Meeting myself in silence…

Silence… how comfortable are we with it?
Can you really hear silence? And how does your silence feel to you?

It took me years to become comfortable being with myself in silence. For a long time, I was afraid of what I might hear in my own thoughts. About a year ago, I started doing silent meditations. Sometimes I let gentle music play in the background, but most of the time I just sit and listen to whatever comes.

And only when I started to hear my own thoughts, I began to truly meet myself. To my surprise, I really liked her.

There is still a lot to heal, a lot to process, but with each day it gets a little easier. With each day I am becoming more and more me.

I was raised within a structure, within a system. For so many years I tried to fit into the box created by my parents, school, and society. No matter how hard I tried, I never succeeded. I was never good enough for the standards that were made for me. I looked at my siblings and friends and wondered why life seemed so simple for them if they just followed the rules. I felt like a failure. I thought something was wrong with me.

But then, one day, I heard myself in the silence. One day, I found the courage to go within and ask: What kind of Irma is there?

At first, I didn’t like what I found. She was a stranger. I was even afraid of her. But the more I sat with her, the more familiar she became. I started to see her real feelings, her real thoughts.

I realized I had been a rebel all my life — unable to accept being told what to do or how to live, especially when it didn’t make sense to me. I had been fighting with myself every single day for 41 years.

And only recently, I understood that I was afraid to show my real self to the world. The fear and the structure had been familiar and safe for me. But hiding also meant not living fully.

So today, by writing this, I am showing you the real me. I am sharing my depth, my ocean, even with all the emotions that rise as I do this.

This is the path I want to walk from now on — maybe not always comfortable, maybe not always making sense, maybe not always following rules and structure. But it will be me.

Me, with all my mistakes.
Me, with my emotional and physical scars.
Me, standing tall in front of you, finding my own form, fully loving who I am, fully accepting myself, and taking responsibility for creating new patterns.

From this place, I choose to live my life fully.

With love,
Irma