V.J.’s Weekly Challenge #79 – subtraction

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I adopted my father’s rage at a young age, and learned to wrestle with the best of them, typically boys, ’cause Father said never hit a girl. Most days, I’d return from school with debris in matted hair and torn stockings. Mother would shake her head, muttering:

“No one will ever love you.”

I heard: you’ll never be good enough for love, so I married a man whose every complaint was prefaced with: If you loved me enough, you would….

It wasn’t until I was thirty-nine and he decided to move on that I declared war on the messages that were influencing my choices.

“I am good enough for love!” I shouted to no one in particular, like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum.

Then someone suggested I lose a few words to make the mantra more empowering.

“I am enough for love!” I tried on for size, deciding that the good was redundant.

Then: “I am enough!” or “I am love!”

and eventually settled on “I am!”

I am is a much lighter loader to carry, and oh, so freeing.

This week think about what you might subtract from your life to free up energy – emotionally, physically, or psychologically. Naturally, creative discretion is yours – this doesn’t need to be a personal subtraction; global issues work too.

To participate, create a post on your own site and link back here. Or leave a comment. Looking forward to all responses.

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Permission to write, paint, and imagine are the gifts I gave myself when chronic illness hit - a fair exchange: being for doing. Relevance is an attitude. Humour essential.

45 thoughts on “V.J.’s Weekly Challenge #79 – subtraction”

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  14. VJ, excellent. There is a movie called “I am” which focuses on what makes us happy. It is a series of interviews with religious leaders, academics, psychologists, regular folks, etc. The key punchline is “money does not make you happy; but the absence of money can make you unhappy.” In other words, we need enough to feed, clothe and house our families, but more money has a vastly diminishing margin of utility. Keith

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