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Vironika Tugaleva Biography

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“They say, "Look before you leap." So look. But do not look for too long. Do not look into the void of uncertainty trying to predict each and every possible outcome, to evaluate every possible mistake, to prevent each possible failure. Look for the opportunity to leap, and leap faster than your fear can grab you. Leap before you talk yourself out of it, before you convince yourself to set up a temporary camp that turns into a permanent delay on your journey into your own heart.”

“These times are hard, but I won't walk away jaded, darker, different. I feel. I cry to heal. If you saw me in those moments, maybe you'd think I was a mess. But I don't call it a mess. I call it strength. Real strength isn't about building walls. Real strength is about staying open, no matter what. It's about taking life—with all the pleasures that fade and all the pain that sticks around for too long—and not shutting down, not closing down, not building up those walls. Resilience isn't hard, impenetrable, iron. Resilience is flexible, soft, warm. Stay strong. The real kind of strong. Don't let your automatic mind reflexes make you jump away from pain and towards pleasure. Make choices. See clearly. And never, ever, stop feeling. Don't go numb. The world, even with all its horror, is too beautiful to miss.”

“No one sees your strength, do they? No one sees the silent battle you fight against your overprotective mind that’s trying to keep you safe from harm by keeping you safe from risk, safe from connection, safe from honesty. Maybe others don’t see, but you see it sometimes, don’t you? In the mirror, in those eyes, begging for someone to notice. You have noticed. It is real. You are strong. You are fighting for something incredible. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise—especially not your thoughts.”

“There was magic. Some kind of alchemy. I don't remember the moment you transformed from a prop into a main character. No, that's not what happened. I don't remember when you shape- shifted from an elf into a Prince. No, that isn't it either. What I really mean is: I don't know if we were meant to fall into each other all along or if you were just in the right place at the right time. Yes, I found safety in your arms in the middle of a hurricane I chose to escape, and I still don't know how it would have turned out if someone else came to my door that day. Or if you never held me. Or if I never cried. Or if everything hadn't been so fairy tale. Until it wasn't. Do you see the magic now, now that it's too late? Do you still remember me? Do I still remember you? And what, in the end, have we learned? Is it really better to have loved and lost? Was it love for you? Who now is dying faster from the lonely?”

“In today's world, it is tempting to follow suit and artificially numb the emotions you don't want while inducing the ones that you do want. The problem is that pushing pleasure into your veins will not get you out of quicksand, nor will blocking pain bring you relief. The solutions do not lie in the world of emotions, but rather in the world of thoughts.”

“Of course, being open and vulnerable will lead us to, sometimes, experience pain. But what is pain? It is simply a feeling. It is not forever. If you get pain from some person or thing too many times, you can always walk away. To risk a lifetime without pleasure simply to avoid pain is ludicrous.”

“Sometimes love doesn't look like what we think it should look like. Sometimes it's paradoxical. Sometimes we have to step outside our comfort zone. Sometimes we have to be more honest than we thought we'd ever have to be or more supportive than we are taught is appropriate. When we traverse those boundaries, that's when we really understand what this whole love thing is all about. We become more than just human. We become part of the giant, beautiful ever-changing reality of life. By loving without limits, we become wise, strong, and beautiful. We become more of what we already are.”

“Of course you have passions and talents. Of course you have some purpose in the world. Your emotions are guiding you towards it. Each time you discover something that you like or something that you hate, you discover yourself. Everyone can do this. If you didn't like some things more than others, you'd be living in a sewer eating grass. More often than not, it's those things you think are too weird, too personal, or too imperfect that you must share. The world does not await your perfection. It awaits your courage and your honesty. Let yourself be seen.”

“The distance between my lips and yours cannot be deciphered from the square root of the sum of the days we have spent wondering what to do with three minutes and ten seconds. The distance between my lips and yours cannot be deduced by the difference in the circumferences of our necks or in how many minutes we can sit in the noon sun. The distance between my lips and yours can only be measured in poems. Tell me, how many are there? Were there? Will there be? (But who knows what to call a poem and what to call a conversation? And who knows whether to call at all?)”

“The road is long in every direction. Whether you follow someone else's footsteps or blaze your own trail, the road is still long. Walk the one that is howling for you. Go now. It is never too late. Even if you must turn around and go back the way you came, you cannot go backwards. The path will not look the same walking north as it did walking south. You will not be the same person facing the sunset as you were turning your back to it. Go now. Find your magic. Live. Rise.”

“Some people engage in retail therapy, buying new things to make themselves feel more secure, and others engage in knowledge therapy, amassing new ideas to make themselves feel like they know something. We consume for comfort. We rely on certainty to shield us from the pain of confusion. The truth is staggering, colossal, unfathomable, so we cling to our bite-sized lies. We organize knowledge into bulleted lists and line graphs while the wisdom of the present moment sits patiently at the doors of our perception.”

“Instead of labelling your emotions as problems to solve, you can see them as signals to interpret. Instead of judging your desires as shameful aberrations, you can learn to meet them in healthier ways. Instead of calling yourself critical names when you cannot build or break certain habits, you can explore your motivations. You can become a student of yourself rather than always seeking a wiser teacher.”

