A message to myself, passed to you.
These were words to myself for my own healing, which have since helped countless others in their healing journey. I share them with you now.
You're not broken, you’re blocked. Throughout your journey you’ve run into obstacle after obstacle blocking your path, until they prevented you from going further.
This may seem like the end of the road, but it’s not, you just haven’t seen all your options. That’s because obstacles are detours in the right direction. When a door closes, there is always a window. Doors lead to the ground. Windows lead to the sky, and the sky has endless possibilities.
Right now you’re looking around you, trying to see what other doors and passageways are open. But you’re not looking up, at the windows. That’s your way out.
You carry pain, which you’ve accepted as a part of life. But pain is not just a part of life, it’s LIVING. You have lived. You’ve known grace, sorrow, loss, love, joy, pain, and so much more. Pain is a blessing, because it means you're alive. If you don’t feel pain, you aren’t living. You aren’t alive.
But pain is exhausting when you can't let it go. You struggle to carry it, dragging it with you in life. What you don’t know is how to transmute that pain into power, purpose, & pleasure. When you do that, you’ll be unstoppable. You’ll feel alive for the very first time.
You may not feel alive now from the weight you carry, but you can let that go. I know because I did. I embraced the pain & allowed it to transform me. It made me stronger, more capable, kind, loving, and caring for myself & those along my path. But most of all, I learned to honor myself, first and foremost.
Perhaps our paths will cross one day, or perhaps you were meant to read this now to help you feel supported, strong, loved, & empowered. Perhaps you were meant to see what being alive, thriving, and healed really is. My scars are always there, but the wound has healed.
Healing allows you to evolve into the person you want to be, someone YOU will be proud of. When that happens you will know, because what’s inside will finally match what everyone already sees on the outside: a healed, whole, complete person. One who’s alive, joyful, peaceful, calm, and free. Free to be you, in any way you please. Free from the constrains of societal pressures and worries of other people’s opinions.
Free to harness the power to heal yourself.
You create the world you live in
Feeling stressed, depressed, angry, anxious, and confused about the state of the world? Read this.
You do not have to subscribe to the fear mongering going on. You do not have to choose a side. You do not have to prove to anyone how woke you are. You do not have to worry about others shaming you when you don't engage. You do not have to believe everything you're hearing or seeing.
Take care of yourself first. Turn off the TV. Get off social media. Go take a bath. Stop getting angry about things you can't control. It's just. Not. Worth it.
What other people think of you is none of your business
FYI, You will never please everyone, so don't even try.
What others think and have to say about you has nothing to do with you. It's about them and what they dislike about themselves.
Here's the key though: if you have a problem liking, accepting, and being content with yourself, there's no way you can give up worrying about others.
As women we are trained from birth to be likable, content, happy, never angry or sad, to stay thin, never age, always be sexy but mysterious, smart but not too smart, funny but not too funny, serious but not too serious, so many things our male counterparts never have to worry about.
We have to relearn that it's not our responsibility to be liked, understood, approved of, or accepted by everyone. If you constantly try to get everyone to like you, there is no way you can act from an authentic place. You will lose yourself in the pursuit of other's approval.
Take the time to work on you. Figure out what you don't like about yourself, and change it. If you can't change it, learn to accept it.
I'm learning to unlearn. To live from an authentic place. This means being sad when you're sad, raging when you're angry, laughing uncontrollably when you're happy.
Repressed trauma turns into sadness. Repressed sadness turns to rage. Repressed rage turns to depression. Repressed depression turns to mental illness. Repressed Mental illness turns into disease. Disease alters your DNA, which then passes on to the next generation.
Life is not all sexy, perfect, happy, and joyful. It's messy, sad, despicable, confusing, and tragic. But it's also beautiful, transformative, and adventurous. Learn to love it and in turn, love yourself. That's the true act of rebellion.
Going through a tough time? Read this
The fastest way out is always through
Full disclosure: I've had a pretty shitty week. A couple things happened in my personal life that left me way more affected than I initially thought. 😒😒
Thankfully, I know enough about trauma and the importance of grief to know it's not only ok but essential that I allow myself to be sad, go through all the emotions and process this loss.
