Awakening

My Look in the Mirror and Why It Matters

/ A. Ward, LPC / Leave a comment

There’s a reason why you’re doing this, why you made this commitment- again- why you refuse to be bucked off, circling around your old rival, why you just won’t quit.

I want to be the best version of me. I want to have energy and the health to go with it. Live a long and healthy life doing the things I love, comfortable in my own skin. Hiking, kayaking, paddle boarding, traveling with ease, easing the ache in my joints, doing the things in reality that I envision for myself in my mind.

I want to like what I see when I look in the mirror, I don’t want to cringe when I see pictures of myself, or hide behind my kids that are too quickly growing taller than me.

I want my clothes to fit, and then be too big, then my smaller ones to fit, then get too big as well. I want to wear my pre-kid clothes myself instead of passing them on to my tween, and I want her to see me do it.

I don’t want to be the fat mom. I want to be healthy and limber and lean. As I struggle to find my people in this town where I still feel alone, I don’t want to wonder in the back of my mind if my size is the reason I don’t fit. Whether it be the friend group, the promotion, or the invitation to be included. I don’t identify as fat in my brain- pictures usually come as a shock, shockingly. The me in my head is sexy and strong and carries herself with confidence. She doesn’t align with what’s in the mirror. That’s not the me inside.

I want my outside to match my inside. In counseling we talk a lot about congruence. About all the pieces aligning in the whole. I’m growing, I’m building, I’m becoming. I want my pieces to match.

Good things are coming, it’s true, but good things are also already here. Business aspirations unfolding before my eyes, walking into bigger rooms with bigger stages, the fragmented pieces of my dreams coming together in congruence, the bigger picture starting to make sense and actually look possible, even while I’m still figuring out the details.

And there are details- details that I haven’t figured out as I take step after step of blind faith, daring to dream and speak and pray the big things into existence.

But in every dream, in every detail. I am healthy, full of life, and vigor, and energy. Comfortable in my own skin and these clothes that I wear, in the pictures they take and the hands that I shake, and the example I set for my daughter as well as for those in my sphere of influence.

On a girls’ trip this summer, I stood next to my sisters in a tasting room on a too hot July day. The youngest (and hardest to impress) was making fast friends with the bar man. She introduced our crew in turn. “The stylist, massage therapist, the spiritual healer, the stay at home mom, and business owner,” she finished as she turned to me with a look of respect I won’t forget. “She and her husband are counselors and she speaks and leads and owns her own practice.” My heart heard that.

Last week my daughter drew a portrait of me. At first I was hurt because she drew me at a desk, working. I asked her if she felt like I was always working and is that how she saw me. “No!” She exclaimed. “This is you writing the books you’re going to write and running your own business. You’re a boss lady.” She remembers the dreams she hears me speak, and speaks them back to me when I forget.

She’s watching. My sisters are watching. So are my clients, and so many more. It’s easy to forget that others see me, and that more than I realize are paying attention. People are always watching, for better or for worse, and the influence and mark I leave matters. I want to set the best example I know how to set. In all things. And I want to be healthy enough to keep up, to thrive, to shine.

I want the outside to match the inside. My outer self to be in congruence with my inner self. I want to prove to myself that I can do it. That I am not my own rival at all- she is me, and I love her. I want to lead and blaze a trail- for my daughter and all who follow. And I want to do it healthy, proud of the path that I carve, and of the figure I cut while I do it.

Senior Boots and Our Hope for Tomorrow

/ A. Ward, LPC / Leave a comment

Heading down to my Alma Mater to celebrate a new generation, and I can hardly believe the passing of time. Texas A&M University- it’s been too long, and I may or may not have teared up as that skyline came into view. Former Student is right- you never stop being an Aggie. So much has changed, yet as the saying goes, so much remains the same, and I am thankful once again that tradition here runs deep.

Senior boots are a big, big deal, and I’m so proud of my nephew tonight. As I stand on Simpson Drill field looking out at A&M’s finest lined up in rows, dreams written across their young faces, I wonder where the time has gone. Twenty- five years ago they were my peers, and now they are our children, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren. In no time at all, we’re the middle aged visitors to these hallowed halls that used to be ours, and they are our hope for tomorrow. It hits different when they’re yours and the world that we’re handing them is on fire with peace upended.

But today- they are invincible. Youthful eyes bright with hopes not yet realized and courage for life’s battles they’ve yet to fight. Newly minted young men and women, the last remnants of childhood melted away in the Texas sun.

