This morning though, another piece of the lessons she’s taught me stands on a compass that’s pointing the way. I haven’t put my finger on why this figure is grabbing my attention, but maybe it’s a clue to decipher. You see this angel, a gift from grandmother, reminds me to have faith and to never forget what it felt like to be loved as a child.

When next to a candle, the angel’s shape appears to be blowing on and stoking the fire. Angels equal prayer to me. This one’s white color reminds me of purity and hope in dark times. This particular angel is a bell and we know the saying, “when a bells rings an angel get their wings.” My Grandmother calls me her angel and her story helps me to remember that this human journey is precious and temporary. My grandmother wears an angel pin on her shoulder every day. I do believe she is a living breathing angel herself.

But she herself is not exempt, nor has ever been, from the weight of being human. She’s a perfectionist and taught me to be one. To this day, I critique to ‘make better’ almost everything. As a grown woman, I still have a fear of doing things the ‘wrong’ way. She was never harsh, just the type who’d be supremely bothered if she couldn’t reach a piece of dirt off the floor and had to painfully stare at it.

With her body, she’s always had a hard time accepting and loving herself due to the harsh words she absorbed as a child. To me, she is perfect. To her, she’s ugly. I have demanded of myself that this long-line lineage of generational body hatred and costumed eating disorders stops at this generation.

Truthfully I’ve worked for two decades growing through chains and pains to simply regain loving the skin I am in. She’s also always been the glue of the family. She weaves love and people together, but years ago taught me after her own suicide attempt that people who are the loving glue can get caught between a rock and a hard place, too.

Sometimes life buries us in so deep that we cannot see the light.

Because I have the blessing that she’s still alive, I will forever hold the torch for others to see in dark times when they can’t. It’s my soul’s commitment. This great unburying of the heavy and dark has been my life’s work. This layer upon layer shedding to let the light breathe continues to be “the work”.

WE are not broken. We are mischievous in our perceptions. We think life will break us and there will be nothing left. I beg to differ. Life has broken me more times then I can count and yet there is a still a light within that refuses to give up in the darkest nights. Once, when evil, the pain and misunderstandings of the lessons, and the ability to see disappeared, something still refused to die. My heart kept beating, my lungs kept breathing, although both of those things almost shut down too. My health had failed and, in a drought, my dreams turned into dust and I stopped hearing the music. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t end my life. The simple thought that I might have to come back and start all over again, if I didn’t get through this, was one of the things that kept me going.

Grandma, was another one. When everything became too much, the same woman who unconsciously taught me as a child that everything I did could have had a better version, was the only one I could see who loved me and didn’t judge me in any way I showed up to her doorstep. On the eve of the new year, December 2011, I did show up to her doorstep, in a puddle. Everything I had known and built the foundation of my life upon was gone. My family connection, my home, my relationship, my career and my hope. Many deaths in the family had left so much grief that no one could see.

I had to finally learn that it wasn’t my job to save anyone; I couldn’t even be a guide post because I had nothing to ground into. Death actually looked like the easiest form of relief. I had no idea what to do, and my mind saw two options- suicide or somehow make it to Grandma’s house. She was the only one that didn’t turn me away for being me. I somehow landed on her doorstep and she will forever be my angel.

So this morning, as I write, with now tears in my eyes, the white angel, a gift from her, is sitting on a wood-box compass on my altar. The sunlight peeking through the curtains caught its wings.

As I have struggled for many years wondering what to contribute to the world, I think it’s that. My realness and the lessons I’ve learned, the beautiful, tragic love stories, we all live within ourselves. The love and fear embedded in our cells from lifetimes and lovetimes past. The unburying we must do within to come back to lightness and truth. The relationships we endure and grow through to receive some of our greatest life lessons. The pain and sacrifice that happens when we grow up believing others’ lies as they pass down this fucked up concept of inadequacy, this anchorless-love of perceived truth.

It is not truth that we are not enough.

