ATTENTION: The words in this post may truly touch your heart. If you haven’t been on Planet Danni lately, my word for 2024 is ATTENTION. I am on a quest to add more attention to every aspect of my life. Because I need it. Because my family needs it. And because frankly, the entire world needs it. With all the beauty that is still out there, we are missing it all, along with the fundamental point of life. Which is offering love and receiving it.
More specifically, choosing where we are directing our attention and answering the calls for love as best as we can. Noticing and appreciating love when it arrives directly in our laps. Turning this into more love and joy.
More attention offered to love makes us heroes for a world that often feels like it is no longer suitable for our emotionally developed hearts.
We are small specks in this Universe and still, it has to begin at home, with us. If not us, who else?
The Sensitive Hearts Club
Friends, today’s post is a reminder to each one of you because I know that you are part of the Sensitive Hearts Club. We hold a difficult spot in this Universe. And also the most important.
The important roles always come with the job of transforming the impossible into: I’m possible. It’s possible. As a collective, we are possible.
Once again, I am reminding you that we have a responsibility. To protect love, joy, and everything good in this world. I know, this is huge!
However, you and me need to become heroes for all the other sensitive hearts who just aren’t making it out there in all the chaos.
The alternative is slowly drowning in despair and insanity along with them. This is not an option. Do you agree?
This is a shout out.
A type of personal intervention.
So, I hope that you are paying attention.
We need to pivot. Make a complete u-turn in our personal worlds.
Because another frankly here: it is all crumbling down.
This week’s post is also a very intimate and personal quest as a mom and human being. I want to do better.
And excuse me for presuming, but I believe that you do too. You are here because you already signed up to the club, didn’t you?
So here we go…
Why I Am Personally Feeling The Need To Offer Love More This Week
RIP To A Warrior
The nephew of one of my best friends died this week. Let’s call him Tony. They are probably doing the autopsy as I text these words.
It is not a new story. Perhaps it was inevitable given the situation. But it is one that has very much to do with us.
And it requires our attention.
We are being asked to offer love because even though you did not know him, and either did I, WE DO.
A Whatsapp message I shared in my group on Monday morning:
Hi friends, Yesterday afternoon I received a text. I am not available for dinner tonight. My nephew died and I am with family.
The boy who died was 30 years old. Not a boy and yet still a boy. Tormented since a boy. Suffering as an ‘underdeveloped’ adult. An overly sensitive heart which led to self-abuse. Drugs. I won’t get into the details here. And I don’t have the details of how he died.
This morning I stayed in bed a moment longer. Thinking of him.
Thinking of my friend telling us about Christmas when drunk, this man boy screamed out to his parents: You left me all alone as a child. It is your fault!
Thinking of his mom.Will there be enough love in the world for her?
Whether true or not, this is what he held inside as he lived and as he died. A TRUTH.
I am sorry to start Monday like this with you, but this exists. And thus this belongs.
Believe it or not, I am offering love.
Offering Love Through Tragedy
Do you see my love in sharing this story with you? I am reminding us of the importance of people, attention, listening to one another… offering love.
I am reminding us of our responsibility to transform pain into love and joy. That tiny beautiful things can grow from insane hurt. There are always lessons here. Choices. And possibility.
Tony’s story reminds me that our children need us to pay more attention.
They need us to offer them a world where we know how to connect with one another better. A world where offering love is the main point.
And so does everyone else. Children of all ages, even man boys.
Reminder: Pay attention to where you are paying attention. If it isn’t offering love first, you have fallen off course. Turn yourself around.
So remind yourself once again. I am a hero. I am here offering love today.
Remembering A Beauty Named Eva (read full story here)
Deaths like the one just mentioned happen every day. Not always reported on the newspaper. Actually most of them aren’t.
Not like Tony, from a well-known family of our town, his father an attorney. Physically fit on the outside. Strong. A marital arts champion.
Remembered also as a warrior of kindness. Kind and extremely sensitive. A huge heart always offering love to everyone but himself. Yes, this.
Too often, our kryptonite.
Tony’s death brought me back to 7 years ago when I wrote about another death. Eva’s.
Again for privacy, this was not her real name.
Eva was also well-known. An ex-model from Rome. Extremely beautiful and charismatic. Women envied her. Men wanted her. She appeared confident and strong. This is the part of herself she was willing to show.
I knew her well. I saw beneath the veil of protection. A heart. Sensitive. Too much so for this world. Much like yours and mine.
And, at 49, she killed herself.
Seeing The Signs
I suppose she called out.
There are always signs.
We are so distracted.
Maybe not inevitable, her taking of her life. Even with more love.
But I need to question this because she left a teenage daughter behind.
A daughter who was left with a colossal hole. A truth, her truth – her mother made a choice to not mother her any longer.
The one person who was meant to love her unconditionally and forever, said, No. I can’t do this anymore.
And the question: Why?
I don’t know if this girl, now 24, was able to find her sunshine from within after her mom’s suicide.
But I do know that if she was able to transform her storm into a beautiful rainbow, someone – maybe lots of someones – had to have offered her love. Lots of love.
I remind you that this touches us. It has to. It is a call for love and attention. Stories like Eva’s need to be transformed.
We Are All Children Being Left Behind & Leaving Sometimes
Every day each one of us risk being left behind. Not only by death. Mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunties, uncles, friends…
and children left alone to find their sunshine from within.
Every day, we risk being the leavers – maybe physically, maybe emotionally.
And if any of us make it to the other side of our pains, lonliness, and losses, we owe it to love.
And our remembering to do better. Pay more attention this time.
