Breaking Daylight

For the halfway mark of my personal challenge to complete 40 new things prior to turning 40, I did it up big. I went to Vegas with 6 extremely awesome ladies. I checked six brand new to me things off my list. I am not going to get in to the detail of each one cause you know the saying “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” And cause there was an overall theme that emerged from my trip that is way more juicy then any of the details of my six new to me activities.

Before leaving Heather from Eclectic Reality shared an article from the Onion (read here) that truly set that tone of our entire weekend. We were there to Validate the Shit out of each other and we took this task very seriously.

I have spent a more time then I would ever care to add up looking out in to the world for validation. Not in the right sort of way. More in the like me like me I will say and do whatever it takes kind of way. It has left me empty inside and completely disconnected from any sense of who I truly am. This weekend in Vegas was not that sort of validation.

We all showed up just as we were and fell in to the loving arms of others on the same journey ready to support each other. Support us in being who we are. There were no rules about what to say, how to be, what was acceptable. There was no in group. There was no judgement. Raw unadulterated loving of the pure and unconditional sort.  We loved each other as a our past selves, our now selves and our future selves.

It was transformative. It was a network of support that gave me freedom to be. To be me. To be the me that lives in the deepest recesses of my soul. Not only to be her but to love her, laugh with her and let her shine her brightest. I unleashed the sort of courage that pushes me to the very edges of my own comfort zone in order to blast out in to the world sparklier then I ever have been before.

Vegas with is glitz, glamor, party all night attitude was the perfect place to validate the shit out of each other. To celebrate our soft, our edgy, our real, our frustration, our bliss, our individually fabulously unique girl, woman, mother selves.

To conclude now, I must retract my earlier comment that, “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” cause I brought all that love and validating home and it is making me rock my everyday life with a whole lot more sparkle.