If you're like me and most busy women, finding time to meditate can seem almost impossible. I sometimes joked I should be meditating just so I'd stop stressing out about meditating! With a full-time job, a daily two-hour commute and two small children (one about to enter the terrible twos soon), meditation is not a luxury on my "to do" list -- but a necessity like breathing.
The year 2014 brought about many unexpected and unwanted changes in my life. I was in a very deep process of grief and loss, and I was searching hard for peace and acceptance in what had happened. Meditation became my saving grace; the place I went to when the noise in my head was so loud, I couldn't hear myself think; the place I surrendered to when the anger and rage was coursing through me and I could hardly breathe; the thing I did when I found myself in the car crying hysterically because the pain was so overwhelming. Meditating infused air into my lungs and quieted my soul... until I was able to reconnect to my center.
People think that meditating is just sitting quietly chanting "om" with no thoughts going through your head. But it is actually quite the opposite. It's a journey into your own heart. Or at least it's been a journey into mine. It's the place where I hear "me" the loudest. Where the true authentic voice of who I am and who I want to be in the world is loud and clear.
It was in those quiet moments meditating I really saw my two children -- their innocence and trust in me, their pure love. It was in those quiet moments I stopped judging myself. I stopped feeling sorry for myself for being a single mom and not being able to give them the stable two parent traditional childhood I myself had grown up with. It was in those quiet moments I could appreciate how much they were teaching me -- their unconditional love showing me I didn't need to be anything I thought I had to be for them other than "mommy." A place they could curl up and snuggle their heads and bodies to feel safe.
I thought about all those years I spent talking and confiding in friends and loved ones about myself, my relationships, my troubles, analyzing every single mistake I had ever made, dissecting every one of my personality flaws -- yet never making any real progress towards self-love. But it was in meditation that I was able to connect with spirit, confront my every fear, recognize the false stories I believed about myself and my life and start to embrace the amazing woman I was without judgement.
It was through meditation that I learned gratitude: I actually started to be grateful for the horrible experience that I'd just been through and was still living. I was learning courage and grace. I was learning vulnerability. I was learning how to "receive." I was learning self-love. I was learning my journey is on-going and there was no "finish line" I had to cross.
So for those of you who still think you don't have time to meditate. Ask yourself: "How badly do I want to know the answers to life's great mysteries?" Because all of the answers lie within you. With some simple meditation.