Today I am grateful for healing.  I read a quote the other day about the nervous system being over activated and needing to focus on healing the inflammation in order to recover.  There is a physical reaction to over-stimulation and long-term anxiety.  We truly feel what we think.  For as much research as I have done into the human mind regarding anxiety, I never really considered the body’s reaction to emotion.  In fact, I’ve always looked at the body as kind of an ancillary thing—something that just came along for the ride.  But I have been so overly sensitive lately where any stimulation (sound, touch, scent, etc.) triggers me to the point of madness.  I believe that I’ve lived on a hair pin trigger for so long that inflammation of the nervous system makes complete sense.  I’m trying to focus now on slowing down.

Today I am grateful for my animals.  I’ve been on super alert the last week, dealing with so many stressors and a ton of unknowns, trying to anticipate everyone’s next move all while trying to get my work done.  I’ve also been trying to clean up the house and get things set up how I want them and I have run into so many old memories that I’m reliving and rehashing and the same message is coming up: let it go.  I have felt so raw and over stimulated that my super intuitive animals have picked up on it.  At first I was annoyed because they were constantly under foot, but this morning it hit me: they have been trying to help me.  One of my cats is especially in tune and he has been all over me the last 24 hours in particular.  This morning he just laid next to me purring while I draped over him.  The dog has been especially close as well.  These beautiful creatures know what we are going through.  I am so lucky to have them in my life. 

Today I am grateful for my intuition.  Our neighbors made a lovely offer to go out with them to a public event and we declined, mainly because of my concerns with COVID.  I also just had a really bad feeling, knowing that it wouldn’t be smooth or that it would be overly expensive and I knew there would be too many people there.  We didn’t see them for the rest of the day and when they finally returned, they told us the event was the busiest it has ever been.  I know we missed out on a day of doing something other than working on the house, but I am so glad we didn’t put ourselves in a position of getting sick.  I guess that’s one plus for anxiety 😊

Today I am grateful to become an observer.  I’ve been so deeply engrained in my emotions that I’ve lost sight of others around me.  I have a piece on this coming up, but I know I haven’t been myself and I certainly haven’t shown up for those around me lately.  I’ve spent too much time in my own world, holding so tightly to things long gone and demanding that people meet my expectations that I’m right back in a stranglehold.  It’s time to release the hold and get back to a more global perspective. 

Today I am grateful to choose.  I’ve been living in fear about my life—my relationships to my family, my friends.  My relationship to money.  How I view the past and the future.  How to get clear on what I actually want to do.  I had misread the date on the calendar and I absolutely panicked about some bills and I told myself the same story (that we have to live super tightly from now on) and the anxiety just consumed me.  My inner voice told me to stop and think it through.  And I took a deep breath and saw my error.  And in that moment I saw the unnecessary pain I caused myself and knew I could choose differently.  Gaining emotional control is a huge fight for me but I am so grateful to recognize that I CAN do it.  I don’t need to be an emotional wreck—I can choose better. 

Today I am grateful for reminders that everything is just as it should be.  Carrying stress and worry are never productive.  It’s exhausting and unnecessary work and it makes me feel like crap.  Everything has always worked out, one way or another.  Being present and enjoying the time I have and knowing that I have the ability to care for myself allows me to slow down and enjoy the moment.  To appreciate that I am here and that I am able and capable…of anything.  My timing doesn’t matter—things truly unfold as they should.  Being grateful reminds me of the foundation I’ve built and reminds me that I am truly blessed.  All is well.  Gabby Bernstein says, “The sooner you appreciate where you are, the faster you’ll get to where you want to be.”  So here we are.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

Thinking about ease tonight.  The feeling of allowing and going with the flow.  The feeling of not caring what time it is and diving into inspiration and letting it all come out.  Letting the words, feelings, thoughts flow.  Thinking of the lifestyle I want, defining how I want to spend my time.  Feeling the ultimate freedom of defining what I want my life to look like and taking action towards it.  It’s a feeling of absolute calm.  I used to relish in the excitement of daydreaming and planning and wishing and hoping.  Now I revel in this.  The moment here, in front of me.  The absolute solidity of knowing and taking aligned action toward something that once existed in mind and now forming in front of me, a result of my own efforts. 

I feel a difference in my relationship to time.  It used to be something I feared because I was all too aware of how quickly it passed and how limited it is.  I thought it was something to fill with accomplishments and completed lists, the stresses never-ending.  Thinking it was something to get through.  And then, like a flower opening, the awareness of time really hit me:  we aren’t meant to do it all.  We are meant to do what is for us—and that is enough.  While we have a tendency to define ourselves by what we do, it’s not about quantity, it’s about quality and authenticity. 

