As a child and teen, my family spent our summers at a campground about 40 minutes from our home. My dad commuted to work each day and every evening my parents enjoyed the respite from the busyness of city life. My brother and I had all the luxuries a child could want – playground, lake, game room, friends.
I was a very contemplative child. Some called me a day-dreamer, not in a positive way. I loved being in nature. For me, lying on the hillside overlooking the lake brought me great peace and joy. My parents thought I was a recluse and needed to be more active. My brother couldn’t sit still long enough to even begin to be a part of my world. I remember having a deep longing, wanting to share the experience with someone, but no one seemed interested. Even star-gazing at night on the hill was something I had to enjoy alone.
This feeling of loneliness has followed me most of my life, especially when I began to shed all of the people, places, and things in my life that didn’t align with my inner Truth. As I moved through my healing experiences, I found, once again, I had no one who could move through them with me. I had a yearning for a soulmate or friend to share my journey and the exciting discoveries I’d had with nature, healing, and spirituality. I yearned for someone in my life to be on the same page. This feeling of loneliness was haunting me one morning. Just when I needed her message, the beautiful, sun-kissed essence of Goldenrod shone through for me:
Get out in nature and you will find your soul connection. This is where your creativity will flow. This is what you are missing living in a climate that keeps you trapped inside through the long months of winter. You must get outside, no matter what. Find peace within, and you can be your own soulmate.
On cold or rainy days, I have to force myself to get out into nature. Once out there, I find solace and peace and the soul connection I long for, even when I am alone. As humans, we often look for someone to validate us or in the very least, talk through our musings. We are never alone, even if physically there is no one around us. Nature is God’s way of manifesting love in a physical form. All we need to do is pause, see the beauty, and feel the unconditional love of our Creator, tuning out the noise of our minds and finding our true soulmate, who is always within us.
It took many years for me to label the experience I was having as loneliness.
Do you tend to seek encouragement from outside of you, or are you content finding it within?
What words of encouragement are you longing to hear?
Can you whisper them to yourself?
Take a moment to pause, breathe deeply, and tap into your inner soulmate!