Male company
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Female Empowerment. This is a follow-up to that article as I also want to thank those men that have shaped my life.
A metaphysical universal truth is that we are all one. In being one, gender does not exist. My old self would have disagreed. Now, with a little more wisdom, I get it. In outlining the beauty of women, I failed to also recognize those men who have lifted me and many other women up and continue to do so. They are many and they are all around us. What does “lifting us up” mean? To me it is those who support us both with smiles and a love of life that fills our hearts. There are also those souls who have supported my journey by not always coming from love, merely because they did not love themselves. However, lessons were still there and valuable.
Having lost my father when I was twelve, and then having male role models in my life who were not behaving as the male role models I had wished I had, I now recognize the gifts they have given me. A few of those things are a love of learning and questioning, a joy for Shakespeare, an appreciation of discipline and structure, being strong, going after goals even if the world has told me to stand down.
Then there are the gifts from my ex-husband. An easy divorce it was not. My girls were only 3 and 5 years old, so I faced raising them as a single mother, but not completely, as I was blessed that my former spouse always contributed financially. He also remained part of their lives, so I suppose the correct way to say this is that we co-parented the girls in vastly different ways but still the outcome has been glorious; both living their dreamed-of life.
Whatever negative attributes I gave to my ex-spouse, they are meaningless now as the journey brought success to our daughters, and thus the lessons were necessary for the outcomes they are living. This was so hard to see at the time when I was caught up in pointing a finger at him and complaining about him to anyone who would listen. I bid farewell to that old Ananda as this one now only loves. With that, gratitude and appreciation make life so much more enjoyable. Gone are the anger and the hatefulness. What an incredible blessing.
To all my former partners – there were many – whom I learned so much from, I thank you. To my beautiful husband, who shows me beauty in sensitivity, thank you. It was masked for many years, but I see now my vision was blurred and so I could not see inside me, the love that he had for me all these years. I am awake now and see him clearly with all the love he has inside himself.
I adore my male friends in Whitianga. My lovely ocean swimming group – you show up always with a love of life that is sweetly infectious. I used to quit swimming when it got cold, but now have returned, mostly because of you and now appreciate the cold in a way I did not before – I missed your joie-de-vivre. Thank you. (I must also say thank you to the women in the group-you rock!)
All this I write on what is Father’s Day in the United States. It has me thinking deeply about how men have lifted us women up over the years in all ways. Those whose actions may not have appeared loving at the time, built a strength and fortitude in me that has made me thrive. Those who did show up with love, have shown me how beauty can appear in the most unlikely of places – sometimes obvious, sometimes not so much; but each with a heart, a soul, searching for meaning and purpose, just like all of us.
We are all so much alike at the end of the day. My focus is on what we have in common, not what differentiates us. That is love. That is community. That is joy. What a gift to have this shift of perspective; eyes and heart open to the beauty all around us in all souls. To be reminded of it in everyday things and to “see” them as such took me many years and endless searching.
Then…it just appeared. Like a rainbow in the sky. So, thank you all you lovely men out there for all that you have taught me and continue to do so by simply being YOU.
◾️Feel like connecting with me? Reach out at: ananda.laberge@gmail.com
