Dona Nobis Pacem - Blog Blast For Peace 2013

This year again I had trouble thinking of a theme for Blog Blast For Peace again. Not for the lack of ideas, though, but I've been having too many random ideas and then I have to really find that one strong idea that I truly want to voice this year. 

Anyway, here's my peace globe this year:

This year I've been having a lot of conversations with many different ladies around the world and there's one thing that keeps on echoing throughout those conversations. It's that when our inner world is chaotic and raging with so many different voices warring one another, it's so hard to go out there and create peace, because you're having all those wars within and all you want to do is protect yourself. 

It gets even harder to want to create peace outside when you don't get any validation as to what is happening inside, when you feel alone and when people think you're overreacting. When you're confused and in denial especially...it gets harder to embrace yourself and love yourself as we are. When you can't love yourself even at your darkest moments (or perhaps especially on your darkest moments) and when you can't embrace whatever it is going on inside you, how can you extend that kind of love towards others? And it's especially made worse when other people who don't know or understand your pain keep on saying "the wrong thing" or "trying to fix you" or trying to tell you to "move on" even though all you need is that they just listen to you and empathize with your pain and validate your grief.

So this year I want to call for each of us to be more aware of what's going on inside us...to embrace each part of us, to become our own best friends, to dare to be naked within to reveal whatever it is that we need to face inside us, to accept the things we can't change and to believe that we are worth being loved even during those times when we feel least like it and to try to find our own support system. And I hope that by continually doing so, healing can begin from within and peace can be restored from within one step at a time. And then we can start spreading the peace again all around us, one ripple at a time. 

P.S. The image of the two penguins in my Peace Globe is a portrayal of how I'd like us to treat ourselves - as our own best friend.