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June 2, 2014

The Only Moment You Need to Focus on is Now. ~ Amani Omejer

now

A lot of what I’m doing in life, and in my journeying, is learning how to parent myself.

And re-parenting myself.

This morning I wrote a note to myself (above) that flowed out of a place of really needing it. I connected with my inner parent, as I often do when I begin to write to myself, for myself, and with no-one else.

It’s like in those intimate moments of journaling, scribbling, witnessing, there’s no-one else here to watch me or soothe me or be with me, except myself.

And so in that solitude is a comfort that so naturally comes.

A comfort that I have always and forever, inside of me.

A presence I know resides within me regardless of my knowing or regardless of my attempts to find her.

My inner parent is always there—watching, witnessing, listening.

I really struggle to trust that the only moment I have is now. I easily feel wrapped up in anxiety and a desperate need to get-it-all-right and get-it-all-figured-out now. The future easily feels like a terrifying body of unknown and potential danger that to relax into right now feels even more uncomfortable than sitting here wrapped in the discomfort and anxiety that so easily floods my system.

But you know, my inner parent knows it’s okay to trust.

She knows it’s okay for things to be different to what I witnessed growing up.

She knows it’s okay—it’s safe—for me to not be like my mother and for me to be authentically and completely me. For me to have calmness and stability, gentleness and a holding of myself and the world.

She knows it’s okay for me to trust the current moment and not try to figure out anything else.

She knows that inside me is a key to witness the box of compassion that I hold so deep within my chest, my heart, for myself and for the world.

She knows that to breathe and to let myself rest, to let the moment unfold in front of me is what I can do the best, and what offers me the most support.

She knows that the ability to breathe lies within me, whatever anxiety is floating around or holding tightly of my chest.

She understands that this faith, that this courage to step forward with the fear but not within the fear, takes a lot and is often exhausting, but she also understands that to do this is what I need in order to struggle free and thrive.

To struggle free from the constraints of the childhood I lived and watched and experienced and saw, and step into the future that contains the me I am now and the me I have always known beneath the experiences I witnessed and lived through and saw.

She knows that to live is to be right here, right now.

She knows that to live is to relax and to let myself go. To nourish, to cherish, to treasure all these things I give to myself—the moments, the laughter, the madness, the creativity, the ability to express, to connect, to say what I need, to say what I’m doing, to say how I’m feeling, to say where I’m going.

She knows that this is me growing and she knows that this is me freeing from the constraints of the childhood I experienced and witnessed myself go through, to come into the person I am now.

She knows that to be where I am is to not be any different from the person I am becoming or from the person I am—to not mould or shape or become what I think others want me to become, or be what I think others want or hope for me to be, and instead to be 100% me.

She knows that to become me is to listen to the butterfly within my chest—the butterfly of forgiveness, the butterfly of compassion, the butterfly of acceptance, the butterfly of transformation, the butterfly of bad-ass-ness, the butterfly of not-taking-no-shit…the butterfly of everything.

To watch it step out of the chrysalis that’s held it tight and safe inside my chest and let it, watch it, flutter out into a world of glory and a world of wisdom, a world where I’m with it all—the pain and the beauty, the light and the darkness, the joy and the anger, the love and the hatred, the pleasure and the envy, the humour and the seriousness, the sarcasm and the laughter, the quiet and the booming-loud, the solitude and the company.

Because within that world is me being whole, and within that world is a world holding me.

 

 

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Editor: Travis May

Photo: Amani Omejer

 

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