You Are A Miracle

Because writing is a challenge lately, here’s a tidbit and one of my photos. I like to create these inspirational graphic photos.

Remembering My Divinity

I want to share the story behind these words, but the words aren’t flowing well lately. One of the effects of my Kundalini awakening experience has very literally been brain rewiring, creating all sorts of challenges in my everyday life. I’ll expand on this when I can.

But for now, enjoy my photo of the Atlantic Ocean.

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Transitions, Changes, and The Unknown

Life loves to throw us crashing into the dark once in a while. Tides come in and then go out. Good times roll up to our front door and then go washing out the back. Their arrival brings joy and happiness, only to eventually fade and pass. Hard times too. We hate to see them come, and breathe sighs of relief when they recede. Life seems to be in constant motion.

And in a way, it is. Constant movement and change happens all around us every day, and we get used to it. We become acclimated and adjust and normalized. I call this being grounded. It’s that feeling of being centered and calm deep inside, when you are firmly anchored. When your vessel isn’t floating free, bobbing helter skelter at the mercy of the wind and sea. Being grounded feels like you are in command and everything is going according to plan. It’s that feeling of calm, deep inside.

Sometimes, things in life change, or we change, and then the dreaded unknown comes visiting. Right up to our door like an uninvited and unwelcome guest. Ugh. I hate that. What to do? I always want to know what to do.

The biggest secret I’ve learned is that the times of transition, when there is so much change going on that I’m sitting in that big black space of WTF, are times to “do” absolutely nothing. When I try to change something and every effort of trying ends up making things worse, it’s time to sit down and wait. And breathe.

Staring straight into the mouth of the unknown can be terrifying; and yet it can also be exhilarating. It’s that wonderfully, terrifyingly, exciting time of not knowing if our next step will be our last, or will be the first step towards wonder and amazement. Will we cross the ocean only to fall off the edge of the earth? Or will we discover new land?

There are times, when visiting the land of unknown becomes a bit too scary, and the best thing we can do for ourselves is stop and breathe. I also advocate having a good cry if it comes up. It helps me wade through the muck all that much faster.

As the voyage of my life presented times of change and transition, I’ve seemed to weather many of them well, knowing that they were stepping-stones in my life. But there were definitely times that I lost faith in the journey and became terrified of monsters below the sea. Expecting them to rise up and capsize my ship at any moment.

Not only was I terrified of monsters, but winds of change picked up and whipped the seas into a frenzy I thought might never calm. Fortunately, time has shown me that eventually, the winds die down, seas calm, and I find port and securely anchor again.

My most terrifying and most rewarding journey has always revolved around raising my son. From the day he very suddenly and unexpectedly entered the world, it’s been a series of ups and downs. When he had difficulty with what felt like every transition in life, as a very little guy, the amount of discomfort he experienced really rang my bell. There was nothing harder for me than seeing my son struggle and suffer every single day,  and often multiple times a day, for years.

Trying to fix things that often couldn’t be fixed, wore me out.

Trying to control him taught me quickly that I really can’t control another person.

And pushing him too hard, ended up with him crashing on the rocks.

There were times that as much as I might have wanted to make progress forward, maintaining bare steerage, navigating each wave as it came, and actually losing ground, was the most prudent course of action to keep the ship upright.

And then there have been the moments when weeks, months, or years of consistent effort paid off. The day I dropped him off to preschool, and he didn’t cry and cling to me, was about seven months into the school year. He finally tied his shoes when he was eleven. And just the other day, he talked himself down from a panic attack. HUGE!!

I was thinking about why it’s harder to see my child struggle than it is for me to deal with my own hardship, and it finally hit me. As much as I know that he has his own journey in life, and he’ll have his own adventures and storms to weather, a big part of me didn’t trust that he’d come out the other side without a severely damaged hull and rigging.

These days, we are going through the teenage years.

It’s my child who is changing and venturing out into a new and different phase of life, and as much as I want to impart all of my life wisdom into him as quickly as I can, I must wait until his ears are open to hearing it.

Because it’s such a huge time of self discovery for Little Man, my job as mom is taking a back seat, morphing into teacher and mentor. It’s time for me to turn the helm of my son’s life gradually over to him, and be ok with watching his journey unfold.

