I M Perfect lady

Tag: choices

  • Loving For Me.

    "I wonder, Why you stopping talking at Mom for long time?You need be forgive in your past and let go angry for some reason? You never to know if Mom is gone and you might feel guilty for real. I did forgive what my dad did and time to move on. Please do not waste your time for angry or hate on her. Remember, no one is perfect and you need learn a solve problem. It not hard? Right? Today is new day and do not looking a past.  If you keep emotional, that is not good health. I want to see my family be happy and love anyone!"  Jay Huhta writes on facebook last night.  

    A few entries of my sisters line up beneath…directed at him.

    "you are wise 🙂 Remember Jay, everyone thinks differently and all we can do is respect that….You are sweet Jay, I love you….You are all heart, love you."

    Interesting exchange, it is like there are two conversations.

    And my dialogue would make it three…

    The questions and guilt are always directed at me.  Love and kindness to those who forgive and forget.

    She isn't asked a thing.  

    Nothing is expected from her at all, she is granted all things due to her title, "Mom".  

    Our broken relationship is all my problem; I broke the family pattern, I stepped out of the cycle of abuse, and I am wrong.

    Assumptions are made that I am angry and hateful…that unless I am loving towards abusive people I will feel guilty.

    I used to feel that way, I used to be locked into a frozen stance where no matter what, the only emotion I was allowed to use was love and forgiveness; forgiveness in the abusive sense, of forgetting the abusive actions of changing the past and wiping out the bad things.  Returning that person back to nice.

    My actions are seen as negative, for I will not let go of the past.  I will keep the past as it is, pristine in all its glory, changing nothing.

    I will keep a full image of my father and of his wife and of all they have done to me.  The good, the bad and the very ugly. All of it stays in my book, I will rip no pages out.

    It is written down in the truth of the universe, and you simply can't change what has been done.

    It works beautifully for them to not add the negative things, then you get to keep a kind loving mom and dad.

    My refusing to subtract the hurtful behaviors has my view of my parents totally different that of my siblings.

    The label "Mother and Father" has them capitulating…and I refuse.

    I refuse to go along with allowing abuse.  I know they hate to hear that, I know they want me to believe that they too are taking a tough stand against abuse, that they too will be vigilant. 

    What they want is to have both.

    Standing against abuse and have a happy loving family.  

    Impossible.  

    It literally is not possible when the father is a pedophile and the mother blesses his 'sin's of rapes and fondling away.  

    In a family where abuse lives, you can't stand against it, Unless you stand against the abusers.  It is not my choice that the abusers happen to be my father and mother.  It isn't my choice that those who supported them, happen to be my sisters and brothers.  I stand against abuse, no matter who is wearing it.

    What they call love is to capitulate for abuse; to surrender the facts, the truths and keep a happy loving family.  

    And if you don't forgive and forget you will feel guilty.

    I won't.  

    The only guilt I have felt is for all the years I went along with the abusive family, for supporting her and forgiving him. My guilt is for the first 46 years, and my actions to keep silent about abuse.  I have no guilt about my last 7 years.

    No regrets, none. 

    All my behaviors were perfect for me.  Perfect for someone learning to walk away from abuse. In my confused backwards state; all the actions I took were exactly as they should be.  

    My journey away from abuse began in a state that the abuse had put me in.  Mental, upside down and backwards, with defintions of love completely wrong, disassociated from feelings and emotions and a sense of self.

    I did my best in the state I found myself in.

    I am proud of my last 7 years…it is a huge accomplishment of healing from abuse.  While I see this as a positive, my family still back within the 'loving' confines of family see it negatively.

    And they should.

    We haven't seen eye to eye on this for 7 years.

    Our eyes are focusing on two different things.

    Seeing abuse from two drastically different vantage points.  

    One is to see what my parents need, and the other what the abused child needs.

    My vision cleared and I was able to see the child's needs.

    Mine.  Where in the past, I too could only see what was best for my mother, my father and to keep a family together.  And in doing so, I failed to speak up about abuse and abuse ran through our family into the second generation…for 40 years.

    For 40 years I didn't see me.

    Now I do. 

    And I feel no anger or hatetred nor do I feel guilt in seeing me.

    When I see the abuse in me, I can see the abuse in others.

    When I love myself.  I love myself enough to walk away from abuse…even if it is wearing the label dad/mom.

