How many heartaches?

How many heartaches in their life, I wonder?
Feed and educate them, I can; clean their clothes, encourage them, teach and pamper, I can.
Protect, I can only a little. And as they grow older, spread their wings and fly away, it will only get more difficult, let alone impossible.
And I wonder, how many heartaches? How many falls, blows and injuries, tears and disappointments?
I can do so much in their young lives, and yet, I cannot stop them from being hurt by the insensitive, the manipulative, the gross and the selfish.
It took me ages, as a truly candid and confident individual, ages to realize how some people think and behave along particular lines of interest. How some people can act in the name of love or friendship in order to achieve their goals. How some people can therefore use the good in you and then ditch you, how insensitive and opportunist some of them can be.
I have had a few friends who turned out to be interested in me only for the help or connection or support I could give them. For a long time I gave unconditional affection and faith to people who didn't deserve that. Only to feel the pain of being left alone, only to feel the nastiness generated by jealousy or greed or selfishness. Was I innocent? I slowly recovered from heartless friends and made fewer but better connections. I chose not to close my heart, but surely I became more cautious and less spontaneously trusting.
Now, I've had the opportunity to see the friendly connections my kids make, and how, in their turn, they so genuinely and spontaneously love their friends. And how the love and affection we give sends us over the moon and makes us fragile at the same time.
And I watch...and see the cuteness, the innocence, the beauty. Alas from the grown-ups who try to control their kids' lives, I also see manipulation and opportunism, competition and jealousy. In older kids I sometimes see the seeds of rivalry and aggressiveness.
And I am left with the helpless knowledge that my beautiful children will also come across those heartaches.
Not only any mother, but any woman with motherly feelings will know how it feels. The fear and the anger beginning to groan and moan deep inside, when our sweet beloved little one is faced with darkness. When we see them starting to doubt, hoping in vain, being disappointed, or sometimes worse, being hit or insulted or harassed. Or when we see them ignorant of the manipulation or arrogance around them.
A mother's life is made of these fears too. I want to use my past experiences, good and bad, to become a better person. All those heartaches in a lifetime must mean something. Maybe simply the assurance that worthless people make good people even better. That building a beautiful life for my family and me, means loving every minute of it and acknowledging every minute of it. Including the ones that hurt. Because if you survive them while keeping a good heart, you'll only get stronger and wiser and happier. You'll be a free individual. Because you've got to accept the bad as well as the good, and draw your own conclusions and walk your own path.

Letting out

I am very sorry to hear that May was so bad for Val.  I really hope June has been the opposite for her.

My daughter has been also in a stressful situation at work, as a new employee, and it seems to have started to affect her health.  The other day, we went to a bedrock bath, which are popular in Japan now, to detox, and talked a lot so that she could let all her stress out.  She told me she felt that she had lost her genuine self due to extreme stress.  She was urged to solve her problems but it seemed to me as if she ended up wallowing in her stress.  It is hard to solve all the problems she has at once, but I believe that being able to let out her feelings may have been of some help for her to recuperate her positive energy and deal with her difficulties.

Breathing starts from exhaling.  If you breathe out as much as you can, you will breathe in a lot of new fresh air.  Letting it out gets rid of all the bad things, then you will be able to let new, good things in, just like Val says in her post, "Bad brings out good".

It is quite heartbreaking for me to see my daughter suffering from stress, but every time she experiences hardship, I see her growing stronger.  Hardships might be the seeds that grow into beautiful flowers.  As a mother, what I can do is limited; just puring out my love energy and praying for her is all I can do.  As can Val.

Lots of love to Val and you all.

Beautify...Pacify

After all, life is this amazing succession of events that leaves you breathless, exhilarated or battered, depending which phase of this life you are currently going through.
It is in turn sweet, tough, puzzling...but when I look for instance at this, I remember once more that everything is important, yet few things really matter.
It is about the people we meet and love, the places we go, the things we achieve and experience, the choices and memories we make. It is about enjoying and growing. One of the things that have always mattered to me, along with all these, is Beauty. Or maybe Beauty defines all the things I have just mentioned: the beauty I see and feel, the beauty I develop, the beauty of all small things around me, the beauty of the material world but also and most of all the beauty of the heart and mind. I have always felt the urge to acknowledge the beauty of the universe, and to beautify my environment whenever possible or needed. Like a gold digger. Like a beggar. Like a thief. Like a poet.
I have written other blogs before, never really knowing exactly what it was I needed to express: my love for photography? Writing? Crafting? Philosophy? Cooking? How daily life is so deeply entangled, with all its petty bumps and detours, with the conditions of our happiness and peace, with our intellectual and spiritual self?

I've felt the growing need to share my vision of life on this beautifying journey. I'm happy to open this little space where I'd like to share all the possible ways of seeing beauty where it is, showing it when it hides, creating it if I have to, whenever the days are getting darker, hunting it down when it seems to flutter away.

In the blogging world, I have had the pleasure of coming across the path of people who seem to focus on the same thing: what do I do with this life? How do I make it beautiful? Peaceful? Happy? I believe it starts with a choice, even if chance has its say. I've chosen to see beauty. But this blog is also named 'Pacify', as a dear friend of mine is going to share it with me. She has chosen to see and look for peace. She will soon present herself. Let me just add for now that I live in France and she lives in Japan; we both are women and mothers, friends and bloggers. We both want beauty and peace.

I can't wait to share this space here with her, and you!

Val