Solitude is Earned
Every lonely tear you shed. Each experience of betrayal. All the doubts you harbor that you will never find a partner, or enjoy the happiness of a loving relationship. These are all openings to the secret passageway to your beautiful solitude.
What is solitude, and how do you open that door?
True solitude is a comfortable ease with being alone. It is the space to find your own inspiration and depth of purpose. A healthy relationship with your solitude leads to healthy relationships with others, because you will no longer look to others to fill voids within yourself, or enable toxic behaviors. You will look to them to join you in your own self love. A person who loves her solitude, loves herself. And requires others to love her too.
To open the door, first you must embrace the pain your loneliness brings you, while also daring to believe life can get better. No one is coming to rescue you, not because you're not worthy of rescue, but because you will never find the treasure of solitude until you accept accountability for your own life. All of it. Because there are no magic pills and no shortcuts.
Next, you begin loving yourself enough to gently accept your loneliness. You must do this without numbing yourself to your reality, or trying to run away from it. If you allow yourself to feel the pain, eventually you will be able to let it go and start dreaming a better dream.
Accept your flaws AND your magnificence. Dare to welcome loneliness by telling yourself a better story about why you're alone. There's nothing wrong with you (though you are flawed, like the rest of us – and there is beauty in that too.)
Your soul tribe is waiting for you. And – while you may need to be alone for a time as you lovingly end the relationships that cannot support the updated version of you – your tribe can already feel the miracle of you. Your tribe intuitively knows that you are worthy of healthy, fun, passionate relationships. But even they cannot turn your painful loneliness into fulfilling solitude. Only you can do that.
You are on a journey of learning from your past, and reaching higher and higher planes of consciousness. As you begin to treat yourself with kindness, you can set authentic boundaries. You can find people who make your heart sing, and engage in life-giving, reciprocal relationships. But it all begins with you.
Once you discover the treasure of solitude within your heart you will have discovered the key to lasting joy. It's well worth the journey through loneliness.