    Love of self and being in that family were impossible to do.

    I feel very blessed and full of grace that I was able to finally see me.

    I found me in a battered and broken state, but have walked myself into a place that is totally loving for me.  

     

     

  • Peace Is.

    What I read about the lower levels, (below 200 in consciousness) caught my attention. 

    "A prime difficulty with thoughts and behaviors associated with the energy fields below 200 is that they cause counterreactions. A familiar law of the observable universe is that force results in equal and opposite counterforce; all attacks, therefore, whether mental or physical result in countreattacks. Malice literally makes you sick; we're always the victims of our own vindictiveness.  Even secret hostile thoughts result in a physiological attack on one's own body." David Hawkins, Power vs Force

     

    As you are caught up in blaming and pointing fingers and attacking others, you are actually loading the gun to come back at you.  

    If it hadn't been for Byron Katie and her brilliant turn around, where I could see that who I was really hollering at was me, I would have kept loading the guns and attacking others.  Instead I got very busy unloading my anger guns.

    I have been very busy learning about the human mind, the psyche, and now the levels of awareness and energy that all contribute to the way a human being is…to say nothing of the treatment and beliefs they were taught as a child.  Incredible that we even have any coherent beings walking this planet.

    And it is my belief, the more we learn about what doesn't work, the more we can learn about what does.  And our exquisite bodies are the key to unlocking all the mysteries.  As Deepak Chopra has stated, "the mind is manifested in the body," and an angry mind creates disease. 

    I have found my ease and peace by learning about how truth or untruth affects my body and how I live my life.  

    I have learned by reading and doing, that what I put out indeed comes right back.  There is no one out there to blame for my life but me.  

    David writes about peace.

    "Peace can't be created this way; peace is the natural state of affairs when what's preventing it is removed.  Relatively few people are genuinely committed to peace as a realistic goal, for in their private lives, most people prefer being "right" at whatever cost to their relationships or themselves.  A self justified positionality is the real enemy of peace.  When solutions are sought on the level of coercion, no peaceful resolutions are possible."

    What I love is that peace is the natural state of affairs, when you remove what is preventing peace…peace is.

    I had no idea that I had such huge mountains of stuff preventing me peace!  When you can get to the place of loving what is, peace is.

     

  • Who are You Bringing to This New Year?

    I made no resolutions for this upcoming year; I promised it nothing, hoped on even less, and expect zero from the year…for I now realize it isn't up to a year, an event, a somebody or something to deliver to me that which I desire…it is up to me.

    Expecting things from a new year is pretty much hopeless, for the year is waiting on you.

    You and only you will make 2012 a year to be remembered.

    However you spent last year, you will spend this year, Unless and Until you change that which you are doing, saying and being.

    Last year for me was one of great learning, yet on the outside the average person wouldn't have been able to see the inner changes that went on inside.

    My letting go on the inside was big.  Letting go of things having to be a certain way or expecting things flowing and following a certain trail…disappeared.  

    I had been slowly loosening my grip on controlling things, and last year I was shown clearly how it isn't up to me. 

    While it is discerning to stand in a place of No Hope, No Expectations, No Control….it is very freeing. It isn't that I am hopeless, but that I am no longer hoping for things to be different than they are, nor are my expectations exceeding that which the Universe delivers.

    I feel that I am closer than ever to being on the thin line of Now…and singing the same words of the Universe; One verse.

    Just as I can't expect my body to lose weight without me participating, I can't expect the New Year to improve without me being an active partner.

    The year is just a pile of days and how we live each day builds up the flavor of the New Year…and really each moment of every day.

    Somehow we overlook this moment in time.

    Yet yesterday was the first day we added to the Pile called New Year, what was it full of???  Today is the second helping we are adding, what are you doing today?

    The year is of your making…this year is one in your life…Your life is being drawn as you walk through your days.  What you do each day is you.  

    Each day you live your authentic truthful self is singing with the Universe…each day you put aside your feelings, and not say what you need to say, is another day given to denial.

    We keep thinking denial is a big thing, but it is actually many little moments that go by where we are not ourselves.

    We keep expecting the year to deliver to us authenticity, realness, truth, and strength, when it is our choice in each moment of each new year, that decides if our year will actually make a new us.