It’s so easy to write those words on paper (or screen, as the case may be), and yet, when it’s 1 am and my son’s brain is bound up with anxiety and panic over something in the future that isn’t even going to come to pass, not allowing his body to sleep, I try to fix him. I try to make it better. Those are the times when it’s beyond hard to let things go. The times when I can’t see how he’s going to make it from what I see in the moment, to the amazing future I know he’s going to have.

Facing the unknown can be as hard as looking at the biggest and baddest sea monster of all, who is circling the boat, and you’re sure it’s ready to move in for the kill. Having faith that by the last possible second, the monster will be taken out by a harpoon you didn’t even see coming, can be a tall order.

Believing that things will always work out for the best can be a stretch. But looking for the silver lining in the clouds is something I’m getting good at. And the more I look for the silver and glean gold from our voyages, the richer we both become.

I don’t know what sorts of weather my son will have to handle during his own journey, navigating from port to port, but he’s building skills to navigate whatever comes up. And with an astute lookout on the bow, angels on both beams and winds to push him ever forward, he’ll make it through, one voyage at a time. And so will I.

My Love For The Sea

I feel like I’ve had a love affair with the ocean for lifetimes. And I probably have. The more I learn about life and about my life, the more I understand my love for the sea.

As a child, my family packed our bags and spent every August in a little summer cottage by the sea on the coast of Maine. I spent my younger days there playing by the water, running around on the rocks and seaweed, and having adventures. Life for me there was relaxed.

There was no school stuff to deal with, and my parents let us run around, calling us home for meals by ringing a big, hand-held bell. In fact, the most challenging days were the rainy ones, when we were tired of being soggy wet and came indoors, looking for something to do. Puzzles were my go-to on a rainy day.

When I was by the sea, I could run free, without the threat of my mother attacking me. It was a safe place for me. Because we were on vacation, my father was around full-time, and his constant presence meant a reprieve for me from being the object of my mother’s venom.

Dad would take us out on the sea in boats, and shared his love of boats and the sea with us. He was my first navigation instructor, showing me how to set and follow a compass course, and how to read a nautical chart. He taught me about balancing the load in a boat, telling us to “trim ship!” when the boat was tipping over to one side. And he was the first one to teach me how to fish.

Some of our grand boating adventures included visiting local islands for picnics. And there were the trips into the harbor where we kids would buy penny candy. I can still remember loading all five of us into a skiff that couldn’t have been more than ten feet long, with a two or three horse outboard motor on the back, puttering all the way into the harbor and back.

Left to our own devices, we kids would wade into the water’s edge or explore the tide pools. We’d swim off a nearby dock, or inflate rafts and float around. More fun times were had simply messing around in rowboats. So many adventures. And even a few ending up with a boat being swamped. The nice thing about a wooden rowboat is, even when it’s full of water, it doesn’t sink.

When we were old enough (8) we entered the island’s little sailing program, which remains active today. We learned our eight basic knots, and learned how to sail, memorizing a few key nautical rules of the road. I learned what the wind and current does to a boat, and how to navigate in and out of our little harbor. I also learned race strategy and about being a good sport, even when I didn’t want to be one.

As I grew up, my summer time by the sea changed from being a time of mostly play and freedom, to dipping my toe in the workforce as a teen. I spent one entire summer living there, working in the big local harbor as a motel maid and also scooping ice cream at a parlor that catered to mostly tourists. I loved my motel job making up the rooms, because the rooms were on a pier over the water of the beautiful and bustling harbor, and I got to do my work on my own. No one looking over my shoulder telling me what to do. The ice cream job wasn’t too bad, but after a while, the insincerity and BS of my boss helped make it easy to leave that job, freeing up some time to relax before school started up again.

College took me inland for four years, and after graduating and fumbling around for a while, having a job just to have something to do and earn some money, the sea called to my heart once again.

I listened to that call, first taking a class that brought me back to the sea, this time living on a schooner and learning about humpback whales. And then finding work on boats, back in the harbor where I’d scooped ice cream and made up beds as a teenager. After a few years of exploring working on smaller boats, I went back to school and ended up working on ships around the world.

