him

An exchange though
Must be completed
There was a transaction that was involved
He would give the moon to her
While she’d give so many stars untold

He could hold them in his hands
Or scatter them all around
They were her precious gift to him
They could never be pulled down

Between them both they could light the sky
And transcend the heavens above
All that was needed was trust and love
To create the beauty above

So he stood there with the moon in his hands
And she had her sack of stars
Could they trust enough to make the exchange
And heal their previous scars

She was ready
And so was he
Their hands were stretching out
It was time to leave all doubt behind
And discover what true love is about

Relationships and needs: Are you seeing what’s right in front of you?

Relationships and needs: Are you seeing what’s right in front of you?

I’ve been talking to a lot of clients and friends lately about relationships and getting our needs met. Sometimes those relationships are with our love partners, other times they are with our friends, work colleagues or family members. Wherever we go in life we are ‘in relationship’ with someone and the smooth running (or not) of these is dependent on meeting or, at the very least, acknowledging the needs of the other person.

It seems to me those needs are things that a very specific for every individual. Whether they are the result of nature or nurture (or a combination of both), I can’t be sure. But we all have them and, when they’re being ignored by the person we’re in relationship with, things go downhill very quickly.

One of the most obvious examples of this is in a love relationship. If Person A needs some kind of structure and security to feel safe and happy in a relationship, and their partner (Person B) doesn’t have those same core needs and doesn’t acknowledge/isn’t aware of those needs, or refuses to make space for them to be met within the relationship, then neither of them are going to be happy for long.

I’m not saying you need to compromise who you are to make the other person happy – if you do that, it’s not going to work. Instead I think it’s about understanding the other person in the relationship is coming from a different and equally important perspective and, for that relationship to thrive you both need to acknowledge and make space for the other person’s core needs to be met.

Let me offer another example and this time I’ll use me. I’m a very creative and highly intuitive person. For me this translates into a need for space in my life to allow my creativity to flourish and acceptance of my intuitive gifts (i.e. who I am). If I was in a love relationship with someone who couldn’t acknowledge and make space for those needs to be met, we would come up against some very serious challenges.

Of course, sometimes we need help to understand what the other person’s needs are. They may not be able to tell us or even understand them fully themselves. This is where you need to work together and talk it through. Being courageous enough to openly acknowledge and own your needs can be a big step and involves trusting the other person will be open to hearing where you’re coming from. There will be times when the other person doesn’t ‘get it’ and isn’t interested in understanding or making space for what you need in that relationship. That’s when you need to decide what’s best for you and you may need to move on. However, for some, a third party can help you get clear on these things so you can move forward together.

If you are experiencing challenges in relationship with someone else, whoever it is, perhaps all that’s needed is recognition firstly of your own needs, then theirs, and the development of a way you can both have those core needs met. Ignoring your needs, or theirs, is never going to be a successful long term strategy for happiness or contentment in a relationship.

Are you seeking a different way to be?

Are you seeking a different way to be?

As a 20-something I was often wracked with indecision. I would spend days/weeks/months agonising over what I should do (or should have done) about particular parts of my life. By my early 30s, as I balanced on the edge of the cliff that was my slowly destructing marriage, my indecision had reached a crescendo.

I spent so much time seeking the advice of everyone else about what I should do with my life. My faith in my ability to make the best decisions for me about major life situations was extremely limited. I thought everyone else was wiser and more sensible than me. I didn’t trust myself and it just got worse and worse.

This was hardly surprising because, as my marriage began to splinter, my own behaviour spiraled. I made decisions that weren’t reliant on good judgement. My recklessness sometimes scared me. It was only later that I’d realise that this woman who seemed just a little out of control was simply breaking the chains that had held her captive for too long. I was breaking the chains that I’d tied myself up in for a very long time.

I could say these were the result of being an eldest child, getting married young, low self-esteem, anxiety, my family upbringing, a strong perfectionist streak and a long list of other reasons. And maybe some of those things contributed to me being the way I was.

But honestly, I think I was just never shown how to go within and trust myself. So one day the Universe gave me a solid kick up the you-know-what and shocked me out of the life I’d created. Forces bigger than me knocked me out of my sensible shoes and serious suits, and showed me a glimpse of something else. If you want to know more about that process, you can read my book, The Men I’ve Almost Dated, when I self-publish in the near future.