    We somehow see the new year as a clean slate, when actually it is a year of new moments awaiting a new you.  A you that will arrive that will make a new choice.

    The only way you will get a new year, is if the you who arrives at each new day is willing to act and speak differently.  

    The year follows you…not you it.

    We somehow have this all backwards, that you can leap upon the back of a white new year and be totally different, that the year will save you, create a newness that hasn't been part of you prior.

    When in fact, just as we wake up to each day and greet each moment of time, we too step into the new year.

    It isn't about the year….it is about the You in the year.

    You bring all of you to this new year.  All your actions of past sit with you as you sit staring at the new year.

    Who did you bring to this new year?

    What does she look like and act like?

    Is she someone you would want as a friend and trust as a partner?  

    We keep looking for the year to change us into someone we may like or even love better, when the year has zero power.

    Each of us brings to the year a self…and each of us is the designer and creator of that self.

    A successful year to me is one that has required more and more of me and challenged me to be more of myself, not less.  It has shown me places where I didn't arrive, where I denied myself and ducked in order to be 'liked/approved of/or loved.

    What I bring to this year, is a me that wants to uncover more aspects of me that are not authentic. I want to live at peace with who I am and love being me…and finding joy along the way.  

    Who are you bringing to this New Year?  

     

     

     

  • Bring to Christmas

    Just being me on Christmas is a huge peaceful relief…no stress is lurking, (now that the mail volume will begin to decrease) and I didn't string up any expectations or false ideals of anyone.

    In the past, I would plunge down deep after Christmas, but it was due to all the expectations and hopes I put into Christmas…and their failure would leave me empty hollow and down.

    It is insane how the mind can expect the undeliverable and believe it.  How I would believe that the Christmas season could change people, and like magic they would realize or see things that hadn't before…

    When in fact, it seems that what is off is really off on Christmas…instead of healing things, it magnifies them.

    And the opposite is true too.  When you are filled with love and peace about yourself and your life, Christmas arrives and there is nothing to want.  For you already want what you have.

    I feel such great emptiness of hopes…I am not standing on a mountain, that I will have to fall from tomorrow and for weeks afterward.  Instead I come to Christmas needing nothing from anyone…it was never about the gifts, but rather the Feelings I wanted from them.

    I wanted them to feel this or that way towards me….

    I wanted to feel this or that way towards them.  No matter who they or them was.  I always arrived with false expectations and in the state of need.

    When I arrive at Christmas empty of expectations and hope, I can sit in peace and let it all be.  

    Loving me and accepting me is the greatest thing I can bring to Christmas; if I am Merry with me, Christmas doesn't have to make me Merry.

    Just as Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor says, "each of us are responsible for the energy we bring into the room," it is up to us to bring Merry to Christmas.

    I love that I have a Merry me to bring to Christmas….

  • Dream it differently.

    It seems like life can be broken down into two categories; those who are dream weavers about reality and those who walk right down the middle of reality.  

    I have lived both ways…and know that the dream weavers are not aware that they are not in reality or that their dream isn't real.  They have been sucked into the dream from the time they were very little and all their love and security lies within the dream…and reality is harsh and bitter, cold and uncomfortable, if leaves no room for dreams.

    Did you know that only those of us who have been abused or NOT allowed to live naturally and organically as a Spiritual Being on a human journey, build dreams. 

    Only those of us with a harsh reality build a dream above it.

    We live there NOT because we are dreamers, but because it hurts too much to live in reality.  The deeper the dream…the harsher reality.

    As a child it would have been too painful to know that my father hurt me and my mother didn't care.  I had to paint a better picture, and I did….and then I got so lost from reality, that I lived the picture instead.

    It isn't a Conscious thought, it is the natural survival mechanism…to go into your mind to escape reality.  

    I lived there for 46 years in a picture about reality and then one day a little girl spoke my truth and I heard it.  

    I heard that voice say what I recognized and it didn't match the picture I had in my mind, but it matched the feelings in my body.

    I was then catapulted out of the picture and was immediately immersed in a life that was full of strangeness and horror, but it felt completely right.

    There is no point in arguing with folks who are living their lives in the dream state, who find it too painful to step into reality…you literally can't reach them.  

    They don't want us to be part of the dream. And in fact we will awaken them to the dream they are living.  I believe their minds are quick to shut us down and toss us out, the quicker the better, for you are ruining their dreams.

