For day 2 of our Quill Fated Scribe International Women’s Day Celebration, I have a beautiful excerpt from Liz Lugo’s book Between My Sheets currently available in Spanish Entre Mis Sábanas: Una Guía Espiritual para la Aceptación, Validez, y Libertad on Amazon. This delicious morsel of expression below highlights that Liz is not afraid to tackle difficult subjects in Between My Sheets, as you can read below. My suggestion, have a box of tissues as you read, things may get a bit weepy with the understanding of your own personal journey and what it is that would strongly be of benefit to you in the long term.
How to go from being slaves of time to expressing that you own it? By Liz Lugo
When hard things happen to us, things that are difficult for us to understand, time is our best ally… even if we do not like to hear it. Wounds do not heal from one day to the next, just as time varies according to the person and their experiences, we must all recognize the positivism that encompasses and make it our best friend. Although it may seem crazy, understand that time is not your enemy, that it accepts you as you are and that it is willing to fight alongside you, against winds and tides. But, what about you? Do you accept yourself as you are? Are you willing to fight against everything?
Self-love plays the most important role in making peace over time and overcoming difficulties; but there are many things that affect the way we see ourselves, how we love, respect, and value each other. It is not easy for any person to understand, for example in the case of sexual abuse or physical abuse, how someone crosses that line of respect to touch you without your consent, to hit you, to hurt you. It is not easy for anyone to understand, for example in the case of psychological, verbal and emotional abuse, how someone can manipulate you, say such hurtful things, treat you worse than trash… much less if they are people who supposedly love us. We cannot pretend to cover the sun with one finger. Nobody deserves that. It is just horrible. These people should not even be classified as human beings. But we do not live in a utopia world. Unfortunately, psychological abuse, verbal abuse, sexual harassment, domestic violence, sexual abuse, rape, (among others)… all these are issues that society classify as a taboo refraining from talking about them, but (sadly) they exist. And these are just examples. The truth is that you do not have to be a survivor of abuse to feel like society, and even oneself, points out and judges, adding weight to the pain. And there is precisely the key to making that divine alliance with time.
The human being is like an oyster… billions, but each one is special in its own way. Not all oysters make pearls and, certainly, not all pearls are created equal. For an oyster to produce a pearl, a process is required that too many will seem normal, common, or “things that happen in life.” Pearls are formed when a foreign body enters the interior of the oyster… it can be a grain of sand, a parasite, or any other particle (many call it a “little garbage”). Not being able to expel it, the oyster reacts by secreting substances, a mixture of calcium carbonate and conchiolin, known as nacre, which is the same material that lines the walls of the inner part of the oyster shell. That is when a pearl is produced. The interesting thing is that it is not an immediate process… on the contrary, it is a process that takes time, and can take up to ten years.
Just as oysters get that “little garbage,” human beings do too… in the sense that that is how we feel when we go through difficult situations. We feel tainted, garbage, that we are worthless. We feel that whatever happened to us, whether it was surviving any type of abuse or simply being rejected, losing a loved one, losing our job, being abandoned… whatever happened, just came to invade our space, our interior. And we constantly miss who we were before, and even wonder who we would be if such a thing wouldn’t happen. “My life would have been even more stable!” Well, it is an opinion that we will never have a correct or real answer because life simply happens. So why wallow in countless unanswered questions that only keep us stuck in that place full of negative vibes?
Just as oysters require a long process to produce pearls, human beings require a long process to heal… it is not overnight. An oyster can take up to ten years to give us such a precious jewel. However, the human being can take until it is necessary. We do not have to set time to heal because each one is individual – to ourselves and to the oysters, there is no comparison in that regard. Some may take months, a year or even five years. For others, it will take ten, twelve, fifteen, or even twenty years. Not all situations are the same, nor are all pains. It is essential to understand that you are you, that all your luggage bears your name, not someone else’s… as well as understanding that your luggage weighs what you decide it weighs, not someone else’s. That, if each suitcase and bag weighs fifty pounds each, that’s fine. I admit it, it weighs too much. And once you recognize the weight of each one, accept it as it is —— that is the magical moment that time begins to smile with you. Right there is that, little by little, you will begin to empty those suitcases and bags, and your luggage will become lighter. And it does not matter if it’s half a pound to half a pound, a pound a week…it doesn’t matter. The important thing is to lose weight.
Oysters are considered a pure, elegant jewel, symbolizing loyalty, generosity, humility, and innocence. In earlier times, men and women wore them because they were considered talismans with powers over stronger friendships and could even calm anger toward others. In addition, for many people, pearls meant the symbol of the purest love. It is interesting how a process of suffering, of situations that destroy us, that change us, can lead to producing something so precious. I am fascinated by this comparison with oysters and how pearls are produced, not only because it expresses how time plays an important role in our processes, but also how time goes hand in hand to, in addition to helping us heal, transform us into a being of light, to show us the treasure we have always been.
Usually, society points so much at people… yes, very much at survivors of abuse and even rape, to the point of overwhelming all attention on how the victim was to blame and not the attacker; but they really point out even at people who are just trying to survive a depression because they had to see their mother die (or any loved one), see who they considered their soulmate leave, fail in some project… countless situations that are difficult to assimilate, to process, to heal. And for some strange reason, many times it is more comfortable for us to listen to the noise around us than to listen to our soul. We know who we are, but simply because we do not understand why such a thing happened to us, we think that the noisy ones are right, that these signs tell the truth. It is not like this. The healing process leads us to remove that band that we began to create when something unpleasant happened to us. That band that we put in our eyes, but especially in our minds, and prohibits us from seeing our value. By being able to take off the band, we are going to be able to realize all the wonderful things that have always been within us, all our essence. The healing process leads to a love as pure as self-love… so hard to find, but so precious. You uncover all negativity and begin to give place to humility, loyalty, generosity, innocence, empathy, understanding… to all those qualities that make you unique and special.
We are not what people think. We are not what people see, nor what they murmur. As we become distracted and fed up with hearing phrases about time, how is it that we give importance to the noise of society?
CCIQ Press 