Tuning Out & Tuning In: a check in of sorts...

I recently locked all social media apps on my phone in order to stay fully unplugged from the virtual world. So far it has shown me the true beauty and value of staying in the present moment. I love photography and capturing moments, but it's currently for the sake of the memory rather than thinking about creating content or sharing with a wider audience. 
I was finally able to finish reading the fiction book that I have been working on. Maroons by Adrienne Maree Brown is such a beautiful and powerful sequel to the first book of the Black Dawn Series, Grievers. I have felt so held within this story. I am the type of person who even highlights fiction books because there is something to learn from all literature. A few quotes that stuck out to be from this reading are the following:

"I'm not asking you to trust me, I am asking you to trust love. Trust the love you feel for me can help you feel my love for you. Trust that we will have an abundant life in love. Trust that our love will help us do what neither of us has ever done."

"If you're angry, you're in the past. If you're scared, you're in the future."

​"It feels like the grievers realize they have to stop everything and...grieve. For something. Something lost. Or everything they've lost."

​"...that specific joy that only lives inside grief--visible only through the lens of loss."

"Her need to be alone transmuted into a need to be at ease."

"Did the dead puncture the sky on their way out? Did they take all the light of their lives to some point in the blackness and explode directly over their earthly home? Did the stars sense her existence?"

"...what if she had been left behind because she couldn't choose her joy over her suffering?"

"It only needs to be one person who believe in you, as long as their belief is absolute."

"Sometimes you yell out the loudest when you most need to believe, not when you have the most faith." 

"The thing no one tells you is that bad company can make eternity your own private hell and good company can make the demons disarm themselves."

"True liberation is not about slipping your sovereignty from another's grip, but taking responsibility for your own life and choices, individually and in the collective."

"...time is water. If we don't let it flow, if we become a dam against it, or try to reverse its course--it breaks us."

There are so many more sections that I underlined and highlighted, but I don't want to give the entire story away. I highly recommend both Grievers and Maroons. They have encouraged me through my own grief and aided in my own liberation from suffering. 

I am finding that I am sitting within joy with more ease than ever before, and it's honestly such a relief. I genuinely felt that I would be sitting within suffering and grief for eternity, and while grief is a familiar friend that lingers within my every day--it's no longer an all day, every day, kind of visitor. 

Staying completely in tune with the present moment is opening up so many simple joys for me; from walking around a grocery story with my best friend, to playing at the park with my godbabies, to sharing a meal prepared by a dear friend, to the beauty and stillness of nights home alone...it's all beautiful and matters in this web of living.