Bravery towards freedom

The month of August marks my one year journey to self-discovery and self-love.  I learned that when we hold space for our grief to come to the surface, we allow for the expansion of our capacity to love.  Grief, I believe, is the opposite of love.  It is when we lose what we love that we experience grief.  My journey has been about mustering the courage to come face to face with the pain, and with one step at time, meet the edges of the sorrow until it softens.  What comes out of it is the ability to forgive and love myself.  In this wonderful path, I also learned to be self-compassionate.  At first, it seemed like I was doing this just for my own benefit.  However, I was wrong.  You see, our capacity for self-love and compassion cannot stay within us.  For it to be truly lived, it has to be shared with others.  This experience allowed me to brave vulnerability.  It provided me with the capacity to see the light in others, to extend the same love and compassion I have for myself and wish others the same.  The truth is, we can only have what we can sincerely wish others to have - even the ones whom we think have caused us pain.  This is where the door to freedom opens.  This is where we meet our true selves.