I love the space you take up in this world.
I’m so excited to tell you all about the amazing experience I had this past weekend. So much love, healing and connecting. It was incredible. I’m going to share with you some of the amazing things that happened that has changed my life for the better. We had this beautiful home in Zion National Park that we shared. I think there was about 20 amazing women at this Retreat and I learned so much about myself. During the retreat I stepped out on the porch of this beautiful home saw this amazing view of Zion and I wanted to share a couple of thoughts that I had in the moment.
I am at a women’s retreat that my mentor Angel has put together with her mentors Kami and Shelby. Angel has had life changes because of what she has learned from Kami and Shelby. She calls them the unicorns because they are “magical” and they really are. Haha I love them all so much. This is one of the most amazing experiences that I’ve had in my life so far. Just being surrounded by women who are free to express their deepest fears and to release all the things that we have always believed about ourselves is so freeing. Being able to see that other people care and love us unconditionally. We are learning that we have the ability to love ourselves and forgive ourselves for anything and everything that we’ve been through. We are being taught that everything we’ve been through is exactly how it was supposed to be. That whatever we experience is how God designed our life to be. He provided this experience to be challenging yet amazing. He made it to be transformative. He shows us all sides of the emotional scale. We can’t know the joy unless we’ve been through the pain. When we go through that pain and we experience that sadness and the depression… how much sweeter and greater is it when we come to find ourselves and really see who we are?
Through the afflictions…. we are able to appreciate what we’ve been through. We are able to allow ourselves to feel love, joy and openness because that’s really all we need to offer the world. This is the person that we are. All the expectations that the world puts on us… keeps us from really shining our light. It just shows me and tells me again and again how the vulnerability and the realness of the people around us… just break down all of our walls, the walls that we put up to protect ourselves because we are afraid of being alone or we’re afraid that nobody would understand. What I’m realizing it that every single one of us have been through something hard and been through painful experiences. We have all had painful thoughts. We have all had people hurt us. We’ve hurt ourselves. When we can share that openly then all the sudden we realize that we really aren’t alone in our pain. Even the person that you think has it all figured out and has it all put together….. they have their own story of hurt and disconnection. They’re putting out what they think you want to see. It’s just amazing to come to this realization. As you can tell…. I was very inspired and I’m so grateful for this experience.
The theme for the retreat was stop, drop and be! My mentor had us write our stop, drop and be goals for 2022.
We had to write down the answers to these questions…
What am I going to stop doing in 2022?
What am I going to drop in 2022?
Who do I want to be in 2022?
At the end of The Retreat she had us write the answers when we first arrived and then she asked us to write our answers down again without being reminded what we wrote at the first to just see how different our answers are when we are really in tune with our hearts.
In 2022 I want to stop worrying about what other people think about me and just be proud to be myself!
I wanted to drop my phone because I have a tendency to be addicted to social media and I could waste my whole day living my life through other people and not getting anything accomplished and not go towards the things that really make me feel alive. It’s just a distraction and then
I want to be free! I just want to be free. That’s what I felt during this retreat. I felt free!
A couple of things that were very meaningful during this experience was that we bonded so much with each other. We had 3 days of sharing, crying, holding and supporting each other. I felt like because we shared all of these amazing experiences together that I gained 20 sisters in my life. We would spend nights dancing. We would spend the days sharing stories and crying with each other. We were supporting each other during our difficult moments. We had moments and opportunities to express anger that we’ve never learned how to express.
One of the days we listened to a song and I saw one of my new “sisters” crying. She was obviously in so much emotional pain. Whenever I see somebody that I love in pain…. I want to run to them and hug them. I want to hold them, be there for them and be an emotional support for them. So that’s what I did for this beautiful new friend of mine.
I held her as she cried and that was a beautiful moment. The reason why I am sharing the story is because that moment was caught on camera.
As I look back at it…. it’s such a beautiful moment but I’m distracted by my big body. I’m distracted by what I look like but still embracing the beauty of this photo and seeing the pain that she’s in and see the love that I have for her as I’m comforting her. Then the next day I was in one of those moments where I was crying and I needed comfort. This same beautiful friend who I comforted the day before… came up to me and gave me a hug. When she pulled out of the hug.. She looked me right in the eyes and said to me,
“I love the space you take up in this world!”
I have never had anyone say anything like that to me before. It melted my heart and made me see myself in a different light. I’ve always been worried about the space I’m taking up. I’m too big for this… I’m worried when I’m in the kitchen that I’m in your way.. I’m worried when I’m in the hallway that you can’t get around me. I’m worried that I’m sitting in a seat that is touching you because I’m too big. And she says these words to me??? “I love the space you take up in this world” ahhhhhhh It really Jarred at my heart because she appreciated me… all of me! Every single part of me and she recognized the love that I was able to give to her.