I got to sail the Mediterranean Sea twice as a maritime cadet, tying up in several ports to pick up supplies. And a few years later, when I was on the job, one of the ships I joined in Norfolk, Virginia, became my home for nine months, taking me to New England and across the Atlantic to the UK and working on cable that lay on the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. That tour will forever have a special place in my heart, as it’s where I met and fell in love with my husband, going on our first official dates when we docked in Scotland.

Life on board ship took me to ports across the globe, from Oakland and San Diego, to Djibouti in Africa and the Red Sea. I’ll never forget the day we were steaming down the Red Sea, when I saw a large patch of what I assumed to be trash. Smaller ships from second world countries had no qualms about dumping bags of trash overboard. But as I had the helmsman alter course to miss the dark plastic bags, I soon realized they took on triangular shapes. And the closer we got, the clearer the shapes became, until I realized they were triangular dorsal fins. What we saw was a gigantic school of sharks, slowly milling about near the surface. They were all different sizes, the largest being around forty feet.

During my time on ships, I sailed waters from the Persian Gulf, to the Arabian Sea, out to the Indian Ocean, past Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines across to Guam and the Marianas, and north to Japan, supplying US Navy ships. We picked up supplies in several ports, and as much as I enjoyed getting out and doing some shopping and grabbing a meal, I loved my time out at sea. The night sky crossing the Indian Ocean was so dark, I could see stars all the way down to the horizon. It was amazing! And when we hit patches of bioluminescence, the ship’s wake lit up with the most beautiful glow.

One of my last ship’s tours took me from San Diego, working off the Pacific Coast, dipping down to Mazatlan for an R&R port call, and eventually up to the port of Seattle, WA. Synchronistically, the Puget Sound area has become my home for the past 18 years.

Even after leaving life aboard ship, I worked part-time on deck of a small local ferry until I was so pregnant that I could barely fit between the cars I was parking, and I couldn’t handle the long shifts.

Being out on the water, seeing the horizon, has always been mesmerizing to me. I could stare at it for hours. Where the sea meets the sky. And as a merchant mariner, I actually got paid to stare at the horizon every day.

One of my favorite things about being on the water has always been navigating. Getting from here to there. Learning how to set and follow a course and actually end up where you want to end up. And one of the coolest memories of all was during a voyage from Guam to the Persian Gulf. Getting the navigation plan ready on short notice wasn’t so fun, but putting in lots of overtime over the course of a few weeks got the job done.

I worked my regular eight-hour shift (we were tied up in port) plus an additional four hours every day to get all the charts hand corrected and ready for the trip. There were many charts to go through and make sure all of the information on them was correct and up to date; and there had been some recent major changes in the Straits of Malacca that affected several charts. Basically, I had to plot out and draw new “roads” (traffic separation schemes) where ships could go within the strait. Lots of picky measuring, drawing, and coloring in (thank goodness for grade school skills!).

Once all the charts were accurate and up to date, I had to pick waypoints and draw track lines that would become our course, being mindful of things like rocks, islands, rules of who owned what waters, and where we could legally and safely transit. Based on when we were expected to be at the port of Jebel Ali, UAE, and based on the speed my captain wanted us to travel, I calculated the date and time we needed to leave Guam. Yup. I calculated how many days, hours, and minutes it would take to make the voyage.

Our longest transit without seeing any land had us looking at nothing but horizon for just under a week, as we exited the Strait of Malacca and headed into the Indian Ocean. One of the waypoints I used to navigate was thirty-five miles off the southern tip of India (as specified by the captain), and as we approached the pencil dot I’d written on the paper chart, off India, I switched the range of my radar from twelve miles, out to twenty-four miles, and then to forty-eight. There is was: an echo off land. Just exactly where and when it was supposed to be, thirty-five miles away. As much as I completely trusted our GPS navigation system, there is nothing like the confirmation of having land show up just when and where you expect, especially after days of seeing nothing but water.

If I’d had someone on my ship that didn’t know about celestial navigation or global positioning system (GPS) navigation, they would think it an incredible miracle to be able to sail around the world with such amazing precision and accuracy. And as much as I understand and trust navigation technology, there is still a sense of awe that comes over me every time I see it work.