But the point I want to make is about what happened the day I decided to leave my marriage and every day since. The day I made that decision I chose to trust myself implicitly. It was an incredibly hard thing to do particularly as I knew a lot of people (including my family and many friends) would disagree with my choice. It was the first day I truly chose to back myself no matter what.

Choosing to do that takes courage when you’ve never been shown how to do it. It means you have to take a risk, choose yourself first and know you might still get it wrong.

Over the ensuing years I’ve continued to grow that trust in myself. Like a garden in the Brisbane heat, it often needs watering, weeding and fertilising. There are times when I’ve almost let that garden become a desolate wasteland because I’ve fallen back into the habit of trusting other people instead of myself. I’ve been challenged again and again, to return to my inner voice and trust it even when the dissenting opinions of others scream more loudly.

Self-trust is a lifelong journey. It’s a challenge and sometimes feels like the longest and loneliest march into a foreign world. But if I could go back now and talk to my 20-something self, I’d tell her that no matter what she must learn to trust herself. I’d advise her to listen to that inner voice that tells her when she’s going the wrong way and to take notice when that same voice tells her to keep going or have faith when it seems like madness to everyone else…even if it seems completely loopy to her very rational and reasonable brain.

Trusting myself is my biggest source of strength and my inner voice always speaks the truth. But the thing to remember is that ‘truth’ is ‘my truth’ so it’s not always going to make sense to anyone else. And it doesn’t have to.

The most important thing is that I know that my inner voice, my intuition, is always there to help me to learn, to grow and experience the beautiful things this life has to offer. It is my protector and the character that holds my hand as I leap off the next cliff into another adventure.

It is for me and me alone and will always be there inside. I just need the courage to listen for its soft tones.

Are you interested in building your self-awareness and trust in self? My intuition mentoring program can help you on your journey.

‘I don’t think I’ve done any interesting stuff’

‘I don’t think I’ve done any interesting stuff’

Our ability to keep ourselves small and negate our achievements is something that constantly surprises me. Comments like, ‘I don’t think I’ve done any interesting stuff’ or the rejection of a genuine compliment with a dismissive ‘Oh, this is just an old skirt’ or ‘I need to lose 5kgs’ are just some of the examples that have recently popped up in conversations with people I care about.

I’m not a paragon of virtue in this area either. I can be just as dismissive of my own strengths, talents and attributes. It’s an unhealthy habit and one I’m trying to break.

Australians have long been taught that we shouldn’t get too ‘big for our britches’. The tall poppy syndrome, where we try to keep others ‘in their place’, has long been part of our culture. Our capacity for self-deprecation is also very common indeed. But when I hear people bring themselves down I wonder, is it really healthy to make ourselves small when there are enough reasons to be pulled down in this world?

I often find myself repeating in my head, anything is possible if you believe. It’s become a bit of a personal mantra for me. But this habit of keeping ourselves small works in direct opposition to that. So I have this internal struggle of believing I can achieve what I long for, while being undermined by the fear of pushing myself forward. It’s a bit of a challenge to negotiate this conflict.

Unfortunately, other people often play a role in supporting this idea that we should not stand out too much. One friend was recently told that she should tone down her resume after she reached a certain level in a recruitment process because she’d (in a nutshell) ‘already stood out to get to that stage anyway and didn’t need to do that anymore’.

Hmm. I say a big fat ‘no’ to that one. Standing out and being who you are is a good thing. Being truly yourself, being authentic and going for what you want is absolutely what you should be doing. Living the essence of you, your purpose, is what you’re here to do. It’s not about ramming how great you are down everyone’s throats. Instead it’s about claiming the fabulousness that is you. But you can’t do that if you don’t acknowledge that you have unique gifts and skills no one else has. Because there is no one else on this planet who can do exactly what you do in the way you do it.

So the next time you think, ‘I haven’t done anything that great’ step back and give yourself a little credit. And the next time someone gives you a compliment say, ‘thank you’ and know you deserve it.

You don’t have to make yourself small to keep other people comfortable. That’s not what you’re here to do. You’re here to shine. So gather your courage, step into the light and say, ‘Here I am Universe and I’m going for it!’

I’ll be here cheering you on from the sidelines.

Would you like to learn more about living your purpose and using your intuition to make the right decisions for you? Check out my intuitive mentoring and life purpose sessions at lucretiaswords.com I’d love to help you on your journey.