“The energy of miracles can’t manifest in your life if you don’t act miraculously,” Rachel Wolchin.  Even at my lowest point this week, I am proud of myself for at least attempting to see the positive.  I sincerely took the time to connect, to ask for signs, and to believe when they were brought to me.  As painful as this week has been, I know that from the moment I decided to move my life in the direction I wanted, everything aligned.  The universe really does move to make things happen.  I can no longer NOT believe that there isn’t a reason for everything.

I made the mistake for most of my adult life believing that miracles were only the big things or getting the things you wanted—on a side note I am owning my attachment to materialism which I will address later.  Miracles are everywhere everyday.  The fact that we exist is a miracle; all of the events that had to be in place to create our specific existence are nearly countless.  From the moment the universe exploded into existence, to the timing of the creation of all of your family members up to the moment of your creation, we are all the result of divine timing.  Our bodies and how they move, how they are so full of life is a miracle.  Every living thing around us, the concepts we create in our minds, the art we view—it is all miraculous.  The fact that this world naturally provides what we need—it is all miraculous.

There are ways to train yourself to see the miracles in your life.  The one I practice the most is gratitude.  Gratitude tied to a why is one of the most powerful ways to keep the miraculous nature of the earth at the forefront of our minds.  The goal of a gratitude practice is to be present in the moment of all that is and to appreciate it for all that it is. 

If you want to see more miracles, get connected.  Develop a new understanding of what a miracle is.  And believe. In a “need to see it to believe it” society, belief in the miraculous is challenging.  We aren’t taught to act from faith, we are taught to demand proof.  Ironically, proof is exactly what got people into trouble centuries ago.  And we whittled down the beauty of this existence to something so clinical, that we have now lost touch with the softer (but no less powerful) faith.  I am super guilty of this.  There was a point I had so little faith in life that I could literally be holding something and not trust it was real.  What a limiting belief, and how sad to live without magic.

No one is at fault for that incredulity, but it is our responsibility to resurrect that connection and that trust in the universe.  I’ve never been a particularly religious person, but I’ve always maintained some faith.  I see now how little faith I had, but I kept it.  We all know tragedy and pain but that does not stop the world form moving and those thing do not devalue the miracle that is life.  In fact, those things give life more meaning.  They make life more precious and they make us pay attention and keep us presence.  And presence is where life is—because it is all happening now.  That is the miracle: we get the now, and we can make it what we want.

Slow down and listen to what your body is telling you.  Hear your heart and your breath.  Feel the twitches and twinges.  See yourself and really acknowledge your existence.  Then be grateful.  You have a body, you have a mind, you can create the means to do whatever you want.  It doesn’t matter what it looks like, it only matters what it feels like.  Learn to be in your skin for a while and to really connect with yourself.  Then be grateful again. 

“The most powerful thing you can be right now is patient while things are unfolding,” via Be spiritual.  Patience is my biggest struggle by far.  I’m constantly looking for the next thing rather than simply being present where I’m at.  It’s a combination of being Type A, high anxiety, high energy, a lot of creative energy, and mis-channeled habits.  As we get older we see how much grey is in the world.  The drive I had as a child and into early adulthood was all about getting things done, finishing the things I was supposed to be doing. I had very little follow through on the things I wanted to be doing because I assumed once I did what I needed to do I would have time to do what I wanted to do.

They never tell you that there will ALWAYS be something else that “needs” to be done so we have to make the time for what we want to do.  At least, I was never taught that.  I was also never taught that the experience is sometimes more valuable than the goal and I still struggle with that today.  I always thought the point was to get to the end and I’ve lived my life like that for a long time.  But if that is ultimately the goal, then the end is death.  I know for certain there is more in between the beginning and the end than finishing a series of arbitrary goals that are not our own.

I’ve looked at patience as a concept but never really put it into practice.  I thought that was for other people who had time to mess around or who didn’t have “serious” goals.  I also looked at it as something for people who had more time than me.  I see now how ridiculous that is because we never know how much time we really have, regardless.  I also misconstrued patience as a sort of punishment.  That you would have to endure all of these trials in order to get the prize when you were deemed worthy.   