I’ve been very fortunate to have earned a living doing something I loved, and I will always cherish memories of looking out from the bridge, scanning the horizon, and watching the sea swell and jump with the wind. And to be able to put my passion for navigation into action as a ship’s officer and the ship’s navigator is an experience no one will ever be able to take away from me.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned on the sea is that it’s ever-changing. And if you are prepared for all types of weather, take care of your vessel, and know how to navigate storms, you’ll do just fine. As for navigation, the more I know and trust my navigation tools, the easier it becomes. For me, as much as navigation is about getting from here to there, it’s also very much about the journey between waypoints. Fair winds and following seas.

 

War Torn

On this Memorial Day, here in the US, I am always torn between honoring our veterans and detesting war and all it does to our soldiers. I have this thing of seeing situations from at least two angles at the same time.

At my heart, I define war as what happens when people give up on peaceful communication. It’s what we do when we’ve tried to resolve things using diplomacy and economic sanctions, and nothing is working. The larger part of my heart defines war as a failure in some way. It needlessly kills people; both civilian and military. People die.

The cynical part of me sees war as a big machine that keeps rolling along because people get rich off of it. If there were no profit in war, it wouldn’t happen. We go to war in the Middle East because there is oil there. Despite atrocious human rights violations and genocide in other areas of the planet, because there is no economic profit, we leave those areas alone.

When I think back to our more recent World Wars, I realize that we had to go to war to prevent a massive imbalance of power on the planet. An entire planet ruled by one giant dictatorship wouldn’t work. Past experience has shown that as much as the idea of a benevolent leader who takes care of their followers sounds nice on paper, the reality hasn’t matched up. And even though our political system of Democracy in action is far from perfect, the principles upon which it was founded are good ones.

I also like the principles of Communism, although the reality of it is a bit too far from its principles.

As a mother, I see the huge power all mothers have in shaping the future of our country. Raising the consciousness of our children has always been parent’s job first because children’s world views are shaped by what happens at home. The more we raise our children to understand people’s feelings and emotions, teach them how to work with people, how to communicate, and how to negotiate, the less our children will need to resort to using war to solve world problems.

And when we learn as a community, as a country, as a planet, that war begins in our hearts far before it rolls out on any battlefield, we will become more mindful of how we raise our children and how to heal broken hearts and minds.

On today, this Memorial Day, I honor those warriors whose death was purposeful, and my prayers are that we learn to heal our hearts so war won’t need to happen in the first place.

 

Coming Out The Other Side

How do I write about something I barely understand?

How can I describe an experience I’ve been going through that my culture neither understands, nor accepts as real and valid? And when faced with it, often confuses it for mental illness?

If you have ever had a near death experience, you might begin to understand what my last few months have been like; but then again, probably not.

Our culture is so completely unaware of ourselves as spiritual beings that having an extreme spiritual experience can be very isolating. How do I talk about having a complete Kundalini Awakening when our society doesn’t understand what Kundalini energy is and what it does in a body and mind? The closest understanding Christians have to it is the crucifixion and resurrection process. But Christians aren’t taught that it’s a process that people still experience today – we are taught it was a single event that happened to one person in history.

How do I talk about what people call a dark night of the soul, when the closest language we have for it is hell?

How do I relate to the world and to myself when I’ve changed so much in a few short months that I barely know who I am anymore?

People on a path of spiritual perfection or of healing are always people who feel lost or not whole in some way. They are always people who feel like they are missing something in their lives, or who are in a lot of pain. It is a helpful path for many. And the irony is, for me, I’ve only ever wanted to feel better. I have never sought out the “spiritual” path, and yet, here I sit, coming out the other side of an experience that many purposely seek out and dream of having. They seek it because they believe that if they do this thing or do that thing, it will make all of their dreams come true, bring them salvation, stop their pain, make them feel whole, whatever.

So much of my human created pain has been healed that the extreme unfamiliarity of myself is challenging on some days.

