by Sarah Smith Warren
Founder of Soul Space Work
Happy Birthday to me!
42 years living this human experience and the more you experience and learn, the more you realize there's so much you don't know and need to learn.
This year I am giving myself a really special gift. It's something that I have always wanted, yearned for and dreamed of. Something I desperately hoped someone would give to me. Something that, when I finally possessed, would mean I had it all.
I'm giving myself the gift of enoughness. As I just wrote this, my head started spinning. I think as I physically typed this and meant it, I actually received it.
I am enough. And I love and accept myself and no longer need to feel plagued by pleasing, wanting, proving, judging.
Why now?
Do I wish this gift had come a decade earlier? Hell yes.
It would have saved me so much pain and anguish and time and energy. But for the past decade I've been busy living. If, "The greatest sin is the unlived life" (John O'Donohue), then that is one sin I haven't committed. I have been living the real human experience, especially in this past decade.
{These are things we can all expect in a human experience - living, breathing, feeling, suffering and, if we are lucky, love and joy.}
Sometimes this is spread over 90 years, sometimes it can happen all in one week. For me, a bulk of it has been in this past decade. Loving and losing, experiencing so many firsts - like our first home, our first pregnancy, our first AND second experience of burying a baby, loving a living child, watching our parent's health falter, watching our loved ones hurt,
making life changing decisions like selling everything and traveling for a year.
I think I got whip lash from all the human experiencing I've been doing. But as I've been doing
a lot of work on grieving and accepting and self-awareness (I'm a 2 on the enneagram so if you know you know and if you don't know, call me and we'll talk about it for hours).
I'm also a seeker - I want all the answers, I'm going to take 50 different courses and then read more, and now I'm feeling stuck over here, so I'll book a session with my therapist to work on that issue and then I see how I'm failing in this area so I better do some reflection on this and what in my childhood do I now need to explore that explains that behavior and and and and. Anyone else exhausted just reading about my self help spiral?
Enough now.
I want to be very clear that part of the reason I am able to give myself this gift, this enough-ness, is because of the work that I have done, because of the seeking, the growing, the grieving, the learning.
I didn't wake up and decide - I will now be enough. I did some work (not all, it's never over).
I did wake up and, because I was getting healthy and clear, I decided I was ready for more living, more human experiencing but more of the love and joy part.
I'm tired of being sad. I'm tired of being angry. I'm tired of being self conscious. I'm tired of feeling not enough. I'm tired of focusing on who I don't have.
So today I am celebrating me and my enoughness. I figured it out that no one can ever give me that gift, it has to be from me. I am enough. I am a good mom. I am a good partner and friend and daughter. I am a damn good coach and advocate for my clients. It's like I have been living in the grey for awhile and now everything is in color again.
Although I am celebrating me today, I want to acknowledge all the humans living in the grey right now. I want to wrap my arms around you and love you in it. Everyone will be in it at some point and at many points in our human lives. And that is what led me to my work - to walk alongside other humans as we go through this crazy, painful, awful, beautiful, joyful, confusing thing called life. To advocate for humans in life and work. To teach leaders and businesses how to make space for humans living their own human experiences. Oh and speaking of, I'm so excited and honored and humbled to be the next Women's Connect Speaker in August - where I'll be talking about how to build a new leadership model that's made for humans, not human capital. JOIN ME!
I always thought if only I could make my self smaller, I could make more room for others. If only I could be better and smarter and less selfish, I could be enough for others. But it's actually the opposite. It's my bigness and my boldness and my enoughness that will lead to more love and light for others.
Happy Birthday to one of the most special humans I'm still getting the pleasure of knowing - me.
Sarah Smith Warren is the founder of Soul Space Work and The Soul Place
Connect with Sarah at:
@soulspacework