what a personally intense and emotional journey saints is for me. everyday i am stretched to expand my thinking, to accomondate a new learning opportunity, to self evaluate fairly...not just looking at the good, or glossing over the bad but really trying to understand if i am standing in the same place i believed.
i so totally understand the risks of not knowing what is true inside me, what is really real around me, of trying to turn a blind eye to who i am really and what i am in actuality doing.
so i struggle with my natural human inclination to protect and perserve myself with illusions to comfortably live inside of me.
and why is this such an issue for me...because honesty is so important to me. i not only need to be honest to the animals here, but to the folks that care about us.
sometimes we can lie so well...we do convince ourselves. sometimes we are so afraid of the truth that we just turn and look away or blame someone else. sometimes our minds are so messed up that we honestly create a new reality that fits better than whats real.
sorry, here i go again...i know all of this. and i am not sure how to ensure that i myself have not fallen into the shadowy pit of not quite real. like if your mind is so good at protecting itself...how do you know if you snuck under the wire and really have figured it all out for REAL?
and in the end why does it even matter? well..mostly because of this blog. if i try to share with you what saints is for me every day, in my reality..it means that i share information, thoughts and beliefs..i share the good and the bad, not just about here...but about me personally and as a species, we are not very good at separating personal things..like saints is forever at risk of getting the unfair end of the stick because no one ever says..oh yeah, saints is great but carol sucks...if i suck, people think that saints sucks, unfairly sad for saints but true that saints gets tarred with the same brush as me. i feel bad for the animals about this but what do i do..pretend i am better or different than i am?..i am sorry..sometimes i do suck (but not always, sometimes i am good.)
and it means that by doing this...i leave myself open to all kinds of things. like misinterpetation, or correct interpetation, misjudgements or pretty darn accurate judgements. it means that for those who do not like me or are mad at me...some pretty good stuff is available to prove or justify why they feel the way that they do.
here is the key to all of this...just because i try to be totally honest in telling you what is happening, what i am feeling, what i am thinking...does not mean that i am always right in what i believe. i obviously believe i am right (mostly because i actually do believe i am right alot (most..almost all) of the time) but i acknowledge the possibilty that i might actually be wrong and have not figured it out yet.
so where does that leave me? with a thousand pages of blog that i believe to be true but may not actually be right because i am doing everything wrong and don't even know it because..my whole premise was flawed.
so thats a big worry for me.
if my lifes journey is going to be such a personally intense and emotional (and shared) thing..i want at least for it to be real, for it to be true.
i don't want to take my last breath and suddenly realize that i missed one really big important thing...like i was really so blindly full of shit all along.
i think that would suck and after all of life's struggles and challenges, to realize i got it all so wrong...well shit man..that life was just totally a waste of time!
I echo Erin. Whole heartedly 100%.
I'm thinking of Rose...laying on her back for the first time to invite you to love on her belly. The belly she protected when she came here because her previous people had used it as a target for punishment. She came in a tortured ( and obviously unloved )soul, and will leave knowing how utterly loved, adored and bloody important she is.
Millie...the dirty yellow stained cat who now plays like a 6 month old kitten and her white hairs are now as white as snow. Czar...the sweet sweet new horse, whose whole persona has softened and he meets the eye. Bobby Brown...who comes out of his house and rubs his pheromones on anyone who loves on him...he's come a long way! Stu and Stevie who became best bun buds! ( that was indescribably heart smilin' to witness! )
I LOVE my job!! I think I have the best job on earth and beyond. I believe it's an honor to clean up after, love on, and worry on these honey pies. They come in looking and feeling like shit...the best thing in my world is to see them happy, tails wagging. Seriously happy smiles on their faces. That beats anything, hands down.
Saints is truly a magical place. Hands down again.