H is for Honoring

by Randi

This post is part of The ABCs of Fierce Love, by Stratejoy.  Boy did Molly have me pegged for this topic!  It’s become my life’s work.  What an honor to be one of 26 writers (yes, I called myself that!) sharing my strategy for self-love.  Thank you, Molly and thank you for stopping by.  Now, about you…
 

Your heart knows your song, but you have to be willing to listen to the words. ~Sue Rock

 

By my calculations, there are about 39 different ways I could write this post; honoring comes in many forms.   But since this is in the spirit of Fierce Love I’m going to honor my most fierce wish for you:  honoring the whispers of your heart.

To me, honoring is to shine a light and acknowledge. It’s a light shone outward and a light we can shine internally.  Sometimes, it’s making the unseen visible and offering up a moment of reverence, if not gratitude.  Honoring is listening for and naming your truth.

The deepest honor in the name of self-love shines light onto the whispers in the heart.  Like a smoke signal we can’t see in the dark, the light we shine illuminates desire.  This longing could be a calling, a caution, a message, intuition.  Unseen, it smolders until it becomes a burning that is either ignored, self-anesthetized or an ache.  It’s the signal that we are no longer fully living our truth.

To date, the greatest whisper in my heart was ignored for decades.  I never thought it could exist and when it started to evidence itself I ran from it.  The mere suggestion did not lend itself to who I thought I was but my heart was starting to say maybe to motherhood.  My Maybe Baby question was smoldering.  I was not cool with this.  But I knew that until you really honor the questions and whispers of the heart, you cannot be fully at peace.  You have to know your truth before you can be at peace with it.  So I listened, and I explored and I gave myself permission to change my mind.  I honored the question and by doing so, honored my truth.

The soul speaks by whispering into our heart.  It leaves a message, suspended in time, waiting to be heard and yearning to be honored.

Whispers into the heart come when they are ready and they don’t mean we were not clear in our actions, identity or know who we were before them.  We evolve and peel back our layers.  New layers reveal aspects closer to our core.  We weren’t wrong before them but the whispers inform who we are to become.

Every child wants to be heard and shines when they are acknowledged.  Children thrive when they are honored.  Most of us would listen to a child tugging at out our leg wanting to tell us something.  We’d crouch down, look into their eyes and let their words settle into who we are.  We’d listen and they would feel heard.  Honoring your whispers is no different.  They long for your attention.

How do we honor the whispers in our heart?

We listen to them.  We recognize they are there.  We create space for them in our lives.  We live their questions without committing to an outcome before we crack open their truth.  Honoring the heart reveals our song.

Honoring the whispers may not mean your life will radically change.  Honoring the messages means you are listening and are willing to look at their meaning, their hope for you.  It may be that listening is enough.

What wants to be honored in you?  What desire, next move, new path, course correction, budding love, extinguished flame or truth need to be honored in your heart?

Tell me what your heart is whispering to you in the comments, and I’ll give you a prompt to begin to honor the truth that is trying to reveal itself to you.

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  • http://www.sasmagicalmysterytour.com/ sas

    wow. the idea that just listening might be enough, is so powerful. i have a tendency to jump in, want to do everything yesterday. this feels quite freeing, to just sit and listen. 
    you remind me that i can listen without expectation.love you, teacher xxx

  • http://www.storiesofconflictandlove.com Roxanne

    Beautiful, and just what I needed to read right now. Thank you.

  • http://www.laurierosenfeld.com/ Laurie Rosenfeld

    Randi, this  is lovely. One of the whispers in my heart is inspiring women step into and author their own lives. Helping women who have checked off all of the boxes of success by external standards, have grown dissatisfied, and now want success on their own terms. They want to be more present, more aware and more fully alive. Another one of my whispers is to write a book about stepping into your personal authority and living life on your own terms. This is the first time I am communicating this publicly. So even though I am not in the “Maybe Baby” camp, I love that your work speaks to me and makes me think. Thank you! xoxo

  • http://www.laurierosenfeld.com/ Laurie Rosenfeld

    This font sure is tiny! :)

  • http://poachedkumquats.wordpress.com Sara Blackthorne

    my heart is whispering that perhaps — while I don’t have to do it all — perhaps I can *have* it all: the dreams, the love, the sex, the connection, the embrace, the magick. I can lead my living to match my heart-truth. I’m just not sure how to do it not quite so openly. I mean, perhaps “it all” isn’t something people want to hear about. I don’t know how to keep that boundary…
    Thank you, wise and brilliant teacher-friend. xxx