Patience is really the acceptance of the universe in its divine order and learning your place in it.  It’s learning to accept who we are in all forms and all parts of ourselves.  It’s feeling the difficult emotions and not shying away from them.  Patience is the ultimate surrender and trust.  Knowing we made the best choices we could at the time with what we had.  And patience is being open to our humanity. 

I’m learning to integrate this new definition of patience.  It’s easier to swallow than my previous beliefs.  I know I won’t get it perfect, but I see the value and the necessity in slowing down.  We have to let our minds and bodies align in order to apply this type of practice.  And I like how that feels.  So let go of what needs to be done tomorrow and address what needs to be done now and the rest will fall into place. 

We are able to turn tragedy into something beautiful if we sit with it —and if we decide it was something beautiful.  The biggest lesson I’m taking from the events of the last week is that I know what I need to do next.  I need to get my shit together and stop pretending like all of this was irrevocably decided for me.  I need to get my shit together and love every ounce of me.  I need to get my shit together and start taking responsibility for my overall health.

The facets of my life that I want to address are areas I’ve neglected for a long time for the sake of pushing through.  The areas of my health I want to address are mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual.  It is so easy to get off balance, especially when we are taking on the things that are not ours.  We are taught so much, regardless, that we lose sight of what is ours and what isn’t. 

I’ve finally incorporated what it means to take care of me.  There was always a reason why I didn’t have time to work out, or go to the doctor, or to do the things I wanted to.  There was always a reason why I couldn’t get started on my projects and then there were reasons why I couldn’t finish them.  There was always a distraction that took precedence, someone who needed something, some reason why my things had to wait.  THAT is what made me sick.  I set the precedent that I came last.  That my needs weren’t important, hoping that someone else would meet my needs for me because I met theirs.  I allowed people to believe that my time would eventually come if I just waited.  I’ve learned that I need to take care of me so my needs ARE met, so I get where I need to be, so I can do the work I need to.    

I’m not 100% sure how I want to tackle all of these areas, but I know this is a big evolution.  This is the solidifying of my foundation.  So when I say a big evolution, I mean that this is a new direction from anything I’ve done before.  Take every ounce of emotion and put it into action.  I listened to “Armchair Expert” today and their guest was Daniel Goleman, the author of “Emotional Intelligence.”  For me this was another sign of the areas in my life I need to work on.  I can no longer let my emotions determine which way this goes because I feel deeply.  That isn’t always a bad thing, but I know I allow myself to be pulled along by the current rather than going with it. I let it consume me rather than float.

This life works out in some really fucked up ways sometimes.  It’s painful and beautiful all at the same time.  We will never know all the answers.  But if we find a way to cognitively get our house in order, if we learn to have a little faith, if we learn to trust ourselves, those fucked up moments become just that: a moment.  If we really rely on those tolls (faith, trust, action) then we may be lucky enough to see the lesson.  And if we are patient with ourselves, we can incorporate the lesson.  We learn that those moments don’t define us—we define ourselves.  We have an incredible amount of resilience in our souls.  The heart continues to beat.  Air still flows in our lungs.  Take care of those precious gifts, take the fucked up moments, and love every ounce of life. 

“Before you try to fix someone else’s vibe, make sure you’re not killing your own in the process.  Protect your own energy first,” via paradise awakening.  Wrapping up the conversation on personal calling and dysfunctional communication, I read this and felt finger pointing was another valuable topic.  Humans are biologically designed to avoid blame because if we did something wrong in prehistoric times, we’d die.  Mistakes literally meant death, and we still carry that primal weight with us.  We are acutely tuned in to how other people make mistakes because we believe we are protecting ourselves but we struggle with seeing our own negative traits.