We owe it to someone, somewhere being the hero of a wounded, perhaps overly sensitive heart in this overly distracted world.
The Day My Daughter Reminded Me Not To Leave Her Behind
When my daughter was about 8 or 9 years old, she said, Mommy you don’t stay with me enough. I thought it was crazy. My girls were homeschooled. I was always with them. We spent months traveling.
Wasn’t this enough?
But, it got my attention. When I heard these words, instead of taking it personally, I thought long and hard.
Maybe I am here, but not really here.
- Was I distracted?
- Was I multi-tasking?
- Was I listening and playing and hugging with my entire being?
- Was I looking up and into my daughter’s eyes?
- Was I paying the type of attention that she needed to feel seen and loved?
So I made a promise to do better.
My goal: To leave people behind as infrequently as possible, especially my daughters.
As human beings, we forget. We refall asleep.
As parents this is an important thing to accept.
Because as parents, we will miss things. Lots of things. Sometimes incredibly important things.
They fall into the spaces of our imperfection like a piece of candy that gets lost in a pocket, car seat or couch until one day it suddenly reappears.
Sticky, impossible to unwrap.
And all we can do is offer more love and try to not miss it next time.
Offering Love Is Not About Being Everything
We cannot be everywhere and everything for everyone. This is not our role.
Not as mothers, fathers, loving family members or dear friends. Not as human beings.
We are human. Beautiful, but limited. Our energy runs out and needs to be recharged regularly. This is healthy and ok.
But when we are there we can remember to be there.
And this is us doing our best to do better. And this is all we can ask of ourselves when we offer ourselves to another.
May we remember to pay attention today. To people. They matter most no matter who we are, where we are, what we are doing.
And by doing this day after day – practicing this – we can live knowing that we gave our best.
As moms, dads, family members, and dear friends. As emotionally developed human beings.
What It Means To Be A Hero For A Pained Soul
So you and me, dear friend, we can do something today. We can choose to do better.
And be a hero of love. Wearing our extreme sensitivity proudly and with greater attention.
You and me, we can offer our love.
This is how we acknowledge the suffering that lies in the core of another human being.
Their suffering, maybe not inevitable, but definitely worth seeing, understanding, and connecting with.
We cannot save everyone. We cannot even save anyone other than ourselves.
But we can always offer love.
Final Pep Talk – A Final Call For Love
So back to the beginning. Today, I shared two stories about tremendous loss.
The first left a mother behind. A mother that was already unraveled by her tormented son’s pain.
Will she survive the guilt and loss?
I honestly do not know.
She was fragile before the death. Now she has broken into a million tiny pieces of pain.
It is a puzzle that will be difficult to put together. Puzzles of the heart always are.
The second, a woman who chose to leave her child behind.
Was her daughter able to pick up her million pieces and move on and past the feeling that the choice her mother made, was before all else, a choice to abandon her and leave her motherless?
Again, I don’t know.
Whether or not we thrive after pain is really up to us. A choice.
This may seem basic, even heartless.
But the fact is that for some life goes on and can even be wonderful after the after.
For others the after means being pulled further and further down.
I believe that it depends upon how we choose to give, receive, and experience love.
Sometimes we are the ones that need to search for it.
And this takes us taking a peak outside with our pain. And this takes courage.
Ode To The Strength of Our Sensitive Hearts
These are the type of stories that we would like to bury and never have to hear about again. They remind us of how human we are. And that life is brittle.
But this would be neither possible, nor of service.
Life is beautiful and it is hard, cold, and cruel. And the presence of both is what makes life complete.
This is perhaps the only truth I have to offer us today.
So we return to our responsibility and choices.
- Are we paying attention?
- Do stories like these remind us to pay even more attention to the calls of love that fill each and every day?
- Will they inspire us to act? Act with love and answer the calls?
Other questions:
- How do we want to live our lives?
- How do we want to show up for ourselves and others?
- Do we recognize the opportunity we have when we choose to take pain and transform it into something valuable?
Pain will never become extinct in this lifetime or any.
It is as much part of the fabric of this world as joy.
So as far as I see it, we might as well use it to do and be better.
Take a ray, offer it to the rain, and wait for the rainbow.
Walk Into The Offering Of Love
The pivot means that we start looking pain with fierce attention and love. We offer the deepest offering that exists.
Our love is capable of making pain less lonely, vulnerable, and misunderstood.
With love, pain gets easier to hold up and it even grows roots and feet. So it can begin its next journey.
This world feels feetless. It is stagnant in a sh*tload of suffering.
Indifference is taking over with the excuse that it is all just too painful for our sensitive hearts to watch.
But we are human and were born to feel.
We were also born with two feet and are meant to move forward and help others as well.
We are all strong enough. But only when we are fueled by love and attention.
So take the first step. Open your heart. Risk more pain. Vicarious pain. And pay attention.
When you choose to use it, you are a hero for the Tonys, the Evas, and everyone they left behind. You are a hero in this world and for this world.
At least this is what I believe.
Making The Connection
I don’t know if this is all connected or I am just seeing something that isn’t there. Maybe it is not connected at all.
His death. Our pains. The distractions. The loss of values. Difficulties in parenting and remaining human. Kids needing therapists. Anxiety. Stress. Unhappiness. Fear. War. Separation.
The world situation.
I definitely do not have absolute truths. Never have. Never will.
Maybe I think too much. Maybe I feel too much. However, this is who I am and I am embracing it.
And this is what I am sharing with you today. My open, fiercely feeling heart. Offering something to reflect upon, hopefully a clearing for more joy and connection, and of course, my love.
Heart Opening Meditations
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