For as long as I can remember, I’ve been looking for love.
The love that I experienced, even between parent and child, never felt like enough.
At sixteen, I told my parents that I felt unloved.
I was met with strong negative emotions.
I understand why.
What parent would want to hear that from their child?
Yet, it was true.
On the outside, my life journey looks shiny, a veneer I’ve kept up pretty well.
People have thought I’ve needed and wanted for nothing.
Meanwhile, I’ve been through crushing experiences and loss.
Now, I know that I chose certain circumstances, positions, and experiences as part of my spiritual evolution.
I have been tested.
Without “things,” who would I be?
Would I continue to be kind, compassionate, generous, grounded?
Would I lose my integrity?
I received all kinds of offers, some more salacious than others.
Bad people, and there are many, have a way of knowing when you’re in a precarious situation. That’s what they feed on and hope for.
Did I sell my soul? No, I did not.
I did put my trust in people who were not trustworthy.
I did count on people who could not be counted on.
The consequence is that I have been without food, without money and without safety.
If you are reading this now and I ever asked you for anything, help of any kind, support of any of my activities, please know it was because I truly needed it.
If you came through, thank you a million times more than I’ve already given thanks.
The journey I chose has not been an easy one.
My most difficult realization was that there is not one human being in this world who puts me first, to whom I am a priority.
Please take a moment to think about that and put yourself in my place and then think about how truly fortunate you are if there is someone in your world who puts you first.
I’m not sure I ever experienced that feeling, perhaps when I was incredibly young and unaware.
It’s clear to me that my mission, up to this point in life, was twofold, to find myself and to find God in and around me, not in order, but simultaneously.
I can never be separated from my true self. That pattern is, forever, broken.
Initially, I thought my life experience was to gain compassion, and I surely have, but really it was to accept myself, with every flaw, to love myself deeply and unconditionally.
The extreme loneliness, hopelessness and fear I experienced was completely necessary so that I could finally recognize that I am never alone, and that I have nothing, in this world, to fear.
If my writing seems more authentic, and I know that it is, it’s because I’ve experienced unforgettable obstacles that have liberated me and shown me who I really am, who I am revealing to you.
The circle is closed, the simplest, most complete closure and never-ending cycle that exists.
My circle consists of me and God, as complete, finite and as infinite as any union can be.
God is my mother, father, spouse, business partner, my everything.
We are one, eternally.
I am lucky, blessed, that all this time I’ve been God’s priority, lucky even that there is no person I could have relied on in her place.
That’s how I arrived in this moment, clear and pure.
Experience is now the catalyst that’s moving me forward.
And let me be the first to tell you, God, as they say, is showing up and out!
There’s more to this story, including the fact that, unbeknownst to me, I never even had to be in the position I was in, but I’ll save that for another time.
In spite of, or perhaps because of, the obstacles I put in my own way, I’ve emerged as divine as every living thing in the Universe.
This is my testimony, my personalized message.