I think about the moments I missed trying to fill space because of the incessant need to prove which was an effort to quell my massive anxiety.  The useless motion, doing either what I was told or wishing for something else when all I had to do was act. I had to put down the mask I created, the shield of perfectionism I wore close to the chest.  There is sadness but I know it was nothing more than a defense mechanism.  I did what I had to in order to survive.  I never could have anticipated how long it would take to get out of that state of mind—and I never really understood the weight of what I carried. 

Once I stopped running and filling time, once I started gauging time by personal productivity (doing things I wanted) rather than activity (what people told me to do), I breathed different.  I looked around me and really took stock of what I saw.  While it wasn’t entirely what I wanted, while it was comprised of the bits and pieces of lives I had once envisioned and started then left behind, I saw the life I built clearly.  I saw what my mind and my own two hands were capable of.  For every time I thought “it” was over, I saw how I kept going.  Not only that, but I saw how close I had really come in some ventures.  I could have taken that as a moment of regret because I knew that I could have succeeded in any one of those ventures had I trusted myself.  Instead, I looked at what I had done and admired the life I had created.  I felt safe, not for what was around me, but for the fact that seeing what I once did showed me what I am and would be truly capable of.  It was stuff of a long gone era that used to make me feel safe because they were achievements to show my worth.  I saw the things and for the first time realized I truly didn’t need them.  Safe wasn’t a thing, it was a state I created.  Safe came from me.

I no longer feel compelled to prove.  I feel able to set my boundaries and enter a conversation speaking truthfully about what I need.  My needs aren’t an inconvenience yet they aren’t for anyone to meet. My life is mine and once we take ownership of our lives, there is no turning back.  There is no giving up the time for things we once would have.  There is no settling for something that we have luke-warm interest in.  There is no apology for taking what we need, including the time to recover and heal.  There is joy in ease and flow.  There is value in truth and authenticity and like-minded support.  There is peace.

“I don’t think bigger dreams are necessarily better dreams; Your dreams are there for a reason.  It’s like each of us has an inner compass, this guidance system.  You wouldn’t have this dream in your heart if you didn’t have what it takes to make it real,” Marie Forleo.  I went through a period where I didn’t think anything I did would succeed.  It felt like the things I wanted in life didn’t matter and that I was destined to be a doormat, always helping others get where they wanted to go, and they never returned the favor.  After a series of intense losses and a long period of feeling stuck in place, I started looking at what I created around me.  I saw a hodge podge of things I had already done, projects already started but never finished, a few bits that I tried because others did it, and a small portion of the things I wanted to do but never did.

I spent a lot of days feeling sorry for myself and it took a long time to start doing the work and looking at where these issues were coming from.  I realized that the tasks I had chosen to carry were not mine.  Those things were not my purpose.  Let me tell you as soon as I turned that focus inward and really started questioning what it was that I needed and wanted to do, that is when life took off.  Not that I suddenly had the answers and created everything I wanted in one bound, more that a clarity developed and I learned to discern what was for me and what wasn’t.  The things I really liked and what I didn’t.

I also spent a lot of time believing that what I wanted wasn’t worthy.  I worked for many years in an area where my boss was content to let me deal with the brunt of the work and take all the credit.  I started at such a young age that I didn’t know how to approach or bring attention to the issues and when I went for outside help, I was told that’s just how it is.  My young mind believed it.  I didn’t think there was any room for what I wanted and that I was only there to give up my ideas.  I genuinely believed that the universe would treat me like some Cinderella and when I was worthy, all that I wanted would be bestowed upon me.  After too many prince-less nights, I realized that I had to tell a different story. 

As I spent time with that inner voice and learned to tune into it better, the more I let what wasn’t for me fall away.  I was able to hear what was really mine and what came from the outside.  Soon the voice that told me, “You’ll never be able to do it,” and, “Things only work when they are for other people,” and, “You will never get where you want to go,” turned into something else.  I started hearing, “That isn’t for you,” and, “Your talent is elsewhere,” and “If they can do it, so can you.”  The work turned into a HOW do I get this done instead of I will never be able to do this.  As soon as I shifted, possibilities started opening.  Once I saw those possibilities, I started working on the how. 

