If you’ve ever been on an aeroplane during turbulence, you’ll know how unsettling it can be. Life itself can feel like that too, can’t it? You’re just going along, minding your own business, and then —whoosh!— the air currents become unstable, and you lose your centre!
Recently, I published my book I Create My Day: simple and beautiful ways to create a nourishing life. At its heart, the message is about discovering spiritual grace. It provides the tools for, hopefully, creating less turbulence in your life, and for recognising that you have the inner tools and resources for navigating any turbulence you might fly into on any given day.
For the most part, I have now created a life fairly free of turbulence. However, I live in a world that involves other humans, and this in itself offers just the ingredients that set faulty air currents into motion! I have, many times over the years, been left speechless by what appears, to my mind, a lack of awareness, consideration or respect between humans. For example, if someone says they’ll do something for you, or agrees to arrange something, and then they don’t. Why I still, after all these years, expect people to honour their commitments is beyond me. (laughing). We’re all wired differently, and while integrity, keeping one’s word, honouring sacred space, awareness, taking responsibility, etc., is something I adhere to, I am (still) learning that these are my values and not necessarily anyone else’s.
Turbulence came into my yesterday from easily six different sources. I found myself reacting emotionally in ways that weren’t pleasant for my body, and at complete odds with the centred, balanced place within that I have strived to create more and more with each passing day. I found myself becoming increasingly angry because other people were acting in ways that were, at best, inconsiderate and selfish. But, you know what? The only person suffering was me.
Do I feel any different today? Yes, I do, and this is because of two things:
1.) I gave thanks. I truly expressed gratitude for each of those situations, even though they are not what I expected or would have consciously chosen.
2.) I remembered my golden rule of: every thought and feeling is a choice. No one can make you feel anything you don’t want to feel.
So, yes, while I still have disbelief surrounding the way some people can be, I honour my well-being enough to ‘let it go’. Again and again, I come back to: what will be will be. What is, is.
I Create My Day (paperback & Kindle)
It is so much nicer to fly when you see the clouds or country below you, and all is calm. Compared to the adrenalin rush and instability of turbulence, I know which I’d rather choose. I choose peace. I choose love. I choose calm. I choose forgiveness. And always, every single time, I choose gratitude.
A few years ago I had a strong desire to leave the life I’d known as a magazine editor and become a romance novelist. It made sense. I have a deeply felt need to bring more love to the world, and I love writing. Why not combine the two?
I spent my teenage years immersed in romance novels. They provided just the antidote to boring school days and tedious exams. Instead of doing homework, I was being romanced by tall, dark, fictional men…that is, until I could hear my mother walking up the hallway to my bedroom. And then, my secret lover was shoved beneath the textbooks while I pretended to studiously examine the theory of how to dissect a frog. Talk about going from princes to frogs!
I was thrown out of biology class for drawing hearts. Love hearts!
I met my husband Paul―a prince, not a frog―when living in New Zealand, and we moved in together the day after our first date. It was ‘I’ve known you forever’ at first sight. We’re happily in love, two decades later. I still get butterflies when I see him smile, or watch him walking towards me. He makes me laugh like no one else can. I can feel the privilege of those oft-said words: till death do us part; and I know that it means our love will carry us through and beyond that day.
Our love story is a rom-com; I’m the rom, he’s the com. In the roughly ten years I spent as a single woman, I kissed more than a few of those proverbial toads. Often it’s only in hindsight that we see the blessings of poor relationship choices and lost loves. Those toads—every single one of them—showed me what I didn’t want in a relationship. And so I went on kissing toads in the hope that there was a fairytale ending for me. Those toads may have worn different costumes, and had different names or jobs, but in the end a toad is a toad is a toad. Would I ever meet my handsome prince? Perhaps I’d read far too many Mills & Boon romance novels! Nevertheless, they gave me hope.
Despite the heartache, the betrayal, the lack of emotional intelligence or ability to give more openheartedly by some of the above said toads, I never really stopped believing in love. It took me about ten years of kissing toads to realise I wasn’t a toad, and that’s why those relationships didn’t fit right.
I trained to become a marriage celebrant. Even if I wasn’t married, I could at least celebrate other people’s happy unions. As it turned out, by the time I officiated my first ceremony in 1995 I had a beautiful baby girl growing inside me. Yes, I’d found my prince! Or had he found me?
Several years ago, I became rather ill with what I later discovered was adrenal fatigue. I ended up in bed for weeks, so exhausted I could barely move. My daughters, bless them, remembered my teenage addiction to romance novels and scoured the local charity shops buying me dozens of novels from their pocket money. I’d not read romance novels in years. At first, I was somewhat amused that I’d ever found them interesting. After all, aren’t they all the same? That’s what everyone thinks, right? Boy meets girl. Boy is a prat. Girl can’t bear the sight of him. Well, she can really, because, frankly, he’s so hot he’s capable of melting an ice cream from five metres away. Is it lust? Is it…oh my, it’s love. And, darn it, turns out they’ve always loved each other and can’t possibly be apart.
Whatever the storyline, those novels helped me heal. Each day I found myself getting stronger as I read more stories of romance. I’m a fast reader, and generally get through a Mills and Boon novel in two hours.
Then, a few summers ago, I decided to write a romance novel. That summer, getting up before sunrise each day, I wrote five romance novels. Finally, I’d come full circle. All those years of reading about romance, and now I was writing stories about love. But was I?
My novels Mosaic, Bluey’s Café and Sisters of the Silver Moon are not romance novels, but they all feature love stories. What I learnt from writing these novels and writing those five romance manuscripts is that I actually find it hard to follow the formula of ‘boy meets girl and now we have to throw lots of obstacles in their way before they can be together’. Although I have quite the backlog of toads to my name, when I met ‘the one’ our path was smooth. Instant. And in my heart, that is what I wish for other women. I hope that one day they look up and ‘he’ is standing there before them, smiling, and ready to open his heart. I hope he won’t be all ego, arrogance and too macho to communicate his feelings.
The alpha men of romance novels might be drop-dead gorgeous, but I want women to do better than that. I wish for them men who make you come ALIVE with their gorgeousness. You know, those men who aren’t just eye candy but are nourishing soul food. Men who are your equal, and don’t treat you as if you’re anything less than royalty. How do we know if someone is right for us? The best way is to close our eyes. How do they feel? What energy emanates from them? Because, it isn’t their dashing looks which will sustain your relationship through the years, but their kindness, respect, integrity, honesty and ability to be emotionally intimate and vulnerable.
I am grateful for every Mills and Boon book (and other publishers, too) I’ve ever read. And I’m so pleased I never gave up on finding true love. Like childbirth, I don’t believe it has to be a painful experience. I also don’t subscribe to the common beliefs:
Every marriage has its difficult times Every couple fights.
It’s time people started creating their own love stories. Ones that aren’t perpetuating conflict, drama, power games, disrespect or arrogance. Because, you know what? Love isn’t any of those things. Love is accepting, honest, open, kind, encouraging, supportive, respectful, forgiving, compromising, and fair. Love is loving.And yes, even though most of us are dysfunctional in one way or another, and we all have a needy ‘inner child’, so too are we adults capable of making adult choices. Every moment of our relationship interaction is a choice.
As a writer, I have come to accept that I may never have what it takes to be a romance novelist. I can, however, always write about love. For love, true love, is something I know well.
https://veronikarobinson.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/logo-1.png00Veronika Sophia Robinsonhttps://veronikarobinson.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/logo-1.pngVeronika Sophia Robinson2015-09-10 07:52:272015-09-10 07:52:27What I learnt from reading and writing romance novels
