Loving Yourself and Living an Uncensored Life
Posted by Hari Berzins on Jan 10, 2014 in Breathe, Recent Posts | 27 comments
I get up really early to give myself the solitude I need to write in this tiny house. This act of self-love is a newish routine for me, and it’s helping me beat the winter blues. I encourage you to try getting up a bit earlier than usual. Loving yourself and dreaming on paper is fun, and just 15 minutes can make a big difference.
Alarm goes off at 4:00 am. I crawl down my ladder and start the water on for coffee.
I enjoy very much my mornings to myself: writing, reading, journaling, drinking coffee, showering, being naked, writing some more, reading some more and dreaming my day into existence is a healing tonic for my crammed body. We stood around a campfire with our neighbors last week and I shared my routine with some friends. Eyes get wide when I say how early I get up, but when I say it’s keeping me sane as I glance up the hill at our tiny house, they totally get it.
I am ready for my family to wake up now. Now that I’ve dreamt on paper, traveled the country by bike and imagined myself reciting poetry on stage in a tutu. The waking dreams of early morning are creating my life and it’s a multi-colored adventure. I am falling more in love with myself–a goal of mine. This love is where it starts, this living, this creating, this loving everything else.
I love being awake before the rooster; racing him to the punch, I crow loudly in silence.
After I play-dream, I write the work. I work to share. I’m excited about our upcoming eCourse. I go to sleep at night looking forward to waking up and dreaming, writing and putting into stories and assignments the steps of our plan. I can’t wait to help others find their own pathway to mortgage-freedom and simple living.
When I dream on paper, I’m dreaming up my own future, but it’s not just my future. I imagine all of us dreaming up a better future for our planet. It starts with the early morning dreamy falling-in-love-with-yourself and then it spills out into the rest of your life. You want it. You want it. You run toward this better life. This dreamy life of love and fulfillment. It’s right there. You just have to get up and do it. Here I am sitting at this computer telling you that’s all we do. We get up and do it.
The getting up is the part. The part that matters first, but then it’s the I’m getting up to create, not to read Facebook part. I’m sacrificing sleep so that I can be more awake in my day, so that I can share a raw part of my being, a part that only comes out at twilight. A part that crows before the rooster. A loud and tribal dancing tutu fairy who says, yeah, I can read poetry from a stage or bike across the country or weld with the boys.
I’m rambling the ramble that happens on lots of coffee and little sleep and a longer morning alone than I usually get. Thank you, sleep, for holding my family in your cradling arms. Whisper my love into their ears as they wake to this freezing and dark morning. Tell them I love them beyond loving because I love myself that way. I love them beyond loving because they are worthy of that love. They are enough. We are all enough. We have it right here and right now. We just have to wake to it. Wake at your own time, but wake to it.
I am writing like an uncensored fool. I want to be uncensored. I want to wear stripped socks with flowered boots and a purple tutu because that’s what I wear, and because it’s fun and it makes me want to dance. I am freeing myself with self-love, this overflowing self-love that says, you can wear that. You look fabulous in that. You are fabulous. Yes, Mama, you.
The horizon is turning pink. Can I keep this wild woman alive in the daylight? I wonder. I wonder all the time. But now, I will get off of this cushion in the corner of the tiny house and tidy and make breakfast and wear my ruffled apron like a tutu. I’ll dance with my daughter and sing with my son. I’ll tell my husband that he is sexy and rub his booty a little bit. Then I’ll make him some food and kiss his forehead. Then I’ll help him put the roof on our big house. I’ll dream this life into the world at twilight. I’ll hold the torch. I will. I’ll do this for the love of it all.
Please, will you do it, too, for the love of it all?
Simply,
Hari
P.S.
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27 Comments
What happens to your mind and heart when you move into a tiny house?
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What a beautiful post – it may even be my favorite. I really appreciate the imagery of the morning solitude. I also like the line, “We just have to wake to it. Wake at your own time, but wake to it.” Mindfulness in action! Thanks for sharing.
Thank you, Ricky. Thank you for reading and being my friend.
