Never Settle

I want to get down on my hands and knees
and put my head to the earth
Crying happy tears,
Crying thank you, and please!!
For in all of my searching no man has seen my worth

But you

You do
-


For all I have given
I have never been seen
I've been sought, taken and forsaken
One too many times
And I refused to abide

I didn't make the rules to game
But I took the reigns
And sent them away
-I no longer wanted to play


Worthless sentiments
And condescending compliments
Walking on eggshells
Men with no honor
Patting me on the head
Empty heads, lights out,
Checked out, soul hidden behind a wall
Doesn't matter what that soul looks like
If they choose to bury it behind brick and mortar
In a basement, dingy dark and stairs steep
It's they who choose to sleep
Refuse to keep
Integrity

They made me sick
They made me tired
But I forced myself at the worst of times
To never abandon my desire..
For what I deserve

I may have stayed longer than I should've
But I did know how to let it go

I fought with everything to preserve
My sanctity
My faith
In my own heart
And in life

And I have won
-

So to you all
I say

When you are the most sick and tired,
When you no longer wish to play

Walk away.
And hold on...

Not to the users, the abusers
Weak-willed & hypocritical
Living in hypotheticals
Taking
Draining you

Love is not love
That suffocates

Do not negate
Your value
For a half-manifestation
Close but no cigar
You've come too far
In your life
To resign to tolerate
Horrible treatment
Don't settle.

Walk away
And hold on.

Never settle.

I'd rather sleep alone
Than with a poser or a prick
People pretending to be so conscious
Afraid to look in the mirror
They make me sick

Don't waste your time
With one who refuses to grow
And you had better face the mirror
Face the music
Do the work
Walk your talk

Strive to uphold your integrity
Live your life, follow your inspirations
And don't worry

And never settle..
And your day will come..

One
Worthy
Of
Your love.

Adventure Out Of Your Comfort Zone to Stand Firmly in Your Strength

Life works best when we love ourselves.

That truth used to slap me in the face when I chronically had low self-esteem.. (ages 7-25)..

..but it is true.. if it angers you to read that, reflect for a moment on why.. is it because you have a hard time loving yourself?.... and why??.....

My mom gave up her career in her early twenties to take care of my dad, who wasn't bed-ridden, but not fully independent anyways. She lived a hard, sheltered, and lonely childhood... had a few years of freedom, and then met daddy, and loved him with her whole heart, and gave her whole life to caring for him. But she denied herself full independence. She didn't learn to drive. She didn't go on adventures. She stayed sheltered. With daddy being sick, this all has become apparent to me.. my mom's nervousness and self-consciousness makes this brilliant and charming woman scared or anxious whenever she leaves the house, worried about what others think of her and feeling wierd about trusting herself.. no freedom. I remember when I used to be that way.. its such constriction of the life energy, it's such debilitating anxiousness.. and we all have this at moments, or have battled with it more then we have ever admitted.

How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.  Anais Nin


It makes me thank God that I was presented the opportunities to adventure outside of my comfort zone, and that I TOOK them! We all have opportunites presented to us.. but we don't allow ourselves to rise to them.. I'm too tired, I can't do that, that's OK, no... all the excuses to stay tightly closed in our buds, we refuse to blossom until the self-hating fatigue, until the tragedy, until the natural disaster, that FORCES us to open to life and start saying YES!

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.   Anais Nin

The new and unfamiliar is uncomfortable, but is an inherent experience in learning.. if we stop learning, growing, or changing, we stagnate, and to stagnate is to begin dying. I think all the adventures, as I call them, that I have experienced over the years.

Currently, I have made a giant hospital feel like my home, instead of clinging fearfully to the known areas, I explored, and made a new mental map.. met new wonderful people, developed new understanding, and reinforced and grew my own sense of strength, independence, and confidence. This has helped me to have the fearlessness needed to hear and follow my own inner-rightness. In following inner-rightness (or heart, or intuition, or inner-truth, as I also refer to it interchangably as) I feel my connection to the Whole very strongly. It is amazing, how developing a strong, but unselfish, sense of independence, is the greatest link to connect to oneness.

Be brave, explore your world. Try new things. Ask questions. Make eye contact. Don't let yourself freeze up. Take that trip alone, learn that new skill, visit, offer, dance, live, love, love, love!

This is your life.

Foster your own strength and indepence, it's like connecting your energetic roots to the earth.. strong legs, healthy base chakra, so that the rest of your being can bloom! Stand tall, breathe, feel, respond intuitively, don't waste time overthinking. Respond from your inner-rightness.

Get out of your comfot zone for a few minutes a day to grow your self-esteem. You will start to experience the greatest miracles and blessings in your world.