I guess the extreme change I’m dealing with is not unlike when someone has a major change happen in their life that they didn’t expect: being handed a cancer diagnosis, having your child or spouse die, losing your job, your home, or your relationship. When these things happen, life as you have known it is over. Done. Ended. Gone forever. You have to become used to a new normal. Sink or swim.

There is a grief process, a time of letting go of the old and allowing the new. A time of welcoming everything and anything that comes along with as open arms as possible. In spiritual terms, letting go of what no longer serves me, what no longer works for me, and embracing every moment as it is, without judging it, without worry about the future or regretting the past.

The more I can remind myself that the only moment in time that is real is right now, that the only moment I have to deal with is right now, the easier life is to handle.

Very long story short, because my life has taken an extreme turn, this blog will include bits and pieces of the gold as I glean it.

But in the meanwhile, I’m still a wife and mother, dealing with the very real life of managing a household, raising a child, and being a loving and devoted wife. Many people who go through extreme life changes, leave marriages, move into new homes, and have to adjust to life without a loved one being in it.

In my case, the extreme changes are allowing me to interact more fully within my own existing life. Because I have been cracked open wide and can more fully allow love to flow through me, I not only feel tons more love for myself, but for everyone and everything in my life. It is an amazing and very good thing.

And as with all extreme change, the process to get to where I’m getting has been a real mix of pure unmitigated hell, and amazing grace and love. If you’re familiar with the Beaufort scale of sea states during different wind forces, I’ve been riding about a 12 on a scale of 10, 12 being hurricane force winds. And more recently, life has calmed down to about a sea state of five to six, with an occasional calm day or two thrown in.

(FYI, I’ve ridden out force 11 storm in the North Atlantic and it more than sucked: the ship suffered damage and we were lucky we didn’t go down. But that’s a story for another day.)

Stay tuned for more of my love of snapping photos, and some practical and inspirational words of life wisdom, while I continue to chop wood and carry water. Life is real, y’all.

 

To Witness

When a person acts as a witness for another, the act itself can help create change that the witness might never even be aware of. They can provide that momentary opening that might change the entire course of a person’s life for the better. Providing that safe place for a person to feel seen, known, and appreciated, with no judgment, is one of the biggest powers we have.

Remembering My Divinity

I’m finally wrapping my brain around an amazing concept called “to witness”. It’s a verb that unlike many verbs, is an action word and is a word of no physical action at the same time. And yet it holds the most powerful action that exists. The ultimate act of witnessing a person involves completely and wholly accepting them, unconditionally. No judgment. No strings attached. And the person who is witnessed feels completely seen and known, completely understood and recognized. They feel they are known at the very deepest level of their core being, and completely accepted for who they are, exactly as they are.

In the moment of being witnessed, a person only knows themselves as perfect. Anything and everything that is not perfect, has instant permission to leave. And the one doing the witnessing only feels, knows, and projects complete love. Love as absolute acceptance.

In our very human world, it can be a challenge to…

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Life, Perspective, and Healing

Just to let you all know, about six weeks ago, I had a healing session that ended up shifting my entire perspective of life. Everything. And the weird thing is, because I can see things from a higher perspective now, I can see common threads between things more easily, and am healing pains from my life at a higher level, which then trickles down. Essentially, I’m creating change for myself exponentially faster than I’ve been doing for the past four years.

At times, it feels like I’m on a bit of a carnival ride. But because my work in this area has been very purposeful and has progressed very organically, I’m hanging in there. The interesting thing is, because I now have the capability to heal things for myself, without needing to use hypnosis, all sorts of things are bubbling up, asking to be healed. It feels like this process is increasing with speed and efficiency, spiraling up and up, faster and faster.

I feel like the process that’s happening is trying to reach a crescendo, opening up to yet another level. But right now I can’t write much about it because I’m smack dab in the middle of it. After it’s rolled out a bit more and life settles down in that arena, I’ll write more.

Something I’ve wanted to speak about in a language that everyone can understand is just what healing means. What it is. With a new perspective on life, it occurred to me that speaking about life and healing in terms of perspective is something everyone can wrap their mind around.