Hari, I agree with Rick and I know it is my favorite! THis is my morning ritual, but not as early anymore. I dream my life onto paper ever morning and then get up and do it. It’s slow sometimes, the doing it, because I often find myself just BEing in it, whatever it is in the moment. However, when I reflect, I can see the changes, often slight and subtle. And btw, I know a young woman who biked across the country and built houses along the way AND I know a group of guys at Xerocraft in Tucson where you can learn to weld on Tuesday nights for free. Welding is one of my dreams and I just happened to land at their pad one night, “mistakenly”. … I love you “uncensored”.
Thank you for dreaming on paper and reflecting and allowing slow changes to be enough. I love you, too, my dear Lora.
What an absolutely gorgeous post…here’s to living life uncensored!
Here’s to it, Erin!
One of these days, soon, I’d like to get over the mountain to check out your farm. It looks dreamy.
I want this post to be a poster. I’d keep it my office so that my work may be done with my heart fully involved.
That would be so cool. I always loved SARK’s posters and had a secret desire to have my words on a poster, too. 🙂
Simply beautiful . . . . so honest and real. I think we all have a free spirit within us that wears “striped socks, flowered boots, and a purple tutu”, but we’ve been domesticated to suppress it. I’m working on “freeing myself with self-love”. Thank you for putting it into words for me.
Hari, you’re writing is a gift to the world.
Oh, thank you, Bonnie. Enjoy the freedom! Lots of love~
Inspiring! You put into words many feelings I have had recently. I read it in the wee hours of my morning while my family slept, ironically it is my FB time! Thank you for calling me out!
Ha! Funny how we get the messages me need from random places just when we need them. I hope you are loving your beautiful self, my old friend. It’s nice to see you here. Thank you for reading!
Yes YES yes!! A truly BEAUTIFUL blog. Well done you. I am going to get up earlier to pray and have time just for me even though there is only my amazing husband and me at home.
Thank you, Janet. It’s nice to have your early-morning company. Blessings to you and your amazing husband.
Especially loved this: “I’m sacrificing sleep so that I can be more awake in my day, so that I can share a raw part of my being, a part that only comes out at twilight.”
This has been on my mind a lot lately, to get outta bed earlier to explore that part of myself I want to connect with again, but I haven’t made it from thinking to doing yet. Tomorrow I will FINALLY get the heck outta bed earlier and honor myself this way.
Thanks for the motivation!
You’re welcome ;). I am giving you coffee cheers right now, Tommy. I hope you are honoring yourself over there over that mountain~
Wow. Just wow. Brava for living this way, and bravissima for writing this way to tell us about it!
Thank you for saying so, Amado. You know it can be scary to expose raw truth like this. Your supportive comment is such encouragement.
YES! This is my life too! Oh how beautiful, how inspiring and supportive. THANK YOU!
Thank you for reading, Melinda! This is the life I strive for everyday. All we can do is that. I’m so glad you find it inspiring and supportive. Cheers!
Falling in love with your blog! I fantasize about buying a few acres and leaving it all behind, especially having grown up on a few hundred forested acres that provided endless hours of imaginative play and exploration with my three sisters. I sometimes worry that I’m doing my two little ones a disservice by living in town…but I remind myself there are benefits. And we can always leave. And that my almost 3 year old can’t stop talking about how excited he is to plant our garden come Spring. So we’re doing something right. Anyway, with a seven month old daughter who very much doesn’t sleep through the night, I have a hard time getting up before my son’s 6:30 get up and go. But I crave my quiet mornings of old and can’t wait to rekindle my relationship with them. Come that time, this post will surely inspire me. Thank you!
I just found your blog yesterday. I love this post and the one about looking up to your daughter for the courage she has to be herself. You are an amazing writer!
Thank you, Vicky! I appreciate you reading and commenting. Blessings!
Dear Hari, I just found your blog out of your Facebook site and I am really touched by lots of things: your story, the way you found a way out, the way you are living now, the way you are looking at life and your photos – and the wonderful way of writing that creates at once pictures in my head and love in my heart! Thank you so much; I will follow your blog and stay connected to you. Wish you all the very best, take care and please remember that there is somebody in Germany thinking of you…Anja
I’m so glad you’re here, Anja! I’m grateful for the opportunity to share our story and create pictures in your head and love in your heart. I love knowing you are out there! Many blessings to you. 🙂
Inspirational. You are a poet.
What a nice comment. Thanks for reading, Alisa!