Summer and the Simple Smell of Sunscreen
Sometimes I write about bravely stepping into the importance of this moment; other times I write about whimsical nostalgia and love, the heart wants what the heart wants
Do you remember the smell of sunscreen at the beach when you were a kid?
Or the smell of your grandparents car?
The vacations - and particularly the summers where all you had to do was swim and play outside? And, maybe climb a tree?
I remember day after day of summer swimming at our local swim club, Riverside Swim Club. Lovingly called RSC by the regulars, and those of us who worked there every. single. summer - like me, at the ripe age of 13, the *second* I was able to legally get a job. It was a mecca of activity during the summer with mostly moms and kids - and of course, the teen lifeguards. A place to spend all of your days, in a blur of near running when you were supposed to walk, drying off in the crisp sunshine on a thin, mickey mouse towel and bobbing incessantly in the medium-shallow water, just deep enough to claim you couldn’t hear your mom continually calling you to get out of the pool.
It was the aftermath of those days that are some of my favorite memories of childhood summers - snoozing on the couch in your dry bathing suit and crunchy chlorine hair - and waking up to watermelon slices and the distinct smell of charcoal on the grill.
What is it that tugs at our heartstrings so much about childhood?
Is it the innocence, the emotional freedom, the lack of responsibility, or the fact that we didn’t have to work the majority of our lives? Maybe it was the fact that we didn’t know then what we know now - and we believed we could be anything.
Oh, and the best part - the infinite possibilities for love - the world is your oyster when you’re a kid.
I had an epic love story at a young age, one in which I’ll save this audience from, selfishly and truthfully due to an attempt at self-preservation and officially putting that story deep, dark and permanently in the grave - but it pretty much started at RSC and the lesson is more important in this moment than the love story - even though it involves a private helicopter, jet-ski, abandoned airport runway, Dave Matthews Band, that blue bag of m&m’s and a first kiss while locked out of the car in the rain. Told ya it was a good one.
But, the sad lesson - for myriad, unexplainable reasons, given my young life, somehow, someway, mysteriously and quite tragically, was that I had come to hate myself.
There wasn’t much rhyme or reason - and the truth is, it was sneaky. It was my inner voice, the always-there monologue. It was not the kind of self-loathing that you display to others or share with someone, out of intelligent and thoughtful concern - no, it was the nearly lethal one, the one that slinks in the shadows and intends to remain singularly your deep, dark secret.
In 2020, I wrote hours and hours of poems about both the aforementioned love story - and other words which needed to emerge.
There was a deep understanding of both my demons of the time - along with the subsequent heartbreak that ensued, one of the most gutting of them being:
it’s not pretty
to be insecure
no one can know your pain
it’s not fun to be suicidal
that’s not confidence
smile
What I failed to learn as a young child - and amplified throughout my teens, 20’s and even 30’s - was that until you really love yourself; it’s nearly impossible to receive the love of another, no matter how much they want to give it to you.
You can have all the desire for love in the world, but if you don’t have your own well of love within, it’s pretty tough to receive it - to open the door, to allow it. It’s as if you don’t believe yourself worthy, no matter how much another loves you, you don’t believe them. You have to believe to receive - and if you don’t believe you are lovable, voila, you are given love and you subconsciously reject it - or - at least, that’s what I did, anyway.
Sonofabitch, doesn’t that suck.
As a 30-something woman, with a pretty amazing life on all accounts, I would stare myself down in the full length mirrors during a yoga class, spewing absolute vitriol at my own reflection and body shape.
It’s not worthwhile to even type those words here, nor is it a good practice for me to even recall these moments. The point is, how does it get this way?
Beyond having spent more hours in the past five years reckoning with my former inner demons, self-imposed nasty grams and more notebooks full of wild, untamed emotion than I have desk drawers for anymore - I have come to an entirely new version of myself - one in which childhood me would be wildly proud of; and early 30-something me might not believe possible.
So, what did I do? It started with a highly intentional movement away from judgment - both of self and of others. Then, it was a very sharp paying attention to my thoughts; an observant, empathetic policing of them, lovingly seeing and politely declining what I didn’t believe were for my good or another’s - and tracing the trail of them back to their origination to give that version of myself; the one who believed something untrue, loving kindness, compassion and empathy.
