I won't soften it........

This last year has been about acknowledging fully what I have experienced.....not looking away, not softening it, not_______________just standing in the bright light that is shining on all of it........I am a candlelight or low light person in my life......not seeking to have bright lights on in my house......ever........candlelight.......or Christmas lights.....or some soft lamp is my energy and what I want around me.....in my classroom we learn by lower light, lamps too.....and I have a stained glass canvas over my lights by my lockers......it cast a lot of light but soft light.......and so I guess it is my thing.......and I have been delicate all along in my blog......as delicate as I could be, while also honestly expressing my experience......but this morning, as soon as I was awake I was brought back to a dating situation in this chapter.....fairly brief..... and I had felt I had been careful, feeling like I got to know him over more than a year, scouting out his life on social media and what others said about him etc.........having several dates before trusting spending time with him......and he did not honor my boundaries.....not in the worst way possible, but pretty close, and at the time it was shocking but my mind tried to soften it.....like maybe this, or maybe that, or maybe.............but this morning that softening is gone.....and while I still will not go into all the details......what I will say is that he injured me physically.....in a way that I believe was intentional because I wasn't going to be intimate with him in the way he wanted, even though I had made my boundary crystal clear......no gray.........my believing that there are things that are sacred....and that should be reserved for love.....and a committed relationship.......period........and on the other side of that jarring experience, I believe now that it was the catalyst to so much.......it was the beginning of a shift in me.....making my boundaries even clearer.......and to be honest in hindsight today, it is kind of a scary experience.....one I did not realize at the time because I was surviving it......and I would not go as far as assault......but it was as close as I have come........and at the time I gave him grace, as I do......believing that it was unintentional.....maybe a misunderstanding, or a difference in us...........but today I know better......and I do not know why that was the first thing that met me this morning when my eyes opened......but I honor what steps forward every day, and what needs to breathe......and here is the thing.....I guess a person would wonder how I would be capable of trusting ANYONE ever again with all of the deception and betrayal that has met me in the last 6 years......but that isn't how I feel at all.....what they all chose was on them.....and I am also fully owning my role in it all.......realizing the places in me that allowed for any of it......not owning their actions, but owning my own. My trust and belief in people when it really did not make sense in a real way.....ignoring red flags at times for sure.......that is on me......and ironically in the situation I expressed this morning, I did not like his eyes......something about them......but there was enough else that I stepped over that, trying not to be "judgey," or not give it a chance, when in fact that was my inner guiding system alerting me and my divine warning......now I know better.....and have proven it in a few tests since......no longer willing to step past any of that.......so this morning I do not know why I have faced all that I have at the hands of men, I have had my share over the years of a lack of respect, and certainly a lack of respect for my boundaries, and mistreatment.......and admitting that I allowed some of that.......some of what I have endured in this life would not have happened if I had been this version of me........but I do not focus on that part......I focus on the part where here I AM:) Better late than never!! Not being subject to experiencing any of what I have before, not ever again.......vibrating from a different place......and I guess what is stepping forward some this morning is a raw grief.......knowing my heart, and the tenderness that lives there, and the way I love or care for people, and feeling sad some for the woman that was met with such a lack of that, ugliness in the truest sense, when she was trying so hard......and she is not a victim, she is a victor:) And willing to do everything she can to overcome the darkness that threatened her......and using her light to extinguish it, once and for all:) Happy Monday! xoxo Today finds me hiking on a field trip with my class:) How lucky am I:)