Once you become strong in you life, you love yourself.. you are in love with your Self and your life.. and you won't make the mistake of compromising your Self and Truth to pander for love.. you will have the strength and delight that breathes patience into your heart to give and receive love freely and not cling, but await greater and greater levels of love and intimacy. They are coming. Magic is happening. 

with Great Love.. Laura

Consecrate This Pain

Introduction: this poem is about those bittersweet times when unconditional love asks us to let go of someone we love, someone we loved more then we could've ever imagined.
Its also about pain, pain is inevitable in life, and we have to not resist it, not bottle it, but let it tear through us, let it crack our hearts wide open, to cry, to let the energy move and pass. We can dedicate our pain to the healing of others, and then, somehow it becomes a blessing to feel it, for the sake of someone we love.CONSECRATE THIS PAIN
-Laura Harrison  I'm sorry I didn't have the strength to let you go,As soon as I knew.
I could see
You
Were struggling
To open up to me
I knew long before..
Before I had the strength to let you goAnd
I promise
To listen
Much sooner
Much sooner
Forever more.I dragged it out,
I had to doubt,
But I knew you weren't mine to hold,
I just wanted you to be,
So badly.
I am open, I trust fully,
I trust in you, myself, and in reality,
In honoring the way you needed to pull away
And disconnect from me,
I realized just how much you've come to mean to me.
But for weeks it was a burden
That you didn't need to bare
And it tears my heart to shredsSo if I truly care, then
My only choice
Was to silence the voice
Of my growing love for you,
And since I love you more then my own need
The only right thing was to follow through,
Let go of you,
And hope my absence helps your healing speed.
I know its right, and my heart is true,
And I will dedicate this suffering to you..I wish for your own peace more then my own. I consecrate this pain,
To take the weight off you,
May every tear I cry
Help to set you free,
You owe me nothing,
But this your gift from meSo let me take the pain for you,
Let me bare the burden,
May my suffering set you free..
Let my agony,
Cleanse your own,
I want to do this for you,
Even if you will never love me.
I may be far away,
But I know we are all energy,
And in my deep desire to serve you,
May my devastation set you free.i'm not alone. But I miss you. I wish that I could kiss you. I wish that I could be the one to hold and console, but painfully for me, that doesn't seem to be my role.  That is not my reality.

And for you
I'd keep living with this pain,
As long as you need,
I'll keep crying myself to sleep,
And missing your warmth,
And pray that the love was not a fantasy.
And that you'll be back for me.
 And even if it was,
I wouldn't change a thing,
To know you is an amazing gift,
You have changed everything.
I won't dwell, longer then my stay, this time.
I won't hold on to the pain,
It won't take me under,
But the agony comes in waves,
And I can't help but cry,
I refuse to let it take me asunder,
This pain will only open my heart wider,
And if and when you're ready for me,
I'll only be stronger,
shine brighter,
And we'll both be
glad I set you free.

Weathering the Ups + Downs and Staying Open

In order to blossom, that requires us to allow ourselves to be open. We have to stop ignoring our experience, our mental-physical-emotional experience day in and day out. We have to witness the highs of joy and ecstacy and the lows of emotional and physical pain with openess. It is intense. But anthing short of that is to die a little to life.

We have to witness our urges, our longings, our feelings, and let them show us the truth. Once you are in-love, you forever know what it feels like to be in love. The glow of timeless being togetherness, savoring of closeness and fulfilment of desire. But we rarely acknowledge that what is also part of that love is the sweet agony of longing, the painful tearing at the soul in parting, and the depth of loneliness before we find that love or when it perishes, not to mention the ecstatic bittersweet pain of longing for each other throughout the development of the relationship.

Where typical Americans are encouraged to become hardened to the raw intensity of experience in order to become more efficient, more rational, more conformed to social norms and mores, the truly conscious person goes in the other direction. Can we remove every barrier between us and reality in all its raw, fearsome, swe-striking, ambrosial beauty? Can we forge ourselves in that fiery intensity of sensation and become open to the world? This enables us to feel everything, to miss nothing, to find inner peace in all circumstances and gives us the strength to live the truth of our hearts and thus an extraordinary life with no regrets.

It requires us to witness it all. The raw, dull ache of loneliness or longing. The sharp tearing of loss. The flush of fire in embarasment and anger or injustice. The open, expansive joy of loving. The feelings of aliveness that comes in all of this. This is real life, this is reality; not the sanitized, vaccuum-sealed consumer friendly version of life that serves corporate bottom-lines well, which we are sold in our ridiculous culture. Happiness doesn't come from giving in to conformity, it comes from knowing and following your very own heart.

Stay open. Witness your experience. Talk to others or rest in stillness on your own. Connect with nature. Use powerful hobbies like music and art and writing to move the energy through you and allow it to become a creative force. Out of the force of our experience in life comes all inspiration and art. From stillness arises insight, from insight arises freedom.