found here
First of all, I wanted to say thank you for all of the love and support you’ve shown me with regards to my post yesterday. Your tweets, your comments, your emails and virtual hugs mean more to me than you’ll ever know. I miss my grandpa terribly but feel so loved, inside and out, through and through at this moment. So thank you.
It feels weird to transition into something else after the last few days, but I know that life must go on. That said, posting may be light over the next little while as I figure out how to adjust and digest this life without one of my very favourite people.
So here we go, attempting to move on.
A few of you recently emailed me asking what was written and hung up on our new art wall (this post here). It’s an exerpt from a novel called the Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. I have not read the novel myself, but stumbling upon its quote a few years back really hit home for me and no words since have struck me the same way. Here it is:
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your hearts longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon… I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals, or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it is not pretty, every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, YES!
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
-The Invitation
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