As I mentioned, I used to think my purpose was essentially to tell everyone what was wrong and how to get back on track.  It made me a nightmare of a person—and it made my life a nightmare of twisted views on perfection and loneliness.  It isn’t until we understand that we have no say in how other people live their lives that we will grasp that we have no control.  I’m not talking about social things like what we wear, I’m talking about the decisions we make based on who we are.  We get caught up in what our own values are because of what we are told and also because we are entitled enough to believe that the world needs to conform to us that we consider other people “wrong.”

This implies a duality of right and wrong—and that just doesn’t exist.  I know that it doesn’t exist outside of the moral code, because the very fact that we are all here at this time, in this place means we are meant to be here.  We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t meant to be.  The only thing that holds true is that we are all here at the same time and we are all given gifts that we are meant to share.  There is nothing wrong with our unique gifts—we have just been trained to fear anything different than ourselves.

Aside from primal programming involving safety, it’s time to let go of the fear.  When we embrace acceptance, we are less prone to point fingers at other people or to label them as wrong.  People aren’t meant to be fixed, we are meant to be cooperative.  Ironically enough, that IS where we are broken.  We spend more time trying to fix the individual than we try to fix the system.  That is where I went wrong all the way into my early adulthood—I was trying to fix people and their behavior instead of seeing the system as flawed.  And flawed it is. 

I’ve spoken about it before and it stands here that if you struggle with accepting others, first learn to accept yourself.  Having a clear vision of what is right for you makes you less prone to say what is right for others.  In fact, when you’re focused on what is right for you, you’re less prone to even worry about what is right for others.  There is an allowance for you to go your way and let people go theirs.  That is what we need more of. 

There are some moments where there is so clearly a before and an after that it feels like you’re being sucked through a hole to the end, seeing nothing around you. It’s been 36 hours since I left off writing, trying to get some work done.  36 hours since I broke down with the reality of losing my child.  36 hours that I would not have gotten through without tremendous support.  I woke up at 1 in the morning from a bad dream and couldn’t get back to sleep.  I finally came downstairs at 3 o’clock and decided to get some work done.  As I began working in a piece about patience, I wrote something along the lines of, “I’m always rushing and I never slow down to listen,” and I completely broke down.  The tears flowed uncontrollably as the weight of what I went through hit me, the finality of it, the fact that there is no turning back time.  I thought about what the future would look like, and for a moment an immense heaviness settled on me. 

As I struggled with the guilt and the anxiety, my thoughts twisting like knives, realizing that part of my life is over, I felt scared and uncertain.  And it hit me that I will never know anything different than this because this is how things played out.  As the thoughts continued, I tried to feel instead of talking my way through it.  I felt this heat spread over my chest, something I have never felt before.  The thought, “This is your release,” hit me.  I know that thought was not my own. 

I went to my mother’s house with my son and on our way there, I asked for a sign that everything was as it should be.  “Dog Days are Over” by Florence and the Machine came on and I saw a hawk fly across the sky—hawks are always a symbol to me, a messenger.  The sky lit up bright red as the sun tried to come out all through the rain.  I thought it appropriate weather considering the physical relief I feel mixed with the emotional weight.  When we arrived at my mom’s I told her what was going on thought wise, and I broke down again.  It’s been less than 72 hours since everything happened, and I think I allowed myself to actually feel today. 

I admitted I needed help.  I’ve always been the kind of person to try to grin and bear it or I’ve pushed through.  This is something I can’t carry alone.  I’ve been trying to ignore the real feelings underneath and to live logically—every step we took forward was met with 10 steps back and the situation was deteriorating rapidly.  There was nothing else to be done, nothing I could do.

I went to my doctor’s office to arrange another appointment and ran into one of the practitioners in the hall as I was leaving.  I told her everything and she listened and coached me and asked me if I wanted a hug.  I held on to her like my life depended on it and cried.  I went downstairs to my office and called my dad.  I called my husband.  I talked to my coworkers.  Words started leaving my mouth without any apparent control from me.  I cried more and I received support in so many ways today.  And all at once I knew that I am incredibly blessed.  I have a support system all around me—all I needed to do was ask for help.

