What does it mean to be a Grown Up?

How many times have you heard people say that growing up is tough? It is a statement that I believe complicates what should be a simple transition to wholeness as we travel down the road we call life.

Being a grown up, to me, involves standing in our balanced Divine Feminine or Divine Masculine and to be honest and real, firstly with ourselves, and then with others. To show up with truth and vulnerability but also strength and love.

Most adults seem to avoid the hard conversations, believing that they are protecting either others or themselves. They use white lies to deflect, redirect, appease and placate. We fall into our wounds and hold them up as truths, often picking off the scabs to stay in the safety of what we know. We compare our wounds and damage to everyone else's and use them as measuring sticks to prove our success or reinforce our negative, often self-sabotaging beliefs. The competition we create with our wounds damages connection and healing from within.

Lies are words of the ego, the small self, and they are embraced from a place of fear and the subconscious desire to stay "safe". Our fears feed the insecurity, the feelings of unworthiness, of a lack of loveability, and not enoughness.

But what if the safety those wounds and words provided stopped us moving forward and expanding into our greatness? What if white lies responding to other white lies stood in the way of truth, love and true conscious being and connection?

What if, by shining our light of truth on our fears from a place of love, they lost their control, or better yet, were re-framed, to become strengths?

Can we choose to have the tough conversations? Can we show our real, vulnerable, uncovered selves without hiding behind the armour and safety the protective white lies create? What would that mean for our relationships - both with ourselves and others? Can we choose to face our fear head on and perhaps be surprised at the response of others?

Maybe they are just waiting, as are we, for someone to show up in their stripped bare vulnerability and approach issues from a stance of love and compassion. Maybe this is something we all need to step up and help each other with, teaching and learning as we find our new way of communicating.

Can we take the chance to show up for ourselves and others and be the example of the strength that exists in wholeness?

How many times have you heard the term "brutal honesty".... why does honesty need to be brutal? Why can't it be loving, compassionate, inclusive and boundaried? I believe that true honesty comes from a place of love and opens up the possibility for self reflection.

I remember the saying whatever you do that is loving towards yourself is ultimately loving for everyone else (and the converse is true too for what is detrimental). If we enforce our boundaries - simply a line drawn in the sand to say this is ok and this is not - we teach others how we are to be treated and allow for personal growth and expansion. Boundaries allow the space and confidence to say no and to hear a no said in return, they allow structure to filter, analyse and reflect before expanding into knowingness.

Perhaps being a grown up is only tough because we are yet to find the heart to heart communication we desire.