Yesterday, I Cried_ Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving - Iyanla Vanzant [106]
I had read a great deal about learning to love yourself. I had all types of formulas, writing exercises, and physical activities that were offered as surefire ways to bring about my loving essence. Most of them worked for a while, but in the crunch, I was the first one to turn on me. I was the first one to beat up on me. To doubt me. To judge and criticize me. How do you learn to do something you have never experienced? I discovered that you must first find out what love looks like and feels like when it is offered in an unconditional way. The only experience of unconditional love I remembered was what I had experienced when I was praying.
In the midst of deep prayer, I could feel the coolness, calm, and peace of God’s presence. Based on everything I had heard and read, that presence was love. I decided to find a way to stay in that presence. To re-create it time and time again, regardless of where I was, or what I was doing. I remembered something that my friend Shaheerah had once told me. She said, “It is not necessary to re-create something you have experienced. If you simply remember it, if you allow yourself to remember what the experience felt like, you can have the same experience wherever you are, whenever you want to have it.” I decided that was what I wanted to do, to re-create love within and for myself. It took two years for me to figure out how to re-create that love experience. By my forty-second birthday, I had a plan.
There were many women in my life who had loved me unconditionally. They had seen my life go up and down. They knew most, if not all, of the sordid details of my life. No matter where I was, or what I was going through, I could call on these women, and they would be there for me. These were women I told the truth, because I knew no matter what, they would stand by me. I learned that telling the truth was a big part of loving yourself. You must respect and trust yourself enough to know that no matter what you do, you are worthy of love and support. I had been blessed with friends who had loved me in my most insane moments. I needed the blessing, love, and support of these women as I moved forward in my life.
I had once read that life takes place in seven-year cycles. Every seven years, the focus and energy shifts in your life. From birth to seven years, the beginning of life, you are learning how to live. How to breathe on your own, to walk, talk, eat, and essentially, how to take care of your basic needs. From eight years to fourteen years, you are learning what works and what doesn’t work, based on what you have been taught and what you have experienced. Fifteen to twenty-one years is a time of testing. Now that you have some idea of what works, you are testing yourself and your concepts and ideas in order to determine if what you have discovered is true. Twenty-two to twenty-eight years is a time of reevaluation. Now that you know what works and what doesn’t, what is true for you and what is not, you must find new or improved ways of being. You must now break the pattern or remain loyal to it, regardless of the outcome.
Twenty-nine to thirty-five are the hard years. This is when your concepts about yourself, about life, and about how to live are put to the test—again. Life is going to test you to see if you really know and believe what you say you know and believe. Most of us still know only what we have been taught and told. We may think we are doing something else, but what really happens is that our subconscious patterns begin to emerge. Thirty-six to forty-two is the healing cycle.