Why I Love Joel Madden and My Ex-Mother-In-Law! – Coming from a place of love!

I am not a musician.
I have never been a groupie of Good Charlotte.
I have never gone to one of their gigs, nor do I have one of their CD’s.
But, I love the essence of Joel!

This is a recent awareness. It has come through watching The Voice.

Joel was one of the mentors.

I wasn’t particularly interested in seeing another reality singing show on television…

When I was eighteen, I met my future mother-in-law. She was one of the reasons that I married her son. She provided a strong family unit for her husband and three children. I wanted to be part of that. She was my role model.

She gave us strength. She gave us support. She gave us direction. She gave us love.

When I was in school I realised that the people who got ahead had some kind of role model, a coach or a mentor, or a strong family background, what I call family of origin. These successful people had someone to look up to. Someone to whom they could relate to and share their highs and lows.

My teachers said that the person you need as a role model, or a mentor, should have a solid character, have strong values, and come from a place of love. You will be able to see, hear and feel this as it emanates from their inner essence. You will be able to witness their actions and how they treat themselves and others. People will be attracted to them because they exude love, the special quality of total acceptance of self and others. They do not hold themselves as separate or more special than anyone else. They come from a place of self-love and a genuine love of others. Sure. They have had to overcome their own demons. However, they seem to have triumphed in that respect.

Now. I have carried that notion of a role model around with me for some time. So, when The Voice commenced, my attention was drawn to the coaches, the mentors, more specifically than the singers. You see, their reputation was on the line, more so that the singers, who were virtually unknown. The years and years of building their personal brand through very public trial and error, could well have been damaged, if they had displayed less than total acceptance of their team. They had to come from a position of love. The mentors would live or die in the ratings by how they acted and what comments they made to their contestants, and similarly, to the other coaches.

Joel seemed to beam respect and acceptance. He seems to be coming from a place of knowing who he is, both from a spiritual as well human perspective. There were no unkind remarks, no necessarily hurtful comments about performers. There was genuine love, praise and warmth. This beamed through the television set. Oozing the love!

I began following Joel every week, watching, listening, cheering him on for the very essence of him that he exudes. Joel manifests the qualities and characteristics that are important to me, and are those that I learned from my ex-mother-in-law. I learned about integrity, strength, identity, generosity and love, love of self-stemming from a total belief and acceptance of who I am and what I could achieve, love of others with total acceptance and respect of others. No holding grudges, or criticism. Just total instigation of the principle of forgiveness. She told me that this comes from looking inside the person to their true inner essence, their real selves, rather that judging the external shell, the body that their essence just happens to inhabit.

Over the episodes Joel went from strength to strength. My ex-mother-in-law was right. From week to week, he’s never let me down. In fact, his essence and aura keeps growing every week, and the legion of fans are growing. When you come from a place of love, you can’t lose.

Unfortunately, the mother-in-law is still my ex. However, this still does not diminish the life lessons that I learnt from her, and about choosing the right mentor or role model, someone who has a base of solid characteristics and high values.

Now. I’ll probably never meet Joel Madden. But, if someone had asked me who you would recommend as a role model to follow, because you can witness the love every week, I’d tell everyone to follow Joel.

I know it takes all kinds to make a world, but I can’t help but think the world would be a better place if there were more people like Joel Madden and my ex-mother-in-law.