“If someone else notices our qualities and talents, we think those parts of us must be worthwhile. Our potential floats like an island in the sea—uncharted, unexplored. We long for someone to discover us, admire us, colonize us. But why must it be another person? Why can’t you sail that voyage and explore yourself?”

“Hope for the future lies in each of us looking within. By learning to feed your hunger, you can overcome the tempting illusions all around you. By discovering who you are, you can stop basing your self-image solely on other people’s ideas about you. By connecting to your inner strength, you can stop cycling between idealistic illusions and self-hating disillusionment. By taking responsibility for yourself, you can stop relying on others to take responsibility for you.”

“When you love people, you are curious about who they are, what they think, and how they feel. You watch them closely, wondering about their experience and what you can do to make it more enjoyable. You feel compassion for their pain and seek to make it more bearable. You are eager to learn the unique language of their existence. You want to under-stand them, inspire them, heal them. What if you could look at yourself this way?”

“What if no one is coming to discover your hidden talents, to acknowledge your untapped potential, to heal you, to save you from yourself? What if the saviour was always supposed to be you? What if that’s why it hasn’t worked out with anyone else?”

“Most people spend their lives doing one of two things to their emotions: numbing or venting. Self-loving people do something very different—they accept each emotion as a piece of communication and they try to decode it. This way, emotions can become important guideposts on the journey of self-discovery, rather than annoying roadblocks.”

“Compassion and communication are both incredibly important in relationships, but most of us use these at the wrong time. If we communicate, it's only in times of conflict, allowing repressed emotions and unsaid worries form into their worst phrasings. If we show compassion, it's only in good times, when we're feeling good about one another and don't feel triggered or attacked. What if we changed our approach? What if we showed compassion in conflict—taking the time to listen, understand, help each other release pent-up emotions? And what if we communicated in good times—taking the time to talk about patterns we fall into, triggers we both have, and how we can work together to break our cycles? Then, we would stop helplessly dancing the same old tango of mutual misunderstanding. Then, we could work on giving one another room to feel, to love, and to grow.”

“When we listen to ourselves with callous objectivity—trying to diagnose and eradicate our problems with effective solutions—this “listening” rarely works. Think of the people who treat you this way: those who can’t see beyond their labels and judgments of you. Those who only “listen” for long enough to decide which advice to give you. It feels horrible. This same attitude prevents us from hearing our inner conversations. When we feel like someone has an agenda, we resist. Trying to fix ourselves while pretending to love ourselves doesn’t work. We don’t heal through objectification. We heal through understanding. We need to feel appreciated by the people who help us—ourselves included.”

“Life is not a sport. Life is not math. There is no final end goal and there is no right answer. Just because your truth does not match someone else's truth does not make either of you wrong. Life is not a zero sum game. If I am right, that does not make you wrong. If you are right, that does not make me wrong either. A jar of vinegar can sit in a cupboard beside a box of baking soda peacefully, and we can allow those who disagree with us to exist alongside us without reacting to them. There is nothing to prove. There is enough room in the world for all of us.”

“Each wave that rolls onto the shore must release back to the ocean. You are the same. Each wave of action you take must release back to the peace within you. Stress is what happens when you resist this natural process. Everyone needs breaks. Denying this necessity does not remove it. Let yourself go. Realize that, sometimes, the best thing to do is absolutely nothing.”

“When I'm triggered, I think, "This will last forever" or "What if this lasts forever?" I get thoughts about how I should give up, run away, hide, protect myself. These thoughts, I cannot change. What I can change is how I respond to them. Will I unconditionally believe these ideas, or will I accept them as side effects of the temporary experience of pain? Will I act on each thought that arises in the burning fire, or will I hold myself gently and say, "It'll be okay. I know it hurts. I love you"? My power lies in these choices.”

“I wanted, for so long, for someone to understand me better than I understood myself, to take control of me, to save me, to make it all better. I thought that the hardest part of a loving, mutually healing relationship would be showing my vulnerable, raw spots to a person, even though I'd been hurt so many times before. This has not been the hardest part. The actual hardest part has been realizing that no one, no matter how compassionate and kind they are, will say the perfect things always. Myself included. The hardest part has been learning to communicate what I need, to hear what others need, to tell others how to tell me what they need. Intimacy takes communication. A lot of it. We all have triggers. I don't know your triggers, and you don't know mine. No matter how much I love or trust you, you cannot possibly know exactly the words I need to hear, the words I don't want to hear, and the way I like to be touched. And how strange that we expect these things of each other. How strange (and self-sabotaging) that we refuse to get into relationships and friendships with people unless they treat us in just that perfect way. We've been raised to want fairy tales. We've been raised to wait for flawless saviors to rescue us. But the savior isn't flawless and the savior is not coming. The savior is you. The savior is still learning. The savior is never done learning. The savior is a human being. Forget perfect. Forget flawless. And start speaking your truth. Start speaking what you want and how you want it. And start asking and listening, really listening, to what the people around you say. Maybe, then, we will stop abandoning and hurting each other. Maybe, then, there's hope for us.”