For over a month I have felt so many different things, I couldn’t even begin to process what was happening on some levels.  Not until the aftermath of the very end did it hit me how much it impacted me.  All of the feelings I’ve held onto for 6 weeks came fast and furious.  I know I still have to process them and I know that there may be more to come.  Sometimes it happens slowly where you feel like your entire life is dragging out.  Sometimes it’s the blink of an eye.  For me, it was 36 hours.  That’s what it took for me to go from feeling like my entire world had crumbled to seeing the new foundation built beneath me.  I know it’s brand new, but I feel it beneath my feet.  I am so incredibly grateful. I am strong enough to move on, but I am also fragile now. I am working to take this in and move forward–because this is the after.  

“When we avoid difficult conversations, we trade short-term discomfort for long-term dysfunction,” Peter Bromberg.  We teach ourselves that it’s better to save the other person’s feelings or to avoid changing something—that it’s easier to go along with something that hurts us rather than doing the work to reach a mutually beneficial agreement.  This is a skill I’m still learning.  When I spoke of being called in a certain direction and going with it even if it makes you uncomfortable, I mentioned that I thought my calling was to correct everyone.  So while I was bold enough to tell people they were wrong, I was never bold enough to tell people they were wrong when they wronged me.  I was still the girl doing their homework in hopes they would befriend me while they ignored me until they needed help again.

We learn to have or avoid difficult conversations when we are very young.  A toddler telling the adult they don’t want to eat a certain food or that they do want a certain toy, to wear certain clothes is a beautiful example.  Children have no fear about letting you know how they really feel.  They feel something and express it.  The adults in our lives can either support those decisions or they reinforce the idea that we just need to listen.  Depending on what you are taught, you can either learn to believe in your own decisions or you learn to mistrust your own instincts.  I was taught the latter in a very conflicted way.  I learned it was important to be right but to not hurt people’s feelings.

As an adult, and as a leader at work, I see where I fail at the difficult conversations.  I wanted people to understand what I expected of them without laying out full expectations—which I know is completely unrealistic.  But I see now how that sets the precedent for the behavior to continue and to constantly set myself up for frustration when my unspoken expectations aren’t met.  Plus, it isn’t always about my expectations, period.  Difficult conversations happen around us all the time and we have the opportunity to learn from them as we experience them.  They help us set boundaries, and yes, expectations, but they help us arrive at a mutual agreement.

The ramification of not having difficult conversations are absolutely dysfunctional.  Everything from creating a one-sided relationship, to being taken advantage of, to saying yes to things we don’t want to do—and saying no to opportunities meant for us, we learn to shy away from life.  It’s key to understand that not everyone is meant to like us.  Our job isn’t to be liked, it is to fulfill our purpose and if we spend our time dysfunctionally, we won’t fulfill our purpose.  So challenge yourselves.  If the food is bad send it back.  If someone crosses a boundary, tell them.  If you care for someone, tell them.  It’s necessary to build an honest relationship based on who you are rather than a false relationship on who they think you are. 

Today I am grateful for rebirth.  The symbolism of this day is not lost on me this year.  Yesterday was my birthday and I miscarried what would have been my second child.  There had been issues from the beginning with my hormone levels, the size of my baby, the heart rate, profuse bleeding, polyps, and an inability to keep anything down or function.  I had been living in an in-between, waiting for my body to recover or release and it took weeks.  I knew the day was coming and I know that having it happen on my birthday was a sign of cleansing and moving into the next phase of my life.  As difficult as it was, I feel relief.  I’m no longer feeling ill, I can function again, and I can move forward.  It will take time to recover, yes, but I am in a better place to do that now.

Today I am grateful for love.  With everything I’ve been going through I have felt such an enormous outpouring of love from family, friends, and coworkers.  I truly have never felt so supported in my life and it is an amazing feeling. 

Today I am grateful to see the sun again—in more ways than one.  It’s a gorgeous Easter Sunday—72 degrees, sun shining bright and it is such an uplifting day.  I feel so happy to see such a beautiful day and spend time with my family.  I miss the tradition of the day since we aren’t all together, but I am so happy to pass on some love and hope and to share some time together. 