    It was extremely painful and exhilarating to awaken from the dream I had created, and be doused with reality's icy cold awareness, but it clearly saved my soul.

    I believe that my picture shell was cracking prior to the big shatter; that I had begun to get disenfranchised by it all, I was no longer totally believing in the dream…yet not ready or totally comfortable about leaving the picture behind.  In fact, I had wondered how I would be able to do that which I longed for.

    I had started to doubt the church and wondered how to get out.

    I had started to resent my mother more and more.

    I had yearned to be free to just be me…a different me, a Lighter me, a me that wasn't so bogged down by others.  Yet I had no clue how to do it.  Where to begin???

    I had backed up from church and even being involved fully in family. Even if I arrived at the functions, I had begun to look at things differently.

    I was ripe for the change when the drama hit.  I was perfectly cured to popping out.  I had had it.  I was tired of the life I was living, it no longer inspired me…it instead felt completely draining.  It was hard to live as me.  I was done.  I just didn't know how to live diferently, what I wanted or even how or where to begin.

    And like the magic of the Universe and the stars all lined up.  I was ready to leave and the opportunity arose…when the truth knocked this time, I answered the door.

    It was no accident in my life, no tragedy, but a longed for escape…a doorway to the truth.

    What I didn't understand at the time, was that I was waking up in my life.

    I wasn't tired of living, of was tired of not living my truth.  My picture making energies were quickly drying up…I was exhausted.

    I wonder if depression really is losing the ability to keep a picture going?

    It seems totally and utterly implausible to believe that you can paint a pretty picture and fully and completely believe in it….but I did.

    However, once it begins to crack and fall apart, you will have to paint even harder to keep the picture going.  I literally lost all my power to create something out of nothing.  When my father's crimes came around once again…I didn't try to dream it differently.

     

  • I belong

     

    Usually in life, once you are in a designated spot it seldom changes, but I have just discovered that I have been relegated to a new position in my husband's family.  I went from being one of the 'adults' to one of the voiceless children.  

    An adult meeting took place and I was not asked to attend…I accepted this without a fight, for a large part of me felt it was absolutely correct to not have me there.

    It wasn't until after the fact, that I really considered the consequences of it all.

    The overall decisions had the potential to affect my life, but I wasn't included when they were being discussed.  There was no opportunity for me to voice my opinions or give my consent.  

    It is like I have been given a bird's eye view of what it is like to be a child in a family unit, to be affected by the choices, but not part of them.

    There is a certain amount of freedom and laziness that comes with being outside the choicemakers, but there is also a spot of being very vulnerable.  That you then have to 'live' with their decisions.

    This one decision to not include has set me free.  

    Set me freely outside of their family.  Outside of the major decisions, outside of 'personal' exchanges…included only in the public displays. I guess I am an out-law, not an in-law.

    I can complete a 'family' picture during the holidays…but the hole left in the decision making part leaves me feeling left out.

    What a great view of seeing how family dynamics work, how and what you include the children in and how it matters.  Albeit, they are not my 'family' my parents etc, but yet, they are the only other family I was connected into, and now I have been cast out.

    Sure, we will meet and 'act' like I am part of it, but deep down I now know my place is at the children's table, the voiceless choiceless riding along behind their jet stream of choices.

    Interesting to note…I am now free of all family obligations, they have voted that there is no need to include me.  

    It is feels better being at the kids table, for I truly believe that my opinions would not have matched theirs and I can have more in common with my kids.

    Which is huge.  I love that my connection feels the best with my children…within my home, I belong.

     

     

     

     

  • Freedom

    Martha Beck writes in Leaving the Saints,

    "My defection from Mormonism changed me in the same way Adam's disability did: it became an open-ended tragedy that I wouldn't give up for anything in the universe. (not even my own planet) because it helps me let go of beliefs that had damaged my soul.  An erswhile friend of mine in the Oak Hills Forth Ward once said he thought the only prayer we offer spontaneously is "Why am I in pain?"  Knowing that I am considered wicked and perhaps insane by people that I love is so painful that it continually drives me to this prayer, drives me to seek sustenance even more stable and powerful than human acceptance and company.  Please, Please, Please, Please…"

    "When I persist in this prayer, sooner or later (the more I practice the more it becomes "sooner") something wonderful happens.  My status as an untouchable feels so terrible that something deep inside me finally lets go of it, of all identity, of all attempts to prove or please or control anyone.  At that moment, I rediscover the stillness in my own heart of hearts.  Then I feel its connection to the Stillness all around me, the gorgeous, blissful Stillness that holds every heart, every mind, every tree and rock in its infinitely loving embrace."