  • Christie

    Randi – for a while now my heart has been whispering about writing. It’s been whispering a story, in tiny snippets, like a small movie scene playing in my head just for me. And I’ve not been honoring it, I’ve been ignoring the tug, postponing paying it any attention, because what if in giving it attention it grows, it becomes something more, something too much. Then what? But a few weeks ago I started to honor that truth with a few minutes a day. A few minutes with a pen and notebook and the story. And then I did something else, I shared. I shared the story with my children and they’ve requested more. They want to know how the story ends, when will  I print it out, can they take it to school to share? So it is growing and changing and becoming something else and I’m o.k. with that.  

  • Marianne

    Listening is my favorite place. Especially when I get to do it with you. 

    My heart is whispering to me about going back to places I’ve been before, seeing people who I’ve lived and loved with, finding out how I can serve them now, with this new and different life. 

  • http://twitter.com/stratejoy Molly Hoyne Mahar

    First. A thank you.  Thank you for adding your  gorgeous thoughts to the growing collection of wisdom on self-love. XO

    Then.  What is my heart whispering right now?  Hmmmm.  It’s telling me I’m close to sharing my true, true, juicy truth, but that I’m not quite there yet.  My heart is whispering for a break, some space, deliberate deliberation with my message and forms of expressions.  It’s telling me to trust.  To step back.  To steer.  To LISTEN.

    And we both know that it is coming, “forced” as it may be.  I’m looking forward to the change in capacity and pace as my world shifts with the addition of the tiny boy person.

    xo

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  • http://twitter.com/kerrieblazek Kerrie Blazek

    Randi — this is beautiful. Like you, I my heart was whispering Maybe Baby. I allowed myself to talk about the possibility of having a child, exploring  and opening myself to this option, when never before had I thought of being a mother. My lover and I tried for about a year and I did not get pregnant. To some this may seem bittersweet, but I readily admit I LOVE having explored this option in my life. I never thought I wanted children, but listening to the whisper and opening myself to the possibility of having a baby, gives my heart a sweet and gentle peace. A knowing that would not have been possible had I not listened to that still small voice. 

    Now I happily report that my whisper is allowing me to follow and honor a new path. I gave myself permission to quit my job, sell my condo and honor my desire to travel. I’ve been to 22 states over the past 7 months and am continuing to follow my heart. Life has never been better! xo

  • http://twitter.com/jenniferpeek Jennifer Peek

    I’m not sure what other potential post you may have written, but I am so thankful that this is the one that made it’s way here.  I have never really thought about honoring those little voices, those whispers and yet I totally know how it feels to NOT do that.  While this didn’t have anything to do with my decision to have kids, it has so much to do with many, many other decisions in my life.  The most recent one was aligning my business to focus on mentoring other women to start their own businesses the way they want – not using someone else’s ideas or strategies or models.  The decision was easy once I honored those whispers…it was the hiding that was a challenge!

    Jennifer Peek | Small Business StrategistFind Your New GrooveThe Freedom to Build Your Business Your Way

  • Anonymous

    Hi Laurie- I love that you are claiming that publicly!  That’s big and it’s no longer a whisper.  The ‘author’ aspect is big in this, or it feels to me.  Really speaks to making that internal, invisible standard, visible with heartfelt authority.  I wonder how some of that might be claimed now?  

    Thank you for your kind words- and let me know if I can help :)

  • Anonymous

    I know!  I need to talk to Amanda, my weblady about this.  

  • Anonymous

    Thank you, Roxanne.  Stay safe.  Sounds like things are a little unstable.  Keep in touch with your heart.  It’s such a driving force for you.

  • Anonymous

    Yup.  Sometimes we just want to be heard, don’t have a request or a plan or a demand or an insistence.  Just need to be heard.  When you know that listening is an option- and honor the the whispers with heartfelt listening, you’re better able to discern what needs action and what your heart wants you to hear.  In fact, I think the no expectation part is quite a gift.  There’s big, beautiful stuff on your big, beautiful heart right now.  What a  privilege to hear what it has to say.  Love.  xoxo

  • Anonymous

    What’s at stake if it’s not done openly?  What do you want to say about it?  Why?  What’s the boundary about? Who is it for?  PS- I suspect you can have it all, but wonder if you think it can only happen in a way you’ve envisioned.  You know where to find me. xo

  • Anonymous

    Ah.  Yes.  There is a certain responsibility that comes with knowing your heart’s whisper.  I think this is why so many people distract themselves from listening.  I think it was St. Exupery who wrote-, “You are responsible for what you tame.”  I love that you’ve listened, but also took what wanted to happen, on your terms, giving it life but making it manageable.  And that you’re kids dig it?  AWESOME!  What a win-win.  Thank you, Christie!

