Transformative Language: To Live Validating Love (3/3)

To Live Validating Love
More on the Transformative Language Arts conference and what I learned from my corresponding Transformative Coaching Session
(see prior posts here:
Transformative Language part 1
Transformative Language part 2)

Which is to say perhaps it was a struggle of something different – between chaos and order. Between the inaction and action of self. What could be contained versus what was overflowing beyond my control. The recklessness of my own passions, the truth behind every forward motion: I wanted to destroy what had put me in this place to begin with – I wanted to destroy the thing or things, the set of people (or persons) who had made me hate myself, I wanted to tear apart every person who said the arts didn’t matter, I wanted to start a revolution where everything pulsed forward beautifully from even the most horrific corners of my mind. I wanted my revolution to be that of love – I wanted it to make up for my lack of love, I wanted to drain the anger out of my own system, I wanted to show them how daring a caring towards creation could be. I wanted to make an example of their dysfunction manifested in me.

And so, I’m really saying “I hate the system that trapped me into thinking perfection was necessary for life. I hate the system that automatically makes us distrust one another, oppress one another, put one another down for another’s gain.” When I get frustrated with labels, it’s because I’ve frequently found they do more harm than good – because every time someone has given me a label, something as simple as a declaration of “You are 21,” they have immediately standardized me into something I might not be and that’s frustrating. And I hate that I have to use the “oppressor’s tools” to dismantle the oppressor’s house, labeling myself for the convenience of mainstream society – some sort of insurgent anarchist linguist, slowly hoping to change misperceptions they more she says “cunt,” and doesn’t flinch, reminding people that Cunt was once a title of respect, thank you very much.

I want to believe in the better of mankind. I want to believe in the better of myself. And I want to trust myself enough to know that I have my anchor firmly planted in healing and not sinking in the dysfunction of a never satisfied society. These are scary waters to be treading, and I ask myself every day, “are you ready for this?”

My life purpose is to live validating love, effortlessly helping myself and others…

Breathe in, breathe out – I make sure to take deep breaths when this happens: my jaw clenches, my chest tightens, everything locks inside me. Hold down the fort, don’t let anything else in. Stress. If my rage at this lifestyle, the one society produces and repeatedly reinforces, were allowed to grow – it’d tear down a fucking nation. I get frustrated at my inadequacy, my sole nature of being only one, of hearing so many people consistently shoot down the idealism that comes with wanting to rebel and be happy about it (as opposed to being consistently, and stereotypically, angry and radical). Abby Hoffman is my hero for that. I would and could and have gotten crushed by the weight of people’s bitterness, depression, hostility, and hopelessness before.

My life purpose is to live validating love, effortlessly helping myself and others…

Transformative: I want to be transforming. Which is seemingly more difficult as I get older and things generally seem to affect me more – learning, absorbing: impact. It involves either the ability to remain in the present moment and treat it with due respect, or the capability to recognize that your daily efforts towards transforming yourself are enough (rather than the guilty voice inside your head chanting ‘more’ may have you to believe). Or maybe it’s both these thing. I’m really awful at both, though.

My life purpose is to live validating love, effortlessly helping myself and others…

And as I think now about how I’ve dealt with chaos and order, with anger and love, with living one emotion so supremely – it’s generally been when so many things have accumulated in my life that I have no other choice but than to accept, acknowledge, and indulge the feeling. Unfortunately, in my case, I’ve frequently adapted to chaotic change through depression or anger – where the world filled me up with so much distress and heartbreak and betrayal, I felt no other option other than to lash back out at the world. Never love. How do we respond to the world in love?

My life purpose…

I think of an article I read lately on Tiny Buddha that provided a very vivid metaphor for me to latch onto – the idea of our love being tanks of gas. Is your love tank empty or full? Due to the fact I’m really awful at self-care, my “love tank” is almost always on empty. But rather than make time to walk or listen to music or write, like I used to, I find all my spare energy is being put into stress. I refuse to accept the reality I live in: one where good intentions and hard work don’t seem to be enough. And I get scared: because I don’t know how to love myself, and I know that in order for me to create any sort of effective loving rebellion around me, I must first be a beacon of that myself. If I refuse to accept the reality around me, I must embrace the fact that I need to create my own separate reality and enforce it upon the world around me, by just my sheer presence existing under the idea and principle of love.

Love is:
- Being in the present moment
- Being a radical self-care activist
- Learning to listen to the news that may hurt
- Embracing pain as part of healing
- Knowing one’s limits
- NOT perfection
- Taking responsibility for flaws and mistakes, and treating the moment tenderly
- Forgiving yourself and others

“Don’t limit yourself to a particular job,” my transformative life coach (Deborah Howard) reminds, “speak your life purpose out loud every morning, every night.” My life purpose is to live validating love, effortlessly helping myself and others… For all my caring, I can’t help but struggle with it – with making sure to not see it as a goal to be accomplished, with putting myself first (rather than the bills or what other people think of me), or even in simply accepting the large proportions of the words and what they mean to me. It was easy for me to turn something I love into a “should” (if I can do this, and I have the potential to do more, I MUST BE MY VERY BEST), lock myself into certain career boxes, and generally follow those “you will be successful if…” tips. I made healing a rigorous agenda I attempted to repeatedly beat over the head and demand into submission. Shockingly, my recovery process does not listen to my authoritarian ambitious type-A Alpha Girl. It listens to 10 year old Victoria who, when getting pissed at her father one day, ran away to the library (that’ll show him) and spent all her spare money on candy (even though she had braces). Fuck yeah, candy.

“You can’t be tight and in control, if validating,” she reminds.

My life purpose is to live validating love, effortlessly helping myself and others....

And the craziest part of all of this was that these words, my life purpose words, were my choices – strung together by my happy, euphoric, fulfilled memories; compiled by selecting words that stung me electric; thrown together randomly, excitably, all active. This is what I chose. And even though it overwhelmed me at first, and seemed like a goal at second time around, it struck me the first time I heard it.

Which voice, amongst all these life demands, is yours? It cornered me. How do you carry this? I asked myself. Where will you take your love, how will you form your love? When can you begin life again?

Always?

Always, now.

And so I will end this blog entry in a way that my friend Jen seems to consistently end hers: with thanks.

Thank you for your presence. Thank you for learning, knowing, and healing. Thank you for struggling for life. Thank you for your unique purpose. Thank you for your words.