    "I am here. Always.  I am always right here."

    "And it is, it is, right here, nearer than near: connection, comfort, safety, belonging.  Home.  Lao-Tzu said, "The master can travel all day without ever leaving home," and while I'm no master, I have returned home frequently enough to know he was right.  I'm starting to believe that my homing instincts will guide me back anytime I consult it, from anywhere in creation.  I think that may be the reason for this whole terrifying excruciating mortal existence, to wander away from home, then find your way back, so many times we learn from our toes up that no matter how far afield we may stray, we can always, always, always get there from here."

    Martha and I both found that outside of the family and church community there lies a new home.  One that resides inside of us…without that I know I would have certainly died.

    She writes about her new path…"I was teaching career development, helping students create successful lives. But to me, that didn't neccessarily mean huge salaries and a Donald Trump social profile.  It meant learning to go home and stay there, in that place where joy is not dependent on wealth or image, and even the deepest sorrow is a guide toward healing and happiness.  During my years in Utah, through all those days of spiritual trial and effort, all those nights of psychological struggle, I'd developed a repertoire of techniques that helped me do this.  In Phoenix, I began teaching these techniques to my students."

    "You'll know when you're in the wrong job interview," I'd say during a lecture, "because the pit of your stomach will tell you to get out. Your first priority should be stillness, attention to what you really know and what your really feel.  Don't 'network' into meaningless relationshiops with colleagues who bore you; find the people who can make you laugh all night, turn on the lights of your heart and mind. Do whatever work feeds your true self, even if it's not a safe bet, even if it looks like a crazy risk, even if everyone in your life tells you you're wrong or bad or crazy."

    "What I was really tellng them was how to be a Leaf in the Stream, though of course I never  called it that.  Nor did I quote Jesus' question, "What profiteth it a man if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"  I rarely used Buddhist terms like awakening or right action. But all these concepts, all the things I'd learned in my search for God, drove every piece of advice I gave my students."

    "I also started writing books and articles, on many topics but with only one theme, Dante's theme: the journey through the inferno as the road to heaven.  Paradise lost and found."

    "In my case, the inferno-road led through Provo, Utah, the well-meaning bureaucracy of Mormonism, the community of Saints.  Yours probably passes through some other territory, but we all make the same trip.  We believe without question almost everything we learn as children, stumble into the many potholes and pitfalls that mar any human endeavor, stagger around blindly in pain and outrage, then slowly remember to pay attention, to listen for the Silence, look for the Light, feel for the tenderness that brings both vulnerability to wounds and communion with the force that heals them.  Don't worry about losing your way, I tell my clients.  If you do, pain will remind you to find your path again.  Joy will let you know when you are back on it."

    "I still make the journey every day, which is why I wrote this book. Many people, especially I myself, have asked me repeatedly why I'd do such a thing.  I hate conflict, have an enormous fear of being disbelieved, and remember just enough of the old-fashioned Morman temple ceremony to be paranoid about lethal reprisal from the lunatic fringe of my father's fan base ("and whether they will slay me, I know not…"). But much as I dread the consequences of openness, I know the consequences of secrecy are worse.  I've read research that indicates that people who hide a history of traumatic experience live shorter lives, less healthy, less happy lives than those who tell their stories. I know, at a much deeper level, what keeping secrets did to me, and even more to my father. He did more than die for is religion; he gave it his life.  He almost gave it mine.  The memory of that is awful it leads me down Dante's road many times every day and each time, the awfulness makes me keep going, all the way through hell and back to paradise."

    "Once I am home again, I know that my father's true self is not the same man who lied and covered up and sacrificed his children's happiness for his religion…"

    "Even if I never know the explanation behind what happened to me as a child, I do know this for sure; Whether my father had the freedom to choose his thoughts and actions, I do.  I am free, and always have been; free to accept my own reality, free to trust my perceptions,free to believe what makes me feel sane even if others call me crazy, free to disagree even if it means great loss,free to seek the way home until I find it."