First of all, most people don’t realize, but everyone sees the world just a bit differently from the next. Yes, the same physical objects might be in front of a bunch of people, but which object a person looks at, and what about that object a person pays attention to, is highly individual. And what colors how we see everything in life? Our life experiences, interests, and the subconscious beliefs we create about ourselves and our lives.

Every single person on this planet has their own perspective of life. And how we see ourselves and our life, often differs widely from someone else. Siblings can grow up in the same household and have completely different perceptions of life growing up together.

Healing something is merely making a change in how we see things in life. It’s a shift of perspective. That’s it. Other shifts of perspective happen when we have an aha moment, or when you’ve been struggling to make sense of something, and it finally becomes clear.

The difference with healing, is that changes in perspective are purposefully sought out. They are purposefully created. With healing, people strive to find a different perspective of things that help them feel better in life; to let go of pains and allow more love into their hearts.

And healers have a way of looking at life that gives them powerful tools to help people create change in their lives. Here’s an example of how healing works compared with something like counseling (which is very helpful as well).

A few years ago, when my son was in elementary school, he struggled to do homework after school most days. By the time he got home, he was fried. His brain was cooked. But he had reading requirements every day, and worksheets to finish. We’d sit at the dining room table and I’d try to get him to do his work. Inevitably, most days he’d freeze up and couldn’t do anything.

Because I knew he knew how to do the work, and I didn’t understand what was going on with him, I’d get frustrated. The more frustrated I got, the more locked up tight he got. I’d try so hard to not get all worked up, but my thoughts always ran to all sorts of ugly scenarios of him growing up and not being able to do work or get a job. More than once, I got so wound up that I had to give myself a time-out. That’s the point when many people blow up at their kid’s inability to perform.

Looking at a scene like this from a counselor’s point of view, they would work with a person to help them learn coping skills, like taking a time out before going rogue on your kid. They might have asked me to look further into my feelings to see what feelings beneath the overt and obvious ones, were acting up. Recognizing that when we are triggered into anger is because of feelings we hold deep down, if we can uncover them, we can shift our perspective from: my kid is stressing me out, to: my kid’s difficulty is reminding me of difficulty I have doing work under pressure at my job. It’s not really about my kid. It’s about me. When you change how you see things, it can ease your burden, and help you recognize that your child is merely a trigger for your feelings.

The difference with using a healer is, they usually use intuitive skills in some way. They can help a person see further into an issue, to look deeper into what’s going on. My modality of choice has been hypnosis, because it allows me to be able to do the seeing, giving me all the power in creating change for myself. It very directly affects my own heart, allowing me to open it up. My hypnotherapist guides me along, but I do all of the looking.

In the relaxed and focused hypnotic state, when I looked into what was going on between my son and I during those really stressful moments at the dining room table, I was able to notice feelings going on that I couldn’t even feel when my mind was fully conscious. I had blocked out half of my feelings. What bubbled up were a few statements: “What’s wrong with you? Are you defective or something?” I was directing that statement towards my kid in my mind. And as I was guided to go back in time to the very first time that thought came to me, I was able to see a scene between my mother and I when I was very young. She was saying those same words to me. And a moment later, intuitive knowledge hit me that I actually picked up these thought from my mother. She was actually thinking them about herself. She thought there was something wrong with her, and that she was defective.

In that moment, my perception of my feelings went from thinking my son was defective, to thinking I was defective, to knowing that my mother had felt that she was defective and I picked up her thoughts, owning them as my own (kids do this). Because I’d uncovered a deeply held subconscious belief about myself, and was able to find a new perspective that was different and worked for me, that little girl in me was instantly able to let go of the belief that she was defective. Instantly, a shift in perception was created that would ripple out into my life, affecting more than just homework time at the table.

When we grow up, we form beliefs about ourselves all the time. Most of this belief creation is done by the time we are about six years old. It correlates to brain development. When life activates a belief, it becomes further entrenched into our psyches, becoming deeply buried in our subconscious mind.

Anytime something in my life would activate this old belief, a part of me would act up and I would feel “stressed”. This is what stress is. Old shitty beliefs we carry about ourselves that aren’t true. But because we’re not aware of them, they mess with us six ways to Sunday. Creating a shift in perspective that addressed a subconscious belief I held about myself, created powerful change throughout my life.