Creating the life you want takes practice and it isn’t an overnight thing.  It’s a gradual awakening, where you start to get comfortable with what you’re thinking and feeling and setting the boundaries to create the life you want.  Then the self-confidence and the belief that you can do it comes in.  As Marie said, we all have an inner guidance system.  It’s all mapped out for us, we just have to learn to read our own rather than look at someone else’s.  And the dream doesn’t have to be big—it just has to be ours.  The whole universe opens up when you follow your path. No matter how big or small, you need to put energy into it otherwise you will put energy into someone else’s.  Believe me, if it’s in your head, it’s meant for you.

“When I’m feeling out of alignment, I ask myself what’s trapped inside of me right now that needs to get out?  An emotion?  A hard conversation?  A story? Energy that needs to be released can be annoying AF.  We get to set it free,” Kelly Mosser.  We get to decide how we express the things we feel.  When it comes to something we need to design, to build, or to express, if we feel it, we need to act on it.  It doesn’t matter how big or small, if it is in us and asking for expression, we need to let it out before it destroys us.  Ignoring what we are meant to do (based on what we are feeling) is suffocating.  It’s like holding a fire inside—it eventually burns you or it smothers, leaving ash and debris.

I think we also have the expectation of ourselves that our expression always needs to be the same.  Like, if we feel a certain energy, then we always have to run, or read a book, or yell.  But sometimes that energy requires a different way to be discharged.  Similarly, creativity doesn’t always look the same.  One day I want to write, the next I may need to color, and after that I may need to play a game with my son.  The beauty of getting in alignment is that it changes to elicit the best of us.  When we have a calling, we have to adapt to what is needed, not what we want to do. 

The human mind is varied and adaptable and we get to decide how to feed it.  What we consume, whether it is company, ideas, food, music, or drink, that determines the output.  Simply put, crap in, crap out.  But when we hone our abilities and really sit with who we are, then we learn to discern what is most authentically us.  Then it doesn’t matter if we run a mile one day and build a closet the next.  A really silly example of this is the pressing need to be done.  This morning, I took the dog out and I’m normally a ball of nerves because she is so much stronger than me.  I usually just want her to get done because I’m afraid she will get wound up and hurt me.  But today, I enjoyed watching her run through the yard and marveled at how she took her time to play in between doing her business.  And it hit me that she is enjoying this moment—I can too.  How many moments have I missed because I just wanted to get done? 

During our move, I moved my body in ways I hadn’t in years.  I never thought I had the time, and after a while, I didn’t think I could do that anymore.  But let me tell, you my body adapted, and I know that movement is a key form of discharge for me—as it is for everyone.  I also realize that my compulsive need to organize and complete is a discharge of when I feel out of control.  I see how much work I got done around this house and how quickly and I wish I had done it more slowly.  I mean, granted there are the essentials, but in really setting things up, I wish I had controlled that compulsion better.  I’m happy with things are, but I could have done more with patience over persistence.  Again, how much creativity did I miss by pressing to finish?  The good news is that I recognize that quality in myself now.  It’s not always about finishing, it’s about doing it right.  It’s about recognizing the need of the moment and responding to it, not making rash decisions you intend on keeping your whole life.      

“Not all change leads to improvement, but all improvement requires change,” Dr. Shefali.  I think this is an appropriate follow up to our discussion about living in two worlds as well as the discussion about perfectionism.  This is all about discernment and the ability to determine what is best for us, what is aligned with our beliefs, and where that falls on the greater good.  It’s also about purpose—are we changing for the sake of change or are we changing to move the ball forward? And are we actually willing to do the work we say we will?

Change is rarely easy.  I’ve said many times it involves destruction and loss and the release of what we think we know in order to create the vision.  Sometimes it’s a leap of faith into what we think something could be.  As pack animals, we rely on the herd to tell us when something is good and then we all adopt it, but we also know that there may be something better. Sometimes it means letting things get really crappy at first to understand how to do something different. 

The other truth to this is that we are a distracted, lazy, and impatient culture.  We are always looking to be entertained and looking for the next thing to cross our paths, hoping someone else will grant us what we are looking for.  And that works to fuel the consumer system.  We don’t emphasize the need to do it on our own or the ingenuity and fortitude it requires to sustain our visions.  We admire it when we see people like Bezos and Zuckerberg, and Gates but we instill the fear of acting on that kind of vision.  Our system works best on structure and repetition but the human mind is not a machine.  While we may feel comfortable in routine, that is not what we are designed for.  We are meant to revolutionize and galvanize people so that the system works for us—not so we are cogs in the machine.           