    "All the great religions I have studied, including Mormonism, hold that this irrevocable soul-deep liberty is the key to the end of suffering and the beginning of joy.  The Buddha said that just as you can recognize seawater because it will always taste of salt, you can recognize enlightenment because it always tastes of freedom.  About a year after I discovered I'd become a life coach, I stumbled across a Buddhist prayer that felt so true to me it almost stopped my heart.  The last section goes like this:

    "As long as space endures,

    And as long as sentient

    beings exist,

    May I also abide,

    That I may heal my heart

    The miseries of the world."

    "Of course I am not saying I can fulfill the promise of the prayer, only that I want to die trying.  Maybe I already have died trying, once or twice."   Martha

     

    What I recognize most in the similarities between Martha and I, was the cost of speaking out and finding our own inner peace…and how we will repeatedly go back to the fire if we feel we can stop the misery in another, by speaking the truth.  We are willing to die again and again…in order to have freedom.

  • All it wants is truth.

    Last night I woke up a few times with very strong feelings between Character and the Situation.
    That most often we blame the situation rather than blame our selves and the lack or the choice of action we took in each situation.
    There seems to be this wide separation in our thought patterns that has us victims of circumstances rather than participants in our lives.
    We don't arrive with Character, but rather over time and through the valleys and mountains in our lives we begin to layer who we are by what we do.
    Oddly enough, we somehow tend to NOT believe who others are, we keep blaming the circumstance rather than the character.
    The circumstance is often times the accumulation of past events coming home to roost, it is not just a wild card that happened into our lives…
    The Universe is the perfect score keeper and it never lets us get away with anything, the 'karma' deal is right on.  We do indeed reap what we sow and the longer we put off harvesting, the bigger the crop we have to tend to when we finally get around to seeing what we planted.
    What I am here to tell you is you can't plant denial and pull up honesty.
    You can't spread seeds of bullying and come up with people who don't fear you.
    How you move in the world echoes back your own energy.  
    Each moment of today is laying the carpet of tomorrow.
    There is no vengeful God or evil Universe, there is just you tossing the ball against the wall of the Universe, you will get back what you put out.
    There are no mistakes. 
    Truth will reflect back truth.
    Deceit will conjure up relationships minus the truth.
    It all begins with you.
    You are the common denominator in all things.  The world truly does revolve around you.
    There are a billion places you can find people behaving badly but all that truly matters in your life is you.
    Victims focus on what others need to do in order for them to find peace.
    You will know you are no longer a victim when you can find peace in the midst of others behaving badly.  
    If my happiness depended upon my mother and father healing, I would be a victim of their lives.  Instead, I put my wellness in my own hands.  I looked in my own life and saw combinations of their dysfunction littered everywhere, and that is where I began.
    In each moment of time, I looked at what I was believing or thinking, and then how I acted….did they match or was I a walking contradiction like them; partly truth and partly fiction?
    Character can survive any situation if all it wants is truth.

  • Living on the Blocks.

    Week 9, The Artist Way…Julia Cameron writes,

    “We’re more comfortable being a victim of artist’s block than risking having to consistently be productive and healthy.

    “An artistic U-Turn arrives on a sudden wave of indifference. We greet our newly minted product or our delightful process with “Aw, what does it matter anyhow?  It’s just a start.  Everybody else is so much further ahead…”

    “Yes, and they will stay that way if we stop working. The point is we have traveled light-years from where we were when we were blocked. We are now on the road, and the road is scary.  We begin to be distracted by roadside attractions or detoured by the bumps.”

    And here are a few sentences from the exercises at the end of the chapter.

    “Your choice to block is a creative U-Turn – we turn back on ourselves.  Like water forced to stand still, we turn stagnant.”   Julia

    These blocks are in Life and in Art. And we use them as an excuse as to why we can’t live a better life or create art. 

    And it is only ourselves that turn us around and heads us back to our old vices and excuses or fears.  We keep turning our backs on our truths, our desires, what we love, what brings us peace, our joy…in the good energy flow. 

    I see my life as a river where others lives are rocks cropping up or interests that are not crucial to my pathway, and instead of floating on by, I stop.  I stop my own flow in life.

    We each have specific rocks that stop us and then there are bends in the river, opportunities that float by, but we are too afraid to slip into the flow…or we are so busy doing things that are not important and they go by unnoticed. 