At first I tried to shrug the situation off and pretend like it didn't affect me, but it did. For a moment I stepped into old familiar patterns of thinking "what did I do wrong, how did I not see this coming, etc," until I realized I didn't do anything wrong and nothing was my fault. I could not have changed a single thing. This is life, and life has its ups and downs.
So, I've been hanging at the house, eating all the chocolate and watching all the shows, because I know that the sooner I go through this grief, the sooner I'll be out of it.
It sucks that we always think we need to keep a brave face, stay strong and walk with our head held high. We don't. We need to give ourselves permission to be sad, be angry, cry, hold our head down and do all the things people tell us not to do. This is the only way for us to heal.
Suppressing emotions and not allowing ourselves to feel sad & vulnerable only sets us up for failure, depression and more permanent health and mental issues down the road.
We've got to change the perception of grief in society. Grief is not just about death, but for any loss or unwelcome change in our life. We have to honor it all, and that's what I'm doing.
Remember that the fastest way out is always through.
What are your core values? And are you living from them?
What happens when you stray from integrity, and how to get back to it.
I listened to Marie Forleo’s latest Marie TV with Martha Beck and wow, it was a good one.
This interview aligned exactly with things I’ve been working on myself, specifically regarding integrity and authenticity.
Integrity happens to be one of my words for 2021. The more I talk about my life, experiences, and how it’s made me the person I am today, the more it’s crucial for me to live in my integrity, authenticity, & to follow my heart regardless of what’s happening around me, what others think or what the majority is doing.
For someone that was groomed from childhood to be a people pleaser, forced to act a certain way because of my status in the cult & constantly told “everyone is watching me", each time I acted out or tried to be my own person, I was shamed and told I was bad & wrong. Needless to say, undoing all the brainwashing was hard for me.
Listening to this interview helped me connect things I’ve talked about here recently regarding fear, shame, and depression. Martha Beck says the cure for unhappiness staying within your integrity. That’s it. Separating from that not only affects you emotionally, but physically as well. "Once you leave your truth, your immune system function goes down, your heart rate goes up, adrenaline spikes, and stress hormones increase.
I started asking myself how closely am I adhering to my truth on the deepest level? If I’m staying true to my integrity, I’m happier. If I'm fearful or sad, most likely I’m not in line with my integrity and internal guidance system.
That is SO SIMPLE. When we're living in integrity, we have peace, joy, love, & freedom. It's what we are & what we all yearn for. When we split from one or all 4 of those things, we stay rooted in fear and depression until we return to joy.
Freedom and integrity are my two core values, my guidance systems. If I’m not getting those things, I’m not within my integrity. I’ve veered off course and strayed from my truth.
If you’ve been feeling sad, off kilter or unbalanced, check in with yourself. Ask if you’re walking in the path of your integrity. It’s a hard question, because many of us THINK we’re living in our integrity, when really we’re just doing what we think we should be doing. That’s not our truth. It’s everyone else’s.
It may take awhile to figure this out. But think of two words that represent your deepest core values. Just two. Courage, integrity, faith, family, money, adventure, love, career, whatever. Once you’ve found those two, figure out if you’re living within those values. If not, then you’ve veered off course, and that’s probably what’s making you sad, angry, confrontational, unbalanced. That’s that’s fine. Now you know, and you can change it.
You can change it by finding the pieces of yourself that are stuck in false beliefs. The things we think we should be doing, but really it’s what we think others think we should be doing. Recognize it, let it go, and change directions. Start living closer to your truth, your core values and your integrity. It’s a huge shift, but it’s worth it.
Everything that happens to us is happening for us. Every ache, pain, and depression is a gift, a sign post that is telling you to go a different way. Obstacles are always detours in the right direction, usually telling us that we’ve strayed from our values, and it’s time to get back to who we really are. If something isn’t working for you, don’t try harder, try a different way completely.
No matter how far we’ve strayed, we can always come back to wholeness, to yourself. The moment we decide to trust ourselves and follow our truth, that’s when immediate healing begins. It’s that simple.