I Am Not Asking What Do I Want

October is coming. It is my New Year's resolution-making time. The time where I look down the road and think about where I want to be and what I want to be doing. I can feel the transitioning in my bones. My life will change yet again. My life is calling me to new ground. My life is calling me to new love, and to the healing of the oldest wounds.

The cool crisp mornings are whispering it is time.

I am not asking what do I want. The real question is what am I willing to do for the wants I already have? There are not new wants. I have the same wants that existed at the beginning of this blog. The same wants:

1. To know me better
2. To walk and stand in truth
3. To love with abandon
4. To be loved with equal aplomb
5. To continue to attract wholehearted loving people
6. To be good and kind and generous to my friends
7. To laugh more
8. To dance more
9. To make love more
10. To love who I am in this body
11. To be financially strong

These are the wants. These are the things that come and go in my life. I want consistency and long-term. I want eons of good fortune. I want endless days of laughter and dancing. Here comes October calling me to my annual sojourn of offering prayers for the journey ahead.

Photo: Karen King

Adulting: Showing Up For Love

In friendships, you have to be willing to go to your beloved and say you hurt me. And equally important if you've done the hurting, you gotta repair that shit. You gotta take your spit and glue and tape and bandaids, offering a balm. Love requires that and much more.

You hurt me is hard to say and hard to hear. Often folks can't bear it on either receiving end. If you are the one directing it to your beloved, then in your repair and healing of the situation, you have to resist the urge to say that's not what I intended, or meant. Or that I didn't think it was offensive or hurtful. If you are the one saying how you are hurt by what was said or done, then you have to be clear and honest as you can be in those moments.

Hurt words can be healed, providing you are prepared to walk in truth. Let me tell you what hurt and why. We hurt each other in small almost unnoticeable ways. We hurt each other in grand sweeping ways. We hurt each other. The mark of love calls us to repair, tend to and heal the wrong done, real or imagined.

Not telling someone how you really feel about them is not walking in truth, And brushing off things only stores them in a powder keg. Someday it will go BOOM! So rather than wait for the explosion, speak your peace.  I value those I hold dear as friends. I want them to know that hurtful words in and of themselves will not break our friendship. Misunderstandings cannot be left to fester because we are afraid that we can't get to higher ground... common ground. I promise to make myself available to listen without judgment. I may need time to process what you say, but I will not up and abandon the friendship. I pride myself on being a reasonable, deeply thinking woman.

At this place in my life, I am tending some of the most beautiful relationships I've ever had. All the people in my universe are treasures. Each one of them makes me a better woman. The fact that they make room in their lives for me and my shit is breathtaking. I come with complications and unimaginable wounds that run deep and long. Yet somehow their hearts welcome me and I am safe and cared for.

Showing up vulnerable is where I want to exist from. I want to be wide open. That comes with risks. I am willing to take the risks.