Today I am grateful to step back into my purpose.  The last 6 weeks have been so hard, emotionally, and physically.  I could barely play with my son, I spent every day sick, I was missing time from work, I had infusions, endless bloodwork and ultrasounds, I was on tons of medication.  I didn’t even feel like me.  I kept my work going, yes, but it was no small feat.  For that I am grateful as well.  But the way things have worked out have brought me closer to something else: my truth and what I really need to do.  The release of fear, the understanding of miracles looking different than we expect, and appreciating what we have. 

Today I am grateful to see truth in others.  I’ve begun the process of evaluating the content of my life including people I thought I looked up to or aspired to be like, or even people I considered inspirational.  I understand we don’t get to see all sides of everyone’s story—that isn’t possible nor is it necessary or healthy.  But when you experience life at its most vulnerable and raw and are forced to deal with your own bullshit, you start to see through the bullshit everywhere else.  I’ve seen tons of people talking about cleaning up your feed—it’s the damn truth.  If someone is spouting crap in your life, you’re taking that in—let it go. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.     

We rarely are called to show up how we think we will be.  When we ask the universe for change it is rarely in the way we think it will come.  It is hardly ever comfortable because in order to grow, in order to do the things we really want to, we have to learn to do things in a new way. Whether you decide to change careers, buy a car, or even if it’s simply using your voice to say how you really feel, these acts of bravery bring us closer to who we are meant to be.  We just have to get out of our own way and do what feels right in the moment.

I was given the beautiful gift of a long memory—and a quick memory (more so when I was younger on the quick part) and the ability to quickly apply a principle once I learned it.  I honestly thought my purpose was to teach people, correct them on their path, and make sure all the ducks were in a row—for everyone.  I’ve spent a lot of years sharing my ideas and having them ignored only to have the people I’ve shared with either take the idea or come back to me for help when they couldn’t do it themselves.  It has taken many, many years to realize how much of my ego was involved in that cycle.  The cycle of proving I was right and needing it to be known where the idea came from, thinking that would get me accolades and attention to get me where I wanted to be, only to wind up alone until someone needed me to fix it.

It also took me a long time to understand that how I thought things should be wasn’t my decision.  I learned and understood my impact on others early on but I failed to understand free will.  I had initially been taught to go with the program—and I was very skilled at doing what I was told.  So I thought everyone needed to be that way and I couldn’t understand why others didn’t just do as they were told.  Again, all ego and a lot of misunderstanding.  When things started to fall apart in spite of me doing what I was told, that is when I understood that the world has its own design.  We can either go with it or we can lose ourselves trying to control it.  It has nothing to do with making sure our ducks are in a row.  It’s understanding that we ARE the ducks and sometimes we have to follow our own path. 

My purpose wasn’t to chastise people or to be right all the time—that is teaching through shame.  Let’s face it, “Should” is an asshole and no one likes to be told what they should be doing.  And people really hate to hear what they should have done.  Hindsight is 20/20 and chances are people will figure out where they went wrong so pointing out their mistakes just makes you an asshole too.  Learning those lessons has helped me refine my purpose.  I still believe I am meant to teach, but how I got lost when interpreting that message, I believe I am meant to help people find their own paths in the same way I am trying to find mine. 

Our paths shift a lot—that doesn’t mean the goal is different.  It’s the intent behind it.  So when we ask for something in our lives (yes, even the big things like finding our purpose), we may be asked to take steps we never would have considered because not everyone walks the same path.  We may eventually get to the same spot but there are so many ways to get there.  And for some of us, we may have a clear vision of what we think we want but we are taken on a journey we never would have planned.  It always gets us where we need to be in the end.  It isn’t about setting a clear path, it’s about setting a clear goal and then taking the steps that reveal themselves to us.     

“Once you go down the rabbit hole, there is no going back.  Prepare to leave the world you thought you knew.”  We talked about choices yesterday and I wanted to dig a little deeper.  I want to elaborate that I understand why we agonize over some decisions.  We feel like they can alter the whole course of our lives.  And some do.  Where we live, where we work, who we have relationships with, all of those things have a major impact on our lives.  Quite literally, there is no going back and we are often never the same after incidents involving any of those core things. 

