I’m currently working on learning how to separate myself from what I call “it”. It represents everything I do and everything that is done to me. I have learnt that I am not my failures nor am I my successes. those are a result of choices that I made, however it is not me. So the question becomes who am I then? If I am not my success and I am not my failure. I am not my gift, or my pain either…

So I have been dabbling with this question on who am I really? Its been a question I have asked myself and worked through for many years and I realise as I keep asking myself again and again the answers always seem to shift.

I guess who I interpret myself to be is always relative to where I am in that moment of my life. Once upon a time I was this broken hearted girl who walked aimlessly and didn’t have any direction. I was a victim. I was angry. I then became a survivor of many things and identified as a survivor a soldier, someone who can get through anything. I then moved on to identify myself as a student of self growth and development always looking to learn ways to improve myself. Later on as I grew I began to identify myself as a teacher of the skills that I acquired. I wanted to share myself with the world and so I identified myself as that role.

As life has gone by, I clung to external factors to represent who I was. I was recently taught a lesson that helped me see the importance of detaching my identity from my experiences. I am not an external being. I am just me. I believe I am a soul, in a body and my identity is based on an internal factor not all the gazillion external factors. Who I am never changes. I am the same being that came into the world in 1980. As I walk this planet on a daily basis, I am still that baby that was born to those parents at that time. It has never changed. My internal being is constant. My external circumstances may change all the time, my success may grow, my failures may grow and people will always try to attached either one of those things to who I actually am. However right now I clearly see that I am neither of those things. When I breathe my last breath I will leave this place as that very same soul that entered. My mind will have grown, my body will have aged, my experiences will be many, but I am still just me. I will not take my experiences with me, nor will I take my failures with me. I take with me when I leave only what I came into this world with in the first place.

Learning how to detach myself from failures and success wont be an easy process. But with any process it starts with acknowledging and knowing that there are many steps to take in order to fully live in the understanding of ones being. Of ones core, of ones self. I think for the rest of my life I will continue to pursue the path of understanding myself, because not only does peace always follow but also a greater understanding and acceptance of others. Once I fully learn to accept myself, without the attachments of the external world then I can fully learn to accept others without the limitations of their external world.

I have always been very hard on myself, but with that comes the judgement of others expecting them to also be on the level that I am on. This is an unfair behavior on my part because there is no other person like me. We are all made to be our unique individual selves and the closer I come to my own understanding, the easier it is to see others in their pure existence, separating them too from their failures and successes and just seeing them as themselves. My kid is not her achievements and only celebrating her for those is wrong. Forcing her to conform to the external requirements of this world is wrong. She should have the freedom to grow into herself with an understanding that she is loved unconditionally. Now I tell her that I love her unconditionally, but I get upset when she doesn’t do what’s expected… Am I saying she doesn’t need guidance? No. I’m saying I should never make her or anyone else feel like less of a person because she or anyone else has not met up to my expectations.

We separate ourselves from each other based on all these external rules and regulations creating divide and disturbing peace. We separate ourselves as humans into different external categories which feeds into our nature as humans to be better, to look better, to have more. Forgetting that nothing we do here goes with us when we leave. We leave as we came. So I ask this question to you and to myself. What good has come from attaching your external accomplishments or failures to your identity? What good has come from attaching the failures and success of others to their identities? We have created rich and poor, black and white, we have created wars between ourselves to fight for what never even belonged to us in the first place. We as humans have come to believe so much in the external values of what we ourselves have created in this world that we kill each other for it, we torture each other for it and we punish each other for it. When ‘it” doesn’t even belong to us. If it did we would have the ability to take what is ours with us when we leave. The fact that we leave it all behind, proves to me at least that none of ‘it’ is mine.

It’s all just part of the process of living one day at a time, one moment at a time and ultimately searching for love, joy and peace while we are here. It’s a part of the process of growing as a being, and remembering that none of these “things “that we hold so dear and precious matter in the greater scheme of life. What matters at least to me is: Did I love enough? Did I try my best? Did I stand for something? Am I aiming to be the purest version of myself, unapologetically me, not claiming any of these things that belong to world as my own? Is what I’m leaving behind a positive force or a negative one? Did I choose darkness or light? When I fell into darkness did I fight with all that I have to find light again? Will my daughter be proud of who her mother was? Will My grandkids know who I am? Will the steps I take here make a difference to the generations still to come? Was my footprint deep enough to stay in the hearts of my loved ones once I leave?

This is where I find myself at this moment. At peace with knowing that each moment is a blessing and that tomorrow is not mine to hold onto. Many people are pressing the restart button for the new year and I commend them for their efforts in wanting to grow for the better. Many are merely continuing as they were, I commend them too for their consistency. There is no right or wrong way to enter into your new year. The concept of right and wrong is relative anyway.

So don’t allow yourself to conform to any of ‘it’. Because it will never be you anyway.

I wish everyone here a happy and prosperous 2023! May your year be filled with all the love, peace and Joy that your hearts can hold.

Love and Light.

Tammy