One of my goals for this year was to embrace myself in all my oddities by stepping into my power to become who I really am. But what does that mean, exactly?
In the book The Magdalen Manuscript it says that "Restoring women to a place of honor in our culture begins with women honoring both themselves and their stories."
In order to reclaim my power I need to honor my story, honor my past and the person I've become as a result. I learned to honor the feminine in me and not see it as a sign of weakness. Honor my gifts, my sexuality, and my body. Everything that society taught us to downplay and be ashamed of.
For thousands of years we've been taught that women are evil, weak, helpless, and less than. We're taught that we're here to support man, to please him, to sit down and shut up & give him children. These are all lies passed down through generations to keep us from our power.
Our bodies are sacred, and we should treat them as such. We cut up and add things to our bodies to make us more appealing to men, then give our power away by sleeping with random dudes who bring us zero pleasure. We settle for the first ok guy that will make a decent husband with a mediocre life because we think aren't worthy of the man of our dreams. We are afraid of our own bodies, our cycles, our ability to heal, love, and bring life into this world. This and so much more is how we give our power away.
Each time a woman steps into her power and a man honors the woman in his life, the pain and lies of the last 2 thousand years gets closer to an end and women get closer to the power we lost along the way.
We must come back to a place of balance between spirit and earth, masculine and feminine. We must find our strength and stop letting anyone else tell us otherwise.
That's what I've been doing, what I'm continuing to do, and what I hope all women will embrace at the right time.
How I transform pain into power
The worst moments of our life are often the most transformational. 💖💕
I recently did a Tony Robbins course and charted out three main breakthrough moments in my life.
A breakthrough is moment in time when everything changes and the impossible becomes possible. It's usually triggered when you reach a threshold of pain where you simply cannot continue as usual and must make a change, both physically & mentally.
What can trigger a breakthrough?
Anything. A conversation, A book, a change in emotion, a belief, a mentor, coach, health issues.
This exercise showed that most of the time breakthroughs come through hardship by turning our greatest pain into our greatest strength.
A couple breakthroughs in my life that I struggled for a long time was eating disorders and relationship to food, fear of what would happen if I talked about my past, living in shame, unhealed trauma, and grief.
What triggered the change in all three of these things was my hair falling out and deciding things had to change. What helped make the needed changes in my life was hiring my own coach, reading a ton of self help, going down a spiritual path, plant medicine, therapy and changing my surroundings.
This journaling exercise made me realize that one of my greatest pains and source of shame (Hair falling out) was also the catalyst to some major growth. I would never had made some of these changes if it wasn't for my hair, and I wouldn't have made the connection if I didn't do this exercise.
Try this on yourself by asking the following questions and name the top three greatest breakthrough moments in your life.
1. What made the change possible?
2. What triggered the change in that moment?
The answers may surprise you!
Time Does Not Heal All Wounds
What doesn't kill you does not make you stronger, it actually makes you sicker, weaker, sadder, and unhealthier.
Based on the Adverse Childhood Experiences test (ACE) The more aces one has, the greater likelihood of auto immune disease. Women alone are 50% more likely than men to experience five or more categories of adverse childhood experiences. We are known as the “walking wounded” of our day because we suffer from so many diseases stemming from childhood trauma.
That’s why I do what I do. I was sick of walking around with inexplicable health issues, sick of feeling like my life was spiraling out of control, and sick of pretending I had it together on the outside when really I suffered from chronic depression and anxiety.
Healing childhood trauma means going back through your childhood, recalling the earliest painful events emblazoned in your brain, explaining the situation as an adult to your child self, and creating a safe space for your wounded child in order to heal the relationship to that trauma, in turn healing yourself.
Trauma is a misunderstanding, plain and simple. Something horrible happened to you, you created a story around that event, blaming yourself for what happened, and taking that story and belief with you throughout your life. This leads to a host of health and mental issues which can be reversed if you stop treating the symptom and go straight to the cause.
If you feel the same things keep popping up time and time again, the same health issues and symptoms are going undiagnosed and you can’t find the root cause, take the ACES quiz, find out your score and let’s talk! (Hint: with just 2 ACES you have a 70% increased risk of MS, type 1 diabetes, Hashimoto's, & an 80% higher risk of lupus, IBS, asthma & eczema.)
Your experiences and story matters!!
Liked or Respected? Can you have both?
I grew up learning to be a people pleaser, punished for using my own voice and questioning cult teachings. So I learned at a young age to keep quiet. Don't rock the boat, stop with the questions, keep quiet if I disagree.
Unfortunately this translated into my adult life. While I'm certainly not a wallflower sitting silently in the corner, I've often found myself silent and not speaking up on extremely controversial issues for fear of going against the majority and being shunned.
I've seen a lot of people these days keeping silent on what's going on simply because they have different views than the majority. On the other hand I've seen a handful of people unafraid to speak their mind & go against the majority to show more than two sides, more than black-and-white, and more than what we're seeing. 😦
I have more respect for those few people than I do for the hundreds of others who aren't saying anything different. It doesn't matter what their beliefs are, they know where they stand and they don't care about the majority. ♥
These people taught me about resilience and toughening up. This doesn't mean hardening my heart, but changing my mindset from appeasing and defending to standing by my convictions and beliefs.
There will forever be a little girl inside of me just wants to be liked and accepted. It may seem easier just being nice, but those days are gone. I learned that I can't always be liked, but I can always be respected. 🌠
So I decided I'd much rather be respected than liked. 💯
Self Deprecation vs. Self Realization
Choosing to plug into my excited Soul versus the fearful Ego
My whole life self deprecation was my comfort zone. I thought it was me being humble, but in reality it was only reinforcing my insecurities and negative thought patterns. ♥
A true healing journey is so much more than just trauma. It’s stepping into our power, learning to love and trust ourselves (perhaps for the first time ever) and become who we really are, unapologetically. It’s listening to our soul vs ego and choosing love over fear.
Joseph Campbell says the hero's journey is a "transformation of consciousness." Where we have been thinking one way our whole lives and now we must think another.
These days I’m learning to think a different way about myself. I’m a businesswoman, a business owner, an experienced trauma recovery coach, and I’m amazing at it. I’m on a deeply spiritual path and I’m able to connect with my guides in various ways. I’m reclaiming my power as a woman and I’m choosing to take pride in each tiny success and progress I’ve made.
If this resonates and you’ve been doing something similar, start noticing the ways you’re holding yourself back with thoughts and conversations. Whatever you focus on, grows. So chose what empowers and excites you, not what holds you back.
If you're looking to get rid of those negative beliefs and self deprecating habits, I want to hear from you! Send me a DM or email me at hello@serenakelley.com. 💙
"I choose to plug into my excited Soul versus my fearful Ego.”
Survival of the Fittest vs. Survival of the Nurtured
“We are not the survival of the fittest, we are the survival of the nurtured. Those who are nurtured best, survive best.” ~Louis Cozolino
Louis Cozolino is an attachment scientist and professor of psychology at Pepperdine University. He says that nurturing is the key to survival, and without it we carry a lack of trust, empathy and compassion into future relationships.
Many of us didn’t grow up in a nurturing environment, and because of that, we have to learn to nurture ourselves. No one is coming to save us, but the good news is that it’s never too late to learn how to nurture and create secure attachments for ourselves.
We can learn to self mother and self soothe by practicing mindfulness and self-compassion, and by doing things that made us feel safe, happy and secure as a child. For me, that’s going out in nature daily. 👍👍
Practicing what makes us feel safe helps change our nervous system from anxious and vigilant (fight or flight) to a calmer, connected state of homeostasis.
You’re never too old to nurture yourself!