The Reward — 

The Reflection Lake

 

On the other side of the fire,
after the letting go, the surrender, the sacred undoing…

There was peace.​

There was stillness.

Like snow falling on an old wound.

​

There was the clear, quiet lake
of soul vision —

           Not through the cracked lens of survival,

            not through programs or projections —

           but with clarity.  With truth.  With grace.

Where I could finally see myself
not through the eyes of others,
not through programs or roles or projections —
but with clarity.
With truth.
With grace.

​

For most of my life....I couldn't see myself.

For fifty years, I had lived in a fog of doing...
performing, pleasing, surviving.
Stuffing pain.
Silencing myself.
Pretending everything was fine.

​

I had no idea who I truly was.

​

But now…
after the descent,
after the climb,
after the shedding of names and narratives —
I had found her.

​

Me.

​

          Not the mother, the wife, the sister, the householder.
          Not the good girl or the high achiever.
          Not the rescuer or the silencer.

​

Just me —
in raw presence.
In breath.
In joy.

​

And she is radiant.

And she is  becoming.

(And she is me.)

​

I made contact with stillness —
the deep kind,
the eternal kind.

​

I learned to live from the soul —
to be informed by the voice within,
not the noise without.

​

I met peace — not as an concept,
but as a bone-deep knowing.

A grounded way of being
where I no longer spiraled into shame,
no longer obsessed over regret,
no longer feared the future.

​

The present became holy.

​

This moment — enough.

​

This breath — complete.

​

I had quieted the mind.
Tamed the stories.
Learned to sit in silence and know…

I am.

​

I had become a woman who is defiled by no man.
Untouched by the opinions of others.
Unshaken by the judgments of the tribe.
Fearless in her being.
Fluid in her expression.
Sovereign in her soul.

​

I had become a woman who listens
to the deep well of her own knowing.
To the pulse of intuition
and the whisper of the divine within.

​

I had walked through fire...
so many times
that now…

​

I am fireproof.

​

Safety is no longer my god.

I do not bow at the altar of certainty.

I no longer serve the leash of survival.

I am anchored.
Still.
Alive.
Free.

​

This — this is the reward.
Not applause.
Not approval.

​

Peace.​

And it is everything.