And those seniors on the sidelines- so full of life and vigor, cigar smoke swirling around their heads as they sing and sway to that War Hymn I know so well. Reassuring us all that the Spirit of Aggieland does indeed live on. They are the kings of the day, and every one of us knows it.

Congratulations, my fellow Aggies- the best of your lives lie before you, and we are so proud of you all. Now go and do great things. Return with honor, and Gig’em👍🏻

September 11th and the Moral Wound of a Generation

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Where were you on that September morning? I remember it in sharp relief.

We were working at a boarding school in Indiana when my still-new husband called me at home to tell me that America was under attack. I still remember the feel of the floor beneath my shifting feet as I listened uncomprehending and told him that he must be mistaken. I tuned into the one station we had on our TV, adjusting the rabbit ears as the second plane hit, and proceeded to watch in horror for the next six hours. Fear became a palpable thing, seeping into my pores. Somewhere between home and work, I cried for my mother in the hallway when I thought no one was looking. All grown up but suddenly feeling so very small.

Our students had limited access to the news and outside lines, but through our whispers and grim expressions, they knew something was very wrong. How in the world do we tell these teens of the tragic magnitude we’ve yet to understand ourselves?

After some debate, it was decided that we would show them news clips that afternoon, and fill them in on what little we know. But first, a delicate piece of business. For one of our students this wasn’t some far away corner of America, seen in films but rarely visited. For her, it was home.

She hailed from Staten Island, NY, and her big heart and no-nonsense ways made her a fast favorite with all who knew her. As her mentor, the awfulness and sacredness fell to me to tell her of the gaping hole ripped into the heart of her hometown. I’d only just begun to learn what it is to sit with the broken, and the sound of her anguished cries stays with me still. Her aunt worked in the building she explained, and what do you mean calls can’t get through? If the raw pain and pure rage in that small body could’ve transported her, it would’ve carried her all the way home.

Sept. 11, 2001 was a Tuesday, and Eric and I had a road trip planned for Wednesday, our sights set on Niagara Falls. Those plans seemed small now, and an international tourist site no longer sounded like a good idea. So we went where we always went for comfort in those days, where we knew best: we went to the woods and disappeared into the trees. Letting the sunrises and sunsets, the wind in the treetops and gentle thunder of the waterfalls tend to the places in our broken hearts the trappings of civilization couldn’t quite reach. God met us there in those Ohio woods. By the cave and under the stars. By the river in our sandled feet, we poured out our grief, our fears, the innocence lost and the moral wound of a generation. What terror have we witnessed here, oh God Who Sees, and how will we carry on? For us, mere witnesses, but even more, those still searching for loved ones and choking out goodbyes?

Twenty years and we are here, facing fresh atrocities and uncertainties, the innocence of another generation lost. My children read about this day in their history books, not understanding that this particular page of history still echos in our bones. And for some, it still screams.
We Remember. We Remember.

The Awakening

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Awakened.

That’s a word we hear thrown around a lot. Being in touch with our inner selves- alive and awake to the calling within us to make this dream a reality. In some ways, I feel farther away from this dream than ever- mentally, financially, physically. Still vigorous, yet slightly startled to find that the slow beat of time I marched to in my youth has picked up its tempo. Real worries and deadlines and responsibilities that keep me up at night and feelings of not quite yet where I thought I’d be make up the cadence of the drumbeat to which I trod, up, up the mountain.

And it is here- at this tenuous precipice- that I find myself daring to hope for more, praying for abundant blessing to rain down from heaven and water these dry bones, breathing fresh life into these dreams of mine. For this dream ahead of me calls louder and shines clearer than ever. So clear, in fact, that what’s here and now verses what’s yet to be flickers in and out of view. But who’s to say which is more real- that which stands in front of me or that which beats within me?

This in-the-middle-age is no joke. As the little hands that hold tight to mine grip a little looser and grow a little bigger every day, they serve as a constant reminder of the press of time as it falls faster and faster through the hour glass of my life.

Visions of what could be if I dare to pour life into this hope are a fragile lifeline to this dream of mine in my all too awakened spirit. A lifeline that I balance upon, walk like a tightrope. A trapeze artist, I fly higher and higher as I strive, only to find I must let go of my safe hold if I am to soar above my circumstance and awaken fully to my dreams.