My Truth Is Fire.

Words are one of the most powerful tools that we have. When we use our words to give voice to our truths, we are honoring ourselves and our experience. 

I have started and stopped multiple blogs since posting my last one a few months ago… I think somewhere along the way I have become wary of potential damage caused by my truth and it’s hard to have your words flow and be worthy of posting when there’s hesitation and weariness.

I have a history of holding my tongue and maintaining the peace in an effort to preserve relationships. I can recognize it as a lack of boundaries and unwillingness to honor myself for fear of losing people.

Somewhere along the way though, when a relationship isn’t flowing, there will always be something that is a big enough issue that the truth has to come out. This usually comes out in a blaze of fire and once the cap is taken off, the geyser of issues just comes flowing out, and the whole relationship burns to the ground instantly. 

I grew up hearing how big my energy field is and how anytime I have a big emotion that energy field attacks… Instead of learning how to bring logic to my emotions, or to minimize this field, I avoided speaking my emotions regularly and when I let them out, the attack was intentional.

I attribute the success of my marriage mainly to our ability to communicate effectively with one another. And yet, just like with every other relationship in my life, communicating my truth and my emotions without burning everything to the ground is not something that came naturally. My husband and I have worked so hard to get to where we are and we actively had to learn how to communicate with one another. We have been to marriage counseling twice and each time we have come out with better communication tools and a stronger relationship. 

In the last few years, I have been working to put all the communication tools that I have learned in my marriage to work with the other relationships in my life. I like to write my grievances out, go over everything to make sure there are no attacks, and go point by point with what I want to address and what outcomes I would like to see. 

This works really well to open the conversation with my husband…. 

With everyone else, however, I have found more often than not that the immediate reaction is one of being attacked, to retreat from me and the conversation, and to take a step back from the relationship rather than trying to work with me to come to a middle ground that we are both happy with.

It’s left me a little shell-shocked and I realize I have been tip-toeing around the relationships in my life, wary of potential fallout. I have painted myself as the bad guy for speaking my truth because the relationships are never the same… 

The thing is that the relationships already weren’t working. 

I was given an opportunity on a recent family vacation to see how far I have come in my communication skills and how even with that growth, I will not be perceived well by everyone.

The questions I need to be asking myself in these situations are:

• Am I communicating my boundaries and needs effectively without anger and explosion?
• Am I honoring myself and speaking my truth and my needs?
• When asking others to make a change for our relationship or in a certain situation, am I being clear on what I would like to see moving forward?

If the answer to all these questions is yes, how others choose to receive my truth is out of my control. 

It seems like my new personal goal will be to stop seeing myself as the villain in the story of others. 

To protect forests, firefighters will do controlled burns to get rid of everything that is dead and no longer serving the forest. These controlled burns help make sure that the forest is not at a greater risk of total destruction should a wildfire strike. In the path of these controlled burns, the forest is rejuvenated with the ashes, and new greenery blooms, full of life.

The relationships in my life are all forests and my truth is fire. I can let my truth burn everything to the ground or I can speak my truth in a controlled manner and hope that my relationships grow stronger for it. 

Self-love means honoring my needs, my boundaries, and speaking my truth, no matter what. Sometimes fire is a necessary element. 

If you have read my story so far, I hope that my journey to honor myself and speak my truth and the lessons I have learned along the way will help you to do the same. Our words have power and our truth deserves a voice.