The next time the exact same scenario came up with my son and his homework, as he melted down and his brain froze up, instead of frustration and anger rising up in me, I literally felt a hole of nothingness. Empty. It was so odd that I burst out laughing; which caused my son to look questioningly at me and then join me in laughter.

Creating a change in how we see things can help us feel better every day. And if you want to get down to the root of things, finding ways to look intuitively can take you quite literally to the root of how an issue first began. Put a change of perspective on it and it can change your life in wonderful ways.

 

Love and Acceptance

An offering of perspectives.

Remembering My Divinity

How much easier is it to accept or love another person
when you remember they are part of the human race?

How much easier is it to accept or love someone
once you get to know them and like them?

How much easier is it to love and accept someone
that you feel a special spark and kindred spirit relationship toward?

How much easier is it to love and accept someone
when they are your child?

What’s holding you back from loving yourself in the very same way?

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Attraction, Trust, Love

What attracts you? What gets your heart beating a little bit faster? What gets you excited? I have an interesting theory on this. And yes, if your mind just went down the gutter, my theory works there as well as high up in the clouds.

Something that gets me really excited lately, is connection. A love connection.

Have you ever noticed how sexy someone is when they exude confidence? That’s one of the most sexy things I know. Pure, unadulterated confidence. I want a piece of that!

But what is it about confidence that is so attractive? What is it about confidence that we are drawn to, that we recognize, that we want more of?

We see confidence when someone knows and trusts. They’ve done their job for so many years that they know how to handle anything that could come up. They’ve worked all the angles and are on top of them all. When something unexpected comes up, they know who to call to handle the situation. They know how to put out any fires. They have no fear.

Ah! They have no fear. How do they do that? I want that.

They trust.

They trust the skills and knowledge they’ve earned over years on the job. They trust that they can handle whatever is thrown their way.

But why is trust so attractive? Why are we drawn to a person who trusts in themselves? Because trust is evidence of connection. Trust is evidence that they are connected to a part of themselves that knows things. It’s like a billboard with spotlights beaming on it, reminding you that there is a part of you that knows stuff.

We’re attracted to people who know things, because when you know something, your level of trusting it is exponentially more than when you believe it or when you kind of, sort of know it. When you trust something explicitly, there is no room for fear or doubt.

That is sexy as hell.

So how do you build trust? Through experiences. You build trust in relationships over time because you have experiences with people. After a bunch of experiences, you learn who you can rely on. You know who is likely to flake out at the last-minute. You know who will tell you the truth, no matter how much it hurts, and you know who will lie to your face without batting an eye.

How do you build trust in yourself? By connecting to yourself. By taking a few moments and being quiet, and listening to your heart. If you don’t trust how to hear it, just feel it. Feelings don’t lie.

You build trust in yourself through heart to heart connection. Talk with your heart. Listen to it. I assure you, it has plenty to say. Feel it. If it’s been hurt deeply or many times, it might need a bit of coaxing to open up to you. Apologize to it when you need, and utterly love it when you can. Loving it will help it open up more.

This can be tricky in the beginning, especially if you don’t trust yourself very much. Begin by offering up trust. Just put it out there that you trust what you are feeling and hearing. If you let yourself down, a heart-felt apology can actually help you move on to be able to trust yourself again. The more you trust your heart, the more you can trust yourself. Your connection to yourself is through your heart.

By trusting yourself, you actually build more trust.

So with all of this talk about trust, where does knowledge come into play? You can trust yourself on many different levels. You can trust your body to do things for you because you know it. You experience it every day. And because you experience it, you know it.

You can trust that a round wheel will roll across the ground because you’ve seen it and experienced it in a hundred different ways. You know things about a wheel.

The common denominator between trust and knowledge is experience.

But what sort of trust is so sexy that it gets me all hot and bothered just thinking about it? The ultimate trust in ourselves. Trusting our intuition. Trusting that direct pipeline to knowing. Trust in that connection to all information. Now that floats my boat, rocks my world, rings my bell. That level of trust. That level of connection.