So, I paid deep attention to my thoughts - which led to a serious policing of my words. Words have power; and I didn’t want mine to be prescribing me a reality which didn’t fit where I wanted to be going. Next, came the emotions. The commitment to feeling it all - the good, the bad and the ugly - without excuse, apology or abandon. Refusing to shape shift for the comfort of the world, while also carving out the boundaries, time and space to be with myself in my grief, and let the dark, shadowy parts pour from my heart, drip down my body and bleed from my bones, purging what had so desperately been shrieking to be witnessed, held and hugged; enabling movement into an energy of something new altogether.
I also try to practice non-duality and avoid any type of “othering;” while also not bypassing the truth in the shadows of our current reality.
Somewhere along the lines there was a marketer, advertiser or some other wise guy who realized that if you made people feel bad about themselves, they would buy things to feel better. And, the more ways they felt bad about themselves, the more things they would/could/should buy!
While it’s all complicated - of course, my pain and darkness was generated within; that pain developed due to beliefs that I created or absorbed along the way - but, were these beliefs serving me? Were these beliefs even mine? Where were they coming from? How can I blame someone for doing their job when it’s likely they did that work to put food on the table for their family - and maybe try to buy a nicer car than their neighbor?
The truth is, there is no one to really blame anymore; the pain we feel is being generated within us - and of course, if it is pain for another, that makes sense, too. Of course, there are reckless, painful atrocities happening every day, all around the world. Where do they originate? How did we get here? Are these activities a reflection of a bigger story, one in which is a projection of our own human consciousness, our deepest fears, self-hatred and belief that others are dangerous, less-than and unworthy, playing out on a global stage?
In the study of consciousness, it is observed that our thoughts create our reality.
This is what Quantum Theory postures. It’s also what the Law of Attraction and Law of As Above, So Below infer. Science and spirituality are starting to intersect with psychology in powerful and undeniable ways.
But, what happens if we aren’t really thinking much about our thoughts?
What if we are simply trying to survive because there is so much wild shit happening everywhere, all the time, all around us? What if the media is screaming that the world is not safe, people are terrible and now your instagram ads tell you to just go bury some survival stuff in the woods and definitely invest in a bunker?
The thing that was able to click me out of the fear + scarcity mindset was my personal reckoning with death - and particularly the visceral absolute truth that I felt when I first started reading accounts of past-life hypnosis. We might be better served to call these studies “between lives” vs. past as there is much debate on time as a linear construct but that is a whole ‘nother rabbit hole.
Remembering, realizing and reckoning with the idea of other lives lived, feeling a deep resonance to that notion and stream of consciousness writing about it filled me with the “aha” moment I had been seeking since I was a child. It was the *thing* about life which I looked for but never found. It was the string that tied together my life from childhood to adulthood, seeing spirits, hearing messages and communing, on occasion with the no longer embodied. Yes, I have a touch of mediumship and this type of truth resonates in my bones like the feeling of nostalgic summer memories from being seven years old.
There was an entire summer where everywhere I went I insisted we talk about past lives, so much so that I actually lost a friendship from it. I wonder what that does for your karmic cycle? Yes, I am highly guilty of going deep in existential curiosities; and sometimes not reading the room for readiness (is this happening RN?).
The thing is, of course, I don’t want to die. Nobody does.
But, when you can appreciate that life isn’t just a singular, one and only extreme opportunity in which you better excel and produce to be valid at all costs, the weight and pressure of performing for that world seems to slip away. Instead of judging yourself on the perception of your production, you can simply reclaim your permanent and innate worth, by way of getting to know the real you, your soul and what your inner voice has been trying to say. And often our soul is saying “go outside.”
Your lessons this lifetime might wholly be to do with family, friendships, nature, your heart, body or love - and nothing to do with how you make money.
The soul whispers are where the real fun begins - where true wisdom is imparted, and magical, miraculous synchronicities abound. And, the truth is, it goes in waves. In 2020-2022, I was doing so much intentional inner work and spending so much time in solitude, it was like wisdom poured into me like water - through my journal, during my workouts, in meditation, in sleep state. Then, as an entrepreneur, stressed about finances and straddling a line of trying to be palatable to the corporate world while living in my mystical truth, I slipped into fear and scarcity and at times felt like I wasn’t hearing the right messages or on the right path. What was really happening was that I knew the answers to my dilemmas but I didn’t think the world was ready for my full truth - and I kept trying to force the safe thing, even though I knew that wasn’t my soul’s intended path or purpose.