  • Anonymous

    Ok, I had to marinate in your first line for a moment.  Thank you.  The treat is all mine.

    So, so lovely and so you.  What needs to be honored (grounded, anchored?) where you’re at so going back to these places will feel good on all sides?  What needs to be honored within you?  What about this new life is wanting to be shared?  What would delight you?  xoxo

  • Anonymous

    Jennifer, I love your honesty about what it feels like to not honor those whispers.  We know when we don’t.  And you have, you did!  Right on!  And that it’s leading you to support others to honor their voices.  Beautiful.

    What else wants to be heard, honored?  It may well crack you open to more peace.  Truth precedes peace.  Truth loves to travel in whisper form.  :)  Thanks for your comment!

  • Anonymous

    Thank you, Kerrie :)  One thing I learned on my own Maybe Baby journey and now having guided close to 100 women through their journey, is that the question is only in part about children.  The gift is the exploration of the question, the living it heart and soul.  It’s its own gestation of who we are.  Thank you for sharing this.

    Love your path.  Those whispers are wise!  Thanks for your comment :)

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  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Adeah-Wetzel/1132732622 Adeah Wetzel

    Randi, you didn’t put my name at the top but I feel like this was a letter written just for me.  I’ve always been a heart whisper listener but lately I’ve pushed them aside because “I’m too busy and trying to focus on my goals.” Your letter reminds me that those heart whispers are ingredients that can’t be left out! 

  • http://kathleenprophet.com/ Kathleen Prophet

    ahhhhhh…. Randi… just the felt sense I experience by those words… “listen to the whispers of the heart”… carry me down and into my deep self.  I sigh.  I breathe.  I feel my heartbeat.  Tender hidden presence.  Love.  Child Woman.  Beauty.  Gentle fierce love…of self and other.  Not longings… but what my heart is whispering… like a song pulsating out to my life.  I am in such an exquisite place with myself and my life right now that odes are being sung with mantras of joy constantly being whispered.  

    I have lived many places of whispering yearning.  And those whispers are what have carried me here, to this moment.  Thank you so much for creating the sacred space and post to evoke this moment’s encounter with myself.
    love you.

  • http://www.chronicwellnesscoaching.com/ Laurie Erdman

    Love this post. Thanks you for sharing. I’m not sure I am in need of course correction only because I corrected course a few years ago.

    After being given an diagnosis of MS, I finally decided to listen to my soul.  My life was a mess and my body and soul had been telling me so.   Now I was finally ready to listen.

    I changed course from being in a job that didn’t serve me or my soul and took a huge leap to become a health coach to help others with MS, fatigue, and soul-sucking jobs.

    It has been freeing, even as it has had it’s freakin’ scary moments.  But this is part of the journey. I wouldn’t trade this.

  • http://www.tinapruitt.com/blog Tina Pruitt

    Randi….this post is so timely for me as I am cracking open a new vision, a new road, a new brand….supporting women in so many new and fascinating ways…..!!  Thank you for this post, as I too, felt it was written just for me….
    Isn’t it amazing how so very connected we really are…
    xo, Tina

  • http://www.wasslaweekly.com nasrin shah abushakra

    RANDY! This is magical your writing simply takes my breath away.  You’re RIGHT our bodies our minds KNOW what is right and at times if we don’t listen to the whisper it WILL screams OUT.  At times we as “civil” adults ignore these signs.  I too need to listen more, be more aware of what my body and the universe are saying to me because as a woman both my soul and Mama Earth are indeed in tune.  Thank you for the profound reminder of listening to what is whispering to me in my soul, I will stop and honor that whisper.  

  • Anonymous

    I have been ignoring the whispers of entrepeneurship for many years. Finally i have deceided to honour them and take a big step starting my own business.

  • Renee M

    My heart whispers I need to write. Just do it and put it out there because until I do I am not living my truth. 

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