July was all about empowerment in the FrogBlog, a celebration and ownership of life. For August, I honour a woman who was my role model in action and spirit, my mother. As a fiery Leo, she was fearless, resilient, tender, compassionate, impulsive, and possessed an incredible faith that I envy to this day.
Let’s talk about owning your present. Too often we justify our present with our past, or use it to excuse our future. But in owning your present and claiming the moment, you also embrace a different kind of freedom, one that is engulfed in stillness, one that doesn’t come from achievement, or plans, or doing everything right. It comes in the quiet realisation that right now is enough. That I don’t have to chase a future version of myself just yet. That I don’t have to perform for anyone.
Lately, I’ve been reminding myself of something simple:
“I have nowhere to be but HERE, nobody to be except MYSELF.”
It sounds almost too easy, and has nothing to do with motion. I invite you to sit quietly with those words, to stand still, and breathe
We live in a culture obsessed with becoming: becoming successful; becoming thinner; becoming more productive, more spiritual, more healed, more… something, and less yourself. There’s nothing wrong with growth, when you’re always reaching, always tweaking, always trying to prove something, life starts to feel like a performance and you are relegated to a stage where you are the mercy of the puppeteer. It is a stage suffer from a duality of being both the actor and the audience, anxiously scanning for flaws in the mirror, unable to see our true self because there are too many expectations of who and what you should be.
But what if, for a moment, we dropped the act? What if being was enough?
The power of “here” is underrated. The present moment rarely feels flashy. It doesn’t give you a dopamine hit or a shiny certificate of progress. But it’s the only place life actually happens.
Here is where I feel the warmth of my coffee mug.
Here is where my feet touch the ground.
Here is where my breath slows, and I notice the silence behind all the noise.
When I stop trying to escape the present—when I stop needing to be anywhere else—I discover a kind of grounded joy that’s hard to find in achievement.
I’ve worn so many masks in my life. Student, parent, worker, friend, achiever, the “one who has it together.” But none of those roles are me. The truth is, I don’t need to become a better version of myself to deserve peace. I just need to be willing to return to myself, the one who exists when I stop pretending. This doesn’t mean I have everything figured out. It means I’m allowed to be messy. I’m allowed to be unfinished. I’m allowed to be real.
If you’re reading this and feeling like you’re falling behind, like you haven’t done enough today, or you’re not “there” yet, stop, take a breath. Come back to now.
You have nowhere to be but here.
You have nobody to be except yourself.
And that’s more than enough.
FrogDiva Thoughts 