And, wisdom doesn’t work in linear fashion, either. I won’t pretend to know the ways of the universe but I can tell you one thing for certain, it doesn’t adhere to human timetables of desire or success. The universe is here to serve us with our own soul’s chosen lessons, in service to our highest good and the highest good of all, and sometimes these lessons don’t make sense until looking back at a number of things in retrospect.
I don’t always hear all the whispers, but I can tell you that the more I learn about consciousness and reflect on my lived experience to this point, the more I see truth and when I say see truth, I mean it.
Some of what is happening in our world today is not truth. Whether that is intentional or not, I will leave open to interpretation, although I deeply believe humans are inherently good and sometimes go of course when they are told and/or believe themselves to be otherwise.
There is a frequency of truth, a divine intelligence, known beyond the gymnastics of the mind. David Hawkins, PhD. studied this phenomena for around 50 years, through the lens of kinesiology, with his baseline a simple strength test of the arm. Anyone can try it.
In one study, he wowed a room of 1,000 people by using two photos of just apples, with no context. One apple was raised with fertilizers and pesticides; everyone in the room’s arms went weak, in the strength test (one simply extends the left arm out to the side, straight, and someone presses down on it). Adversely, he showed a photo of an organic, regeneratively raised apple with no use of pesticides and everyone’s arms stayed strong to the test. Truth is something which lives within our bodies and can either positively strengthen us; or in falsehood, can physically debilitate us.
Why would anyone want to hurl falsehood after falsehood at a society in which falsehood weakens the body?
Control; which stems from fear.
What I have deeply realized, through this journey home to myself - is that just like the way we come into this life, cramming our wild, cosmic fractal of infinite wisdom into a tiny, shivering and dense 3D human baby body, when we leave, we transcend this human plane, once again alone with ourselves, back to the source of our experience, our oversoul.
When we come into human form - just like when we leave - we are alone.
We must love ourselves, in these bodies, for the choice we made to be here, at this time; as this is an important changing of the guard. A shifting of consciousness which will change the trajectory of humanity and the earth for the better. This is my knowing and my deep belief.
As I understand it, being on earth at this time is a very hot ticket. As much as there is pain, there is also beauty and we can choose to see and be the beauty. We can refuse to allow the atrocities of leaders who are so deep within their own fear that they have lost touch of the parts of themselves who so deeply just wish to be loved, seen and supported. Fear and pain has overridden the whispers of the heart. The pain is at the wheel.
How can we counteract? Heaps and heaps of love. Joyous celebration of life. Staunch support of what we believe to be our collective truth. Unity.
After a lot of hard work and serious commitment, I deeply love myself. More than anything, I love LIFE and the opportunity to be here now. I am, like everyone, a work in progress. There are some days when hints of self-judgment reemerge; but not for long. In January, I actually felt my heart break, shatter into a million pieces - only to have it very viscerally re-configure and re-open about 10 minutes later. I worked hard to get there - to feel so very grateful for my experience, this life and the immense amount of magic and love that exist in every moment - and, to not attach my worth to another’s ability or inability to love. I am devoted to awe and the magic of possibility. It is endless - and so is my belief in it.
I deeply believe in love. I believe in its ability to heal us, to guide us, to overcome. But, I don’t believe that it is sanctioned for relationships or even a relational construct of any kind, at all. It is infinitely available, a wellspring of magic, within. Love is earth. Love is soil. Love is water, Love is air. Love is fire, it is you, it is me, it is we - it is what lights up the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man. Can you feel, hear and be the love?
Love is the sunrise, the crunchy chlorine hair, the watermelon. It’s the nostalgia, the blue m&m’s, the stories, it’s LIFE. It is how we unite and how we prevail. It’s the reason for the fight and it’s the reason we die. It’s all for love.
How can you love yourself so radically that you bury the version of you who didn’t know your magnitude? It’s okay for that version of you to die. R.I.P. former shit-talker.
To radical self-love and love that transcends borders, space and time,
Marley
