Woodside, CA
Molly McCallum sent me this wonderful message full of wisdom – she puts over important points so beautifully, I wanted to share. I met Molly via her daughter Mariya – she sent many messages of support while I was on the Atlantic, and this message was in response to my blog about (un)natural beauty.
I was going to edit out the bits that were too kind about me, in case I sounded big-headed, but Molly thought it better I leave her message in its original form… so forgive!
Roz,
Love getting your notes and thoughts. You are an amazing person because you are open to sharing who YOU are and your thoughts. People spend their lives often hiding behind a facade that they have built up to make them “acceptable” to others and perhaps thought more “highly” of by others and allowing people to know their pure thoughts and insecurities they feel would invalidate who they are. How exhausting.
We are born perfect. Through life, experiences change us and we adapt to what and how we feel we will survive and be accepted. If we’re fortunate at some point we touch our inner “perfection” and then go on a search to rid ourselves of that which is not true to who we are.
You are one of the most beautiful people I have ever met. Not only because of your physical beauty, which is obvious when one first meets you, but from what you “send out”. You care, you listen, you search, you wander and you wonder. You’re open. You allow others to see that you are vulnerable and from that you give them permission to be vulnerable too and to know that people will still love them and care.
Yes, I have learned that there are people out there who don’t like me at all, who find me irritating and at first I was surprised, being a person who wants to please and help others, but that’s OK and makes me realize at least that I do exist and that I must have a personality or they wouldn’t feel so strongly about me!
As I get older I try to spend time with people who give me energy and not with people who take it away. I can truly only please myself and if I don’t love myself how can others?
I do wake up at night and go over my imperfections and how I haven’t done what I was going to do, I ate food that isn’t good for me and won’t help me lose weight or I repeated a pattern that is not helpful to myself and I can really ream myself and my “imperfections” but a phrase comes to me that I was once told… “in ways as yet unknown to me my every need is met” and if I say that to myself I can let the other stuff go and know that I am doing my best and perhaps things are happening to me so that I can learn something that I didn’t even know might be good for me to learn.
I know that I am a “work in progress” and for every regression that I see I hope that I can humbly remember that I am ” not perfect” and that tomorrow is another opportunity to try again.
Thanks for all that you have given me by sharing your life!
Molly
[Note: photo of Molly taken at Crater Lake last month. The latest message I got from Molly, her husband is out with the Search and Rescue team looking for an 8-year-old boy who has been missing at Crater Lake for 3 days now. Hopes are fading, but let’s pray for his safe return…]