A Vulnerable Truth

I'm Tired of the Masks We Wear... 

 and I am tired of the mask I have made myself wear.

The bigger truth - I'm tired of pretending they aren't destroying us.

 We look around at the world and wonder why there is so much anger, division, heartbreak and pain.

 We point fingers. We place blame. We form conclusions about people whose stories we have never bothered to understand.

 And then we wonder why humanity is hurting.

 You want to know where it begins?

 Look within.

 I woke up this morning just after 6 am and I heard my noisy mind, and felt my nervous system cripple me. 

 I knew I was only showing up in my life half ass. I was showing up in what I believed was safe. Maybe safe for an old version of me, but not the version who has been fighting to break through. 

 I say this as a woman who has spent her life fighting for the freedom to love, to live, and to be exactly who she came here to be.

 And yet, here I am, confronting the uncomfortable truth that I have been hiding parts of myself too.

 I have spoken about truth. I have taught reclamation. I have shared the stories of many things I have moved through, the things I've learned and many things I've risen from.

 But I've been sharing my hindsight truths.

 The ones I've already made peace with.

 What about the truth of who I am today?

 The woman who is wildly loving, fiercely passionate, deeply spiritual and sometimes downright pissed off at what we human beings are doing to one another.

The woman who believes in God, who follows her heart even when it makes absolutely no sense to anyone else.

 The woman who has walked away from people and places not because she didn't love them, but because she could no longer breathe while trying to be who they expected her to be.

 And even after all that leaving, I discovered something.

 I was still hiding.

 Still worrying about the rolling eyes, and the whispers.

 Still anticipating the judgments, the conclusions of who they think I am.

 I have allowed other people's conclusions about me to influence how much of myself I was willing to reveal.

 And isn't that something?

 A woman teaching Truth Voice Reclamation while swallowing pieces of her own truth.

 There's my bullshit. And I'm calling it out.

 Because I don't believe we can keep talking about love while refusing to look at the ways we withhold it.

 I don't believe we can demand authenticity from others while punishing them for being different.

 I don't believe we can continue speaking about healing humanity while refusing to acknowledge the wounds we ourselves inflict.

 And I certainly don't believe love means remaining silent in the face of what we know isn't right.

 Love is not the absence of uncomfortable truth.

 Maybe the greatest disservice we have done to LOVE is convincing ourselves that it must always be agreeable, gentle and easy to receive.

 I have spent so much of my life seeking the freedom to love.

 Today I'm confronting the ways I have denied myself the freedom to be fully seen in that love.

 Not just the light.

 The shadow too.

 The messy, uncomfortable, beautiful truth of being human.

 I don't have a perfectly packaged lesson to offer you today.

 I'm not writing from the other side of this experience.

 I'm writing from the messy middle of it.

 And maybe that's where my voice has needed to come from all along.

 So if you're wondering why the world feels so disconnected, why relationships are fracturing, why so many of us are walking around wounded, angry and unseen...

 Before you look at everyone else, look within.

 Not to condemn yourself.

 But to finally tell yourself the truth.

 Because we cannot keep hiding from ourselves and expect to find one another.

 And perhaps it's time we stopped asking the world to change while refusing to see the part we play in creating it.

Big Love 🤍
Patrice Burns oX

 Founder of Odyssey Lighthouse