James Ballantyne

Category: life

It’s not always sparkles
Its not always sparkles

Or rainbows

Or endless bliss flowing freely

Its not always sparkles

It really isn’t

Its not always perfect

Its not always clear

Sometimes it’s fog

That feels very near

Sometimes the weight feels heavy

Sometimes the swirl goes around and around

Sometimes peace is

Struggle to be found

Therapy isn’t magic,

And the book isn’t a spell

When your mind goes all cloudy

And races like hell

Its not always sparkles

Its not always bunnies

It was never going to be

Sensing the discomfort

Yet know

That’s not me

Experience the feeling

Don’t bury it away

Experience the discomfort

As a message of healing

And love it anyway

Talk to the voices

Bring them down from the ceiling

It won’t be all sparkles

It won’t ever be quick

It might be quite blue

Yet what is certain

The power

Is in you.

💜
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Feb 13, 2025
Embrace the now
Embrace the sacred reality emerging just in front of you

Fill the space with love and joy

Create presence by being presence

Emanate love into essence

Feel your way into existence

The world is yours

Each precious life moment

Make curiosity the mode of your eyes

Wide eyed wonderment of childlike openness

To live in reality

In the very now of this unique moment.

That you are previously gloriously living.

For you are spirit and this is walking into soul.
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Feb 6, 2025
Broke, but not broken.
But I bet you think you are.

I did.

I thought I was too broken to be fixed

The fear of deep scars caused by abused too much

To afraid to go there.

Too weak to want to

Too afraid of the consequences

Didn’t know what it would take

What it would mean

Then all the soothing tactics when coping.

They would need sorting too.

And they haunted my days like heavy weights.

Thinking I was to blame

Thinking I was broken

Thinking…

I’m too wounded….I don’t want to start facing it

I’m too broken to even face it

I’ll be going alone.

Yet, I had no choice in the end.

Dug deep when everything lost and clawed my way into safety and space.

Turned around after running away for too long.

Turns out I wasn’t broken

Turns out what I considered sin ..was abuse others had done to me

Turns out I had been normalised into thinking surviving was default

Turns out I wasn’t broken, but holding onto things that weren’t mine to hold

Turns out I wasn’t broken, but I had been broken.

Turns out I was light and love underneath

But that had been sniffed out, crushed and stolen from since birth.

I wasn’t broken….but I had been broken.

Yet…I wasn’t broken

Because I didn’t leave the world when suicide tempted me as a child

Or when emotional breakdowns occured in my 30’s

I wasn’t broken.

I wanted a better life.

I wanted to escape

I wanted more

I wasn’t broken, and neither are you.

You are not what someone, or a system has done to you

You are not the weight of others expectations

You are not the mask or the shield

You are not broken.

You just are.

You are light, and love and joy all along

This is your soul, you are breaking to find love inside

And love is withing melting it down

Your own love, you.

You are not broken.

Love is within.

Love is you

You are within.

You are not broken, you are complete within.
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Feb 4, 2025
Brave Being
Brave means truth

Brave means not caring but doing love anyway.

Brave means inner truthfulness

Brave means integrity over falsity

Brave means justice over fear

Brave means tell, even if no one understands or listens or wants to hear.

Brave means summoning every ounce of being into being

Brave means living beyond the mask

Brave means walking alone

Brave means being beyond expectations

Brave means cost, raw deep cost

Brave means sounds of love over silence

Brave means fighting through the preordained scripts

Brave means making your story happen

Brave means wrestling the demons in the dark, so you can be light in the day

Brave means changing course

Brave means change.

Brave means crying for the hurt

Brave means loving the woundedness

Brave means standing tall

Brave means owning your story in the skin you are in

Brave means truly being.

Brave means looking evil in the eye and pouring in love

Brave means looking in the mirror and saying I love you.

Brave means being still and powerful In the swirl of unconscious rage

Brave means faith

Brave means belief in love despite all the odds

Brave breeds love, breeds courage, builds power.

Brave.
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Feb 3, 2025
Daffodils
There are daffodils in the world too,

And puppy dogs,

And trains that leave on time

There’s children playing in the sea,

And squirrels all around,

There’s families playing board games,

And teenagers doing their art,

There’s wonder and there’s treasure in the world all around.

Theres more love that overcomes the pain

And joy when children play in rain

There’s snowdrops peeking from their hiding

And lights spectacular, in the morning

That’s the world you actually live in,

That’s the one to enjoy

That’s the one you make and shape

The reality that you see.

There are daffodils in the world too

A million good things verses the damage of lies

Look up, look out and look deep within.

There’s more love than there is sin

See that daffodil, see that rose

Thats the real of the world we live in.
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Jan 31, 2025
Loving the past….goodbye….
Learn to love and appreciate your past. Fully embrace it, thank it for teaching you, and let go of any judgement that there was something wrong with it. Your past is uniquely yours. It happened. It’s sacred. It’s beautiful. Nobody else had it, and nobody else ever will. Embrace your past, hug it, kiss it, love it to death

(Michael A Singer, Living Untethered)

That’s very different from ‘you just need to move on’

What happened yesterday happened. It isn’t today.

What happened 35 years ago happened. It isnt today.

But current experience may also be the constant reliving of the past.

Loving the past feels dreamy and impossible.

And for 40+ years I loved suppressing the shadows of a past I didn’t want to open. A past that I was afraid of, a past, the wounds of childhood abuse that I had masked for so long.

Had to hide it was to make it on my own

Had to pretend it didn’t happen to have a ‘successful life’

Had to, it was the only way.

Didn’t want to go there.

And that didn’t seem even a choice at the time, just the only way I knew, suppress and pretend, just don’t open the box.

Let the past have power over me.

Yet some things find themselves harder to get rid of.

Memories intertwined with regret

Memories intertwined with loss

Memories intertwined with shame.

Self defeating prisons of the mind.

That don’t exist in the now.

But haunt.

Self love isn’t just baths.

Its tender, kind, self forgiveness

Love of the highest order

The past.

It happened to cause us to learn.

And to give us the opportunity in the now to hold it, hug it and kiss it to death, so that it’s part of our loved selves.
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Jan 28, 2025
Your friend, Love.
Thank you for being here _______________________,

Rest your weary, or excitable, or fearful, or wounded heart

Sit here a moment

Stay.

Love is your friend

Love is your ally

Love is your teacher

Love is your hand

And Love walks as you do, Love walks with you

So my friend

Stay here, held, surrounded

And peace, in the unconditional open arms of

Your lifelong always and forever friend,

Love.
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Jan 21, 2025
Savouring Uniqueness
As I stood here

I didn’t notice the cars

Or the take away shop beaming purple

Or the shadowed arc of the bridge

But the light

As I stood there

In that moment

In that one exact time

A million combinations of light flooded my eyes

Every one unique

And I pressed the shutter

Awed by the incredible uniqueness of each

How red, white, orange and purple

Shared and reflected their neon hue

Colours dancing , like lovers and friends at a ball

Calling the river fairies from the deep

The dance of light

Flow uninterrupted.

A million combinations of light

Like the billion combinations of stars

And the million combinations of clouds

And the million combinations of us

Amongst the infinity of time

And in this moment

This one

Saw me.
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Jan 19, 2025