It is not truth that in our deepest pain and growth spurts that we don’t deserve unwavering love.

It is not truth that we must leave ourselves and honor others before honoring ourselves.

It is not truth that we must confine our light to make others comfortable and conform to the status quo.

It is sometimes more comfortable to chameleon our energy to others around us. We all want to be part of the tribe. We all want to be accepted and loved and in flow. But when our truths are based on lies nothing solid can be built. Not much can happen when we’ve built our lives around illusions, suppression and control over things. In these moments, the child within needs to stop being re-hurt for feeling and expressing, and instead be held by his/her grown-up self.

Yes, the world is changing both within and around. Many that have focused on personal growth are now finally beginning to feel the wind in their wings.

They are the ones who never stopped believing they had wings to begin with.

They are the ones who in silence and small groups have been mending the layers of broken, shedding the piles of imposed shit that’s weighed down their spirit.

They are the ones who have alchemized their fear into fuel and their prisons into playgrounds of freedom.

We are the teachers for others who’ve built their lives on should-haves, who no longer know what to do as their worlds crumble.

They are the ones who have only known how to survive and achieve success by reigning power over things, including themselves. They are now the scared children, who are often fathers and mothers and middle aged kids and elders who are scared as fuck because they can’t suppress their pain anymore. The ones whose lives that have been built on “control over” that are now being demolished.

Lighthouses, Wayshowers, Torch Bearers- it’s your time.

It’s your time to show others how to navigate the inner and outer worlds in the way you’ve learned how. It’s your time to hold the torch of light for the others who can only see dark, and simply Be Love.

Be the love that you know, or had to relearn like me, that you are. Be the non-saver as others learn that, without exteriors to cling to, they are still enough. Be the light as others learn that Control Over is outdated and soon to be outnumbered and that Power Of is the strongest force we have.

We are learning as a world to do power differently.

We are tapping back into letting our intuition be the guide for what’s right and wrong for us.

We are learning that the compass within must be honored or all else will crumble and can’t be built upon.

We are learning to trust, love and honor ourselves, to redefine what masculine and feminine is and in any relationships to speak our truths even if our voices shake.

We are learning that love must remain constant for obstacles to be overcome.

We are learning that true vulnerability and a willingness to grow equals success and freedom.

We are learning that we can no longer disconnect in an already interconnected world. Disconnection inevitably brings more pain. It’s tiring to strive to maintain Power Over our bodies, as we ignore their messages, when they are continuously and often desperately simply communicating to us that something needs our attention.

It’s tiring to be controlling in relationships when each and every one is set to naturally evolve and support our soul growth. The lessons may be understood much later, yes. But both the victim and the judge take back seat when our consciousness expands and we realize that life is happening for us, not to us.

Plain and simple, WE ARE LOVE. Anything Less Than is no longer sustainable nor acceptable. Any vibration that is lower will be purged out. Any belief that is no longer serving us, will be challenged in the inner and outer planes.

We are here to love: ourselves, each other and our world. We are here to learn what love is not. Sometimes that process is incredibly painful. Through the storms of understanding, we sometimes cannot see. When emotions purge out density lying within, our lives feel destroyed. The last thing we want is some “positive polly” chiming in her two cents of why we need to look at the bright side or be grateful. In those moments of death and rebirth, we learn to breathe again, vision regains and life changes.

Those who refuse to succumb to fear, and hold the light of love for us to grappling hook onto or follow in the dark, are simply another version of ourselves saying, TRUST. Don’t give up. You are still here for a reason. You DO matter. They are the ones saying, you in your darkest moments are still lovable, let’s clean off your spark together.

Love those people. Cherish them, even if they have offered other insights that haven’t been the brightest. We in human skin are doing the best we can. We are not modern day messiahs. We all have strong and weak muscles to learn and grow from each other.

The strongest lights need support and the perceived weakest are often the greatest heroes. May we all be the compass. May we all be the artist. May we all be the creator and may we all be The Love That We Are.

Xxo, ~ Chrystal