    It is just so interesting that Artist Blocks or Blocks of Addictions keep us from creativity…and they are all our choices.

    It is up to us to stop clinging to things that don’t serve us, that keeps us from living. 

    One big boulder in my life is ‘Responsibility’ and getting my work done first. 

    I focus on cleaning up my space instead of using that time to create.  I put so many rocks ahead of my flow, that my life seems heavy and hard. 

    I never looked at it this way…even though I lived it more often than not.  In fact slipping into the flow of life and playing in the currents and relaxing and letting the river take me, without saying no…is not very common in my life. 

    Most of my life has been spent on heavy rocks and in other people’s responsibility.  Getting used to flowing in my life will take some effort and will mean turning my back on ‘work’.  Who knew that work is a blockage in your life.

    Today, my one day off, and again I am working on cleaning up our house, the sewing machine sits…however, I did make a date with my husband for later on.

    In time, I will be able to discern how much free flowing time I have had and how much I have spent on the rocks, for I will feel its heaviness and know I got lost again living on the blocks.

    "Saying No can be the ultimate self-care."  Claudia Black

     

     

  • To Be Fearless.

    Inside of me resides the shadows of a very mental woman; she lurks in the background of my life.  I have worked very hard to keep her back there and not let her come roaring to the front wreaking all havoc.

     

    When my children make choices that are not my choices, or what I would like for them, she is BEGGING loudly to get involved.

     

    She would love nothing more than to toss a few choice words around, belittle, berate, and demean them.  She loves to rant and rave and direct others to do things to make her happy or feel safe or right or in control… she is the queen of all bitches.

     

    My mind gets crammed full of what her desires are, she eclipses my present moment like a very dark cloud, her wants and desires are mostly her fears and they rain down within me.

     

    I have to wrestle inside of me to shut her up.  To not weaken and let her have her way in my world, for when she does, it doesn’t come out sounding sweet nor does it fall gently upon my children.

     

    For almost 7 years now, I have fought to gain a foothold in front of her, to shut my mouth and keep her inside, to face my fears of abandonment alone, to not let escape even one sentence of hers.

     

    If she speaks, it is only to control others for her own happiness; she steals their lives and makes them her own.

     

    My hardest walk ever is to be silent, to give my viewpoint and then let go.  To release each and every person, related or not, into their lives, no matter how their choices make me feel.

     

    If my happiness is found by their choices, I am dependent upon them for my happiness.

     

    It can’t matter a bit if I am sad, devastated, lonely, or unhappy.  My state of being is about me, not them.

     

    If they make choices with a gauge on how it makes me feel, I am teaching them to be a co-dependent, and that their choices should NOT hurt others or make others feel bad.

     

    That is how I raised my children until they were in their teens, and now I am teaching them the opposite. To do what they want, no matter how it makes me feel.

     

    Instead their decisions have to be what they want and they are to be gauged by their own happiness not mine.

     

    And the way I am teaching this is to let them make choices that fill me with fear, trepidation, anxiety, loss, etc.  I have to let them learn who people are by themselves.  I am unable to forbid them; I have to let them go.

     

    My childhood home reflected the ways of the church, that our lives were not our own to live.  Our lives had to please and conform to another’s happiness or fall into the category of what a good Christian does and what a good child does.

     

     

    When I sit with the thoughts still about how many are unable to move independently, I greatly understand, for I too used to live this way.  Frozen unable to move for the fear of wrath to go against the mainstream of how we were raised.

     

    Unable to go against them for we are seen as bad and we fear that if we are bad enough, they will push us out and away.

     

    How binding to live this way. To be too afraid to move knowing it is going against the ideals of people in charge.

     

    As you sit, you teach your children to sit.

    As you act to please others, you teach your children to give up their lives.

     

    I know how hard it is to find a voice and use it that doesn’t match what others want or need. 

     

    But the only way I began to live free of the mental woman inside of me was to go against all that I was raised to be.

     

    To say and do things that make others unhappy for my own peace of mind, for doing what was right for me.

    To speak of things I used to be silent about.

     

    It wasn’t that I wasn’t afraid.  I was terrified, but I did it anyway.  Being fearless is knowing you are afraid, but doing it anyway.

     

    As I see so many silently sitting and knowing…I wonder when they will decide independently, that now is the time to be fearless.