tea in the morning....

so i got to have tea with a really cool woman this morning.
if i had to pick one word to describe her, i'd be stuck between
'genuine' and 'inspirational.'
either one will work, because they're really the same thing to me.
i don't think you can be genuine without being strong and true to your heart.
and that's the stuff that inspires me.

spending time with her really reminded me of the beauty of women my age.
it's so easy to forget as our culture nudges us to look elsewhere,
but there i sat captivated by her beauty.
her dark eyes pooled with it.

there wasn't a lotta time to share lifetimes with each other,
so chapters of living that were filled with struggle were boiled down to paragraphs.

but having lived our own chapters, there was understanding of the depths
that lay beyond the paragraphs we shared. that in itself is so cool.

a few years back i might have described her beauty as that of a survivor.
but i don't like that anymore. it seems too easy for the role of survivor to become
who we are. to overtake our identity. and somehow limit us.
it can catch us and snare us, just when we think we made it thru.

there's something so beyond surviving.
when we don't stop there.
when we don't live there.
when we keep going.
when we just keep trying to be true to ourselves.....
even when we know life isn't going to stop throwing curve balls.

there is beauty in the going forward even as we carry weights we may never
put down.

i had been playing with a concept lately - trying to see 'the big picture' and maybe
make things in the past less powerful by seeing the whole. i'm thinking now some
things in the past are just really powerful. and will always leave aches or scars
or holes that we carry...and maybe i don't need to make that any different than it is.

maybe it's okay. and maybe it's part of the beauty that we carry.
to continue to act from your heart, to offer what you can, to be genuine,
to care, to work and fight for what you believe in, to be kind -
to have held a belief like that - to have grown a belief like that -
not in spite of life, but because of life -
well, there's something incredibly beautiful there.

i was reminded of that this morning.