How do you know when you’re connected? By how you feel. How does it feel to be connected to yourself, to be connected to your intuition? Awesome! It feels like being in the flow, like knowing everything’s going to be ok no matter what’s going on around you. It feels like compassion. It feels like happiness. It feels like the moment you need something, it drops into your lap. And the stronger the connection, the greater the trust. And the greater the trust, the stronger the connection, until you’re spiraling up so hard and fast that it becomes positively orgasmic. Yup. The secret’s out.

Connecting to yourself at the level of your intuition feels like love. You are actually connecting with your Soul. And the deeper and more trusting the connection is, the more intense the feeling of love you can experience. Feeling the feeling of love is evidence that you are connecting to your Soul.

That’s what it is. That’s where love comes from. When you feel love you are actually connecting back into yourself.

We all want more of that!

 

 

The Gift Of A Strong-Willed Child

If you’re reading this, it’s likely that you have a strong-willed child, or maybe teach one. Or you might be an aunt or uncle of one, or just know one. I want to let you in on a really big secret: they are here for your benefit.

I know, you’re thinking I’m nuts, I’m crazy. What am I talking about? How in the world could a child that pushes my buttons all day long, driving me berserk, even in a million years be beneficial for me? What the heck? WTF?

All right. I’ll spill it. They are here to show you where you don’t love yourself. They are here to show you all of the places and ways that you are rejecting love from coming to yourself.

By now you’re thinking that I’ve really gone off the deep end. Hang on. I’ll connect the dots that you can’t quite see yet. They’re there, I promise you. But they’re just invisible to you right now. Let’s see if I can help light them up for you, one by one.

When we have parts of us that reject love, they hurt. They live deep within us, often silent, until something causes them to cry out. Those parts of us are parts that became separated from us when we were young. They are pieces of us that got lost or went missing. They became disconnected from us and are sitting, waiting for us to notice them.

They are waiting for us to call them home. To once again reconnect with them. To open our hearts once again to them and accept them back in.

They are waiting for us to go back and love on them with such fierce and unconditionally accepting love that they have no choice but to melt back into our arms and into our hearts. They are waiting for us to remember and reconnect to that part of ourselves that is nothing but love, so all of those hurts, pains, stings and burns can dissolve back into love.

How do we recognize these lost little parts of us? What do they look and sound like? What do they feel like? They feel hurt, disregarded, disrespected, like they’ve been ditched. They feel sad and angry. They feel like fear. And sometimes they feel like fear masquerading as evil.

They sound like thoughts in our head. Thoughts of being bad, of getting caught and getting in trouble. Thoughts of being stupid, and being too fat or too skinny, or being defective. They scream out that they just want to be left alone, to do what they want to do, not what someone else wants them to do. These lost parts have a thousand voices of pain, crying out to be loved.

So how is it that we lost bits and pieces of ourselves? How can this even happen? It happens when our young hearts are broken. They lose faith. They lose trust. And they get stuck and lost without our love.

They tuck themselves into little balls of hopelessness, fear, and distrust, stuck in time and yet still connected to a part of us, just no longer with us in our hearts. They’re connected to us such that we feel them in our children’s pain and difficulties. As our children struggle, push against us and cry out, our lost bits and pieces cry out too.

Our lost little ones see themselves in our children’s feelings, rising up in triggered pain. The lost and separated parts of ourselves resonate with our children. They ring out with our children’s frustration, and with our children’s sadness, with our children’s anger and inability to cope with life. They ring out when our children believe they are stupid, lazy, or ugly. They recognize that feeling and call out, “Yes! That’s me! That’s what I feel like! I’m still here, feeling like crap! And I’ll continue to stay here for as long as it takes.”

We become triggered by our strong-willed children in a thousand ways. And every time it happens it’s because part of ourselves is crying out. It’s calling, begging, screaming out to be heard. To be loved. To be remembered. To be accepted.

When we are triggered by our challenging children, it can feel like a red-hot poker to the eye. But see it more as a neon red arrow pointing directly at the child in you that is screaming out to be accepted.

Awareness is the first step to being able to love them back into your heart.

The next time your strong-willed, high-spirited, or challenging child triggers something in you, take a moment to accept and love that piece of you that is still in pain. It will help you to be more loving towards your child when you know what’s really going on.