Shawnberry - Don't go back to sleep

Feb 6 eve

https://shavawnberry.contently.com/
Lesson Three: Losses and Betrayals Break Our Hearts Open. Don’t Shut Down. Don’t Go Back to Sleep.

Advocate for yourself.
No one else will love you and treat you right if you cannot protect and value your own feelings. Now, I see the betrayal as a great awakening in a long series of awakenings that have come my way. Sometimes our teachers are kind; sometimes they are terrible. The point is, my long-ago ex and my former friend broke my heart open. For a while afterward, I kept trying to seal it off from life, but life would have none of that.
Now, that raw, still beating heart lives in every word I write. Despite the carnage, I am profoundly grateful for the losses I endured.


Lesson Four: Be Grateful for Everything & Focus on What You Actually Want, Not What You Fear.

We must swallow our fear, and instead, give birth to love.
“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.” ~ John Lennon

Lesson Five: Love is the only thing that truly matters. It is the only thing we take with us when we die.
I began to understand that suffering is a part of life. Death is just as integral to life as birth is. We cannot (and will not) get out of here alive.
Knowing the ephemeral nature of all life helped me see that the only thing that matters in the long run is love. How we love. Who we love. That we love.
Love is what matters. Love is what breaks us and what builds us up. Love is the answer to every riddle. Love is the missing piece that we only realize much later, is never missing. Love, you see, is something we carry inside us, from our cribs to our deathbeds. It is our bones and teeth. It is our marrow. It is what will transform our shadows into figures of light.
Love is the grease that turns the wheel of life.