We never stop to ask if those changes are a bad thing.  We never really consider if it is a bad thing to leave behind what we thought we knew in favor of learning something new.  We embrace our fears first for our own preservation and are trained to push against change.  The more important question isn’t whether or not we can avoid change or whether or not change is bad, but how can we consciously create changes that serve the greater good?  Purposeful change.  I’ve spoken about that many times over the last few years and I stand by it.

We don’t always have the choice for change to be purposeful.  I’m going through it right now with my company being bought out.  While many things are the same for now, it is very clear that large changes are coming that have already been decided regardless of our input.  For those cases, it’s a different type of rabbit hole but the lesson remains the same: take it as it comes.  And even if it isn’t planned, it doesn’t mean those changes are bad either.

The truth is change rarely comes at the ideal time.  That is part of what makes it scary, because it’s unpredictable.  Then again the world itself isn’t predictable, so why not venture into something real?  Why not leave behind what you thought you knew in favor of what is real?  Or what you can create?  We can treat this life as an adventure or an obligation and the more we are in line with what we are trying to do, the easier it will be.  We can look at each twist and turn as an opportunity whether we chose it or not. 

We can’t live the same day over and over again for 90 years and call it a life.  We aren’t designed that way.  We have been given so much more bandwidth than that and it is our job to apply it.  There was a time, not that long ago, when it appeared conformity served.  Following the system felt safe and it provided.  Move forward almost 100 years and we see how it only served the few.  It’s time to jump down another rabbit hole:  creating a world up to the speed we see now, one that serves everyone.  In reality, if the system doesn’t work for all, then it doesn’t work.  We are on the precipice of a time where we know the system is breaking and we need to put something else in its place.  That is an adventure we can all partake in. 

“Make a choice.  If it doesn’t work, make another one.”  Rachel Wolchin.  Humans are prone to overcomplicate things.  Playing out a million possibilities in our heads, worrying about the future. At the same time we fail to realize the significance of some of our actions.  We struggle with our choices for so many reasons.  We struggle with the personal choices and take so many chances on things that impact others. 

My mind has been battling the age old question of what is right and wrong.  I know what it feels like when I’ve made decisions based on what I thought was right, what I thought other people wanted.  It felt terrible.  I set the expectation that others would like me or help me get what I wanted and when they didn’t, I felt let down and disappointed and even hurt.  Then I started thinking about the times when I made decisions based on what I wanted, even the times it may have been considered selfish.  It felt amazing.  Aligned and truthful, and yes, even purposeful.  It felt like I could take on the world.

I want to clarify that I’m not talking about material things.  I’m talking about the times I knew I had to take care of myself so I called off of work.  Or the times I needed to have really tough conversations with people I love so I wrote it out and then had the discussion.  Or the times I knew the work no longer served so I left the job for something better.  It’s easy to take the edge off by treating ourselves to little

 things like the new pair of jeans or the shoes or the coffee, but that isn’t fulfilling anything.  Sometimes those little moments of self-care are needed, I don’t downplay their importance, but I’m talking about something bigger

We are trained to associate meeting our own needs with selfishness that we’ve twisted ourselves in knots for people who wouldn’t even step out of the way for us.  I made horrible choices in my life—completely cliché and non-serving choices to make other people happy—and it was far more dangerous than making a choice for myself.  But in each one of those choices, I’ve finally seen the point: do what feels right because your gut will never steer you wrong.  There may be times it feels that way, but it will never steer you wrong.    

It’s time to break the belief that filling your cup first is a selfish act and replace it with the narrative that it’s is a necessary act.  Once that information is integrated, there is no going back.  I’m learning that accepting myself means accepting how I’m built.  We aren’t a one size fits all package, so not everything people tell us to pursue is right for us.  So fill your cup with what works for you, not with the leftovers people tell you to be happy with.  Live joyfully in what you do and in doing what you want.