“Your soulmate is not someone who comes into your life peacefully. It is someone who comes to make you question things, who changes your reality, someone that marks a before and after in your life. It is not the human being everyone has idealized, but an ordinary person, who manages to revolutionize your world in a second.”
~ Unknown
We all picture our soulmate as being someone that sweeps us off our feet; a romantic attraction and someone that makes life beautiful and carefree for us without us even realizing it. We picture a perfect love where there are never any problems or disagreements and a situation where your “soulmate” is always on your side. HOW BORING and unrealistic is this? Does this even exist? And if it does is this really a suitable way for one to want to live? Never questioning anything, never having a solid disagreement where your perspective and beliefs are challenged beyond anything you have ever imagined? In my opinion, societies depiction of a soulmate is misleading and tainted. It leaves us looking for something to validate us instead of looking for something to challenge and transform us. Validation can only come from within and as a result, when we are constantly seeking it from outside, we are left feeling incomplete and empty.
What if we explored the definition of a soulmate and considered the possibility that a soulmate doesn’t have to be a romantic connection? What if a soulmate could be anyone you choose. Suppose a soulmate is someone that you love deeply and dearly, but not necessarily in a romantic or sexual way?
I started to question this notion a few years after my oldest daughter was born. Clearly, the day she was born marked the beginning of one era of my life and the end of another. She changed my reality and made me question things in a way I had never questioned them before. I questioned things such as our existence, humanity, my beliefs, my values and my mortality. Don’t get me wrong, these are all things I had thought about prior to my daughters birth however, I had never done so in the way that her presence urged me to.
From the time my daughter was little I would hug and kiss her and say, “You are my soulmate!” My husband always thought that was the sweetest thing and although I had never fully explored the notion, I genuinely believed it more and more every time I uttered the words to her. From those 4 little words that I spoke on impulse one day, came this extraordinary realization that our perception of what a soulmate is supposed to be, is completely wrong. Not only is it wrong, but it also has us searching down this one path and potentially missing out on one of life’s most precious gifts. This is not to say that a soulamate can’t be a romantic connection however, it certainly does not have to be.
A soul mate should shake you to the very core by opening your heart and soul to endless possibilities you never even fathomed before. A soul mate should transform your very existence over and over again endlessly, and effortlessly. For me, this person is undeniably my daughter Georgia. My connection with her is undoubtedly as profound as any mother’s connection to her child, but that doesn’t mean that every mother and child relationship is a soulmate. For me, it does. Georgia and I are connected on a level I have never felt before. Without even realizing it, she compels me to grow as a woman, a mother, a daughter, a friend, a sister and a wife. She challenges me to always seek wisdom and has compelled me to recognize that personal development is a continuous and lifelong undertaking that we should never take for granted.
I am not suggesting that everyone’s child can or should be their soulmate and even more so, I am not suggesting that my connection with my daughter is any more profound or special than any other mother’s connection with her child. I have two children and although I know with every ounce of my being that Georgia is my soulmate, in no way does it diminish my relationship with my younger daughter Anastasia. Our relationships are vastly different however; my love for each of them is intense and strong only on very different levels.
My message is this….don’t settle for the definition of a soulmate that has been ingrained in us by society. Dig deeper. Look within and discover what or who changes your reality. A soulmate can be a friend, a sibling, a parent, a lover or a child. It can be whoever you want it to be. The connection is remarkable and unique. It’s so rare that you could never mistake it for something else. The problem has simply been that we have all been looking down that one path for our soulmate and as a result, we have quite possibly been missing what we have been searching for all along.