Now I want to share that voice memo that I tsaved while I was driving in my car because it was really in the moment and raw and so I want to share. The womens retreat… im in awe…. it was an environment where we can all share our most shameful thoughts and things that we would never want anyone to know about us. Through our sharing we were embraced with love. We were shown love, acceptance and compassion. It was like I gained 20 sisters over the weekend. One of the things that was really amazing to me is the very last night… we were all dancing and singing together. I was hit with emotion because i was so grateful for every single woman that was in that room. I had this feeling that I was home. I just feels like home here and sometimes when you are in that experience…. you don’t want to go to your real home. You don’t want to go back to the old ways and the old things that we dealt with. We didn’t want to return to the messy house or go back to the things that we have to do. We didn’t want to be distracted by all the responsibilities we have in our lives… all those things we have been avoiding. My heart was telling me that this is what home is meant to feel like.
I want to say my heart is so full. It sounds so cliche but I don’t know how else to describe it. My heart is full of love, acceptance and full of grace for myself. It helped me to have so many women look at me with the eyes of love. I felt so embraced and loved. I felt like I had this family that there were no conditions placed on me for them to love me. There were no conditions and it was beautiful because we all were there for each other. If I needed a hug or if I needed my back scratched or whatever it was all you had to do was sit next to your new sisters and they knew what you needed. I’m so grateful for that experience.
When I came home, I realized that I want to create that in MY home. What I am learning there is not for an escape of my reality… it is to show me how to change my reality. To show me what is possible. To experience the environment I want to create for me and my home. I want to create that fun and playful environment. I want to do more dancing, playing and laughing. I want to add more life in my home. It feels like my boys, my husband and I have our own separate lives, you know because everyone’s living in their separate situations. We are all doing our own things. They are playing their games… hanging in their rooms on their phones. (I’m the most guilty of this) So I want to have more fun with my boys and husband (and my daughter when she is with me) Dance with them in the kitchen even if they’re embarrassed or they think I’m weird. Haha I want to hug them longer. I want to listen more and talk less. I want to show them how important they are to me.
Another experience I wanted to share about the retreat was since it was at Zions National Park… the views were magical. Here are some pictures to give you an idea.
This is the view off the back porch.
So…. I was out on the porch and was looking at this beautiful view. In that moment I thought of my husband. He really loves going on Hikes and he loves the outdoors and I knew he would love this view I was experiencing. I wanted to share that moment with him and it made me so happy. If you have been a reader of this blog for a while then you known that the last 25 years… I have been a victim in my marriage. I have not given my husband that chance to grow and be loved. I didn’t allow him to fully love me. I have not allowed myself to give myself to him fully and that caused me to resist being with him. It was a beautiful moment for me to be able to miss him and want to share a moment with him. I am so excited about what is to come for me and for my husband and the relationship that we are finally going to be able to build. We are going to build our foundation on unconditional love, acceptance and support for each other. I’m so grateful for that.
Thank you for letting me speak my heart today in this blog post. I would like to share from my heart today and share with you all that everything that we need is within us. Everything that is important is right here with us… our family, God, our relationships, our friends. It isn’t our house or our car. It isn’t our money or the size of our body. It is all about the connections that we have with each other and the time that we spend together. It is all about the memories that we create.
The last thing I want to share is when I left the retreat I got in my van and cried. I cried tears of joy and gratitude and I say Thank you to God for this experience I had. Then as I was driving down the mountain… I had songs come through me. I had inspirations for future songs I could write. I’m so excited about that because I realize that I need to write music. Writing music is the dream I’ve always had for myself. If anything was possible I would create musci that helped people feel God’s love. As I was thinking about that goal I was looking at all the things I was doing with my time. I need to make time for writing music. I want to continue this blog too. This blog is important to me because I’m sharing my journey and hopefully inspiring people to live their life fully too no matter the adversities that they face but it’s really just a journal for me. A journal to show myself what I’m capable of. It is here to remind me that life is full of ups and downs and it is perfect that way. It’s all good for me to experience. If I hadn’t gone through all this hard experiences then I wouldn’t be so grateful for what I have right now. If I hadn’t had those feelings of not wanting to go home to my husband…. I wouldn’t be so grateful for the fact that I do want to see him and it makes me feel so happy. I’m finally be able to let myself be loved and to let myself love someone else. It’s a beautiful thing. My heart is so full of joy and I want you to know that I’m here for you. If you need a friend… If you need to go to lunch. If you need to have a talk…. I am here for you because God has blessed me with the ability to love and I want to share that with you. Have a good week my beautiful friends.
Love always,
Aleisha