To address the impatience, change rarely happens quickly.  At least most things that are worthwhile don’t happen quickly.  That is the way of nature.  There are seasons for everything, and a natural order and time that we have no say in.  It is up to us to align with that flow.  So when we make moves in our lives and don’t see immediate results, we are often triggered that something isn’t working and we think we have to shift again—and to be fair, sometimes we do have to shift.  But we need to train ourselves that it may not be a shift in the opposite direction, it may just be a little tweak.  There is a general slowness that comes with lasting change—slowness in the arrival of it and a slowness of life once you get to the point where you are comfortable with the new ways.

As the world speeds up, I think we are all feeling the pressure and the disconcerting feeling of being propelled forward in a way that we didn’t sign up for.  There are certain things that we can start questioning the need for—like people looking to colonize other planets and wasting resources getting there when we have very real crises here that can be rectified. We can modify the messages we share with people rather than repeating the drudgery and sadness of the day.  Speak new messages.  We can change the story here and now and it can be an improvement.  But in order to do it, we have to change.   

We create conflict when we know things have to change but we behave in the old ways.  For me, it feels like a tear in my brain because my mind struggles to reconcile the need for new behavior while performing the old ones.  This is something that went through my head the other day while discussing some changes at work, and it hit me like a lightening bolt.  We often discuss the desire and need to change but we don’t do anything about it.  We want to change but we don’t want to do anything differently in our lives.  In a corporate environment, it’s even more challenging to reconcile the two because they expect new behavior but they don’t give you the tools to execute and then punish you for not performing.      

I started looking at what is happening in my personal life as well.  I’m in a beautiful new home and I’m working toward a more self-sufficient lifestyle yet I am still reliant on my job and the current system.  I’m terrified to let go because I’m not able to cut all ties yet and my mind struggles with that because I know in order to be successful with my next steps I have to dive all in, but it isn’t ready to sustain me yet. I struggle because I want to spend time with my son but I also need to keep moving on my own work.  We all do things that contradict each other and it is really difficult to break that habit.

I want to speak about having clear lines and boundaries but this goes deeper than that.  I’m working on focusing more on what I can do for others rather than what will make others like me and that means not always being available for what someone thinks they need me to do.  But when it comes to fueling a new lifestyle, we really do straddle the line—at least I know I do.  We live for a time with one foot in each world, one we know and one full of possibility.  We know change requires the big leap, but we also know there needs to be a level of stability before we take that leap.  Even typing this gives me anxiety because I know I’m not a full example of practicing what I preach and I struggle, thinking it makes me a hypocrite. After all, it was the hypocrisy in the corporate world that triggered me.  Perhaps it just gives us common ground because we all do what we have to do to get where we need to go…

I’ve spoken often of faith and I still whole-heartedly believe that the paths we are meant to take will be fully supported.  When you’re taking aligned action, you can leap and there will always be someone there to catch you.  But I will acknowledge the fear that comes up when we are contrasting two different worlds, one of possibility and one we need to sustain us in the mean time.  I want to know why we live in a world that says every opportunity is available to us but consistently puts blocks in place to keep us on the same path.  We have categorized and placed value on certain things people do and have written off certain ventures as unworthy.  So what choice do people have but to do what everyone else does?  We are social animals, we don’t want to be ostracized but we are also spiritual beings and we know we are meant for more.

My gut is that we are meant to destroy ancient systems and beliefs about how the world works.  It used to take centuries for people to believe things differently, but in this day and age, not only do we know what is possible, we are able to create the means to do it.  Beyond that we have the means to spread the message globally.  All of the inflation and demand and forced scarcity is a tactic to funnel our resources when in reality there is more than enough for everyone.  We are meant to be an example of a different way and we are meant to lay the old beliefs to rest.  We are meant to value people more than the system, we are meant to protect people over the system.  Consumerism is great until there aren’t any people left or until you price them out.  People are long lasting—there will always be a population here.  But we can no longer straddle two worlds.

“You can’t learn anything from being perfect,”  Via Millionaire Mentor.  When you think you’ve perfected the world around you, life stagnates.  We stop looking for the opportunities in the situation because we feel we know the way it will go.  We stop looking for alternative directions because we head down the same path.  We stop looking at what else may be coming our way because we think we have it all.  Now, I’m not saying to stop discerning everything that come at you—there is too much coming too fast in this day and age to allow it all to come into your space—but I am saying don’t close off possibilities in your life to spite yourself.

I’m a recovering perfectionist.  I used to think my obsessive planning eased the stress of anything we were doing because I was prepared for any and every eventuality that may come our way.  I also made sure to tell people how they could do the same thing.  I went through a big, “I told you so,” phase.  If people didn’t want to listen, that was on them.  I can see now ego controlled much of that behavior, but I also had a major issue with people not hearing me before we did something and then expecting me to clean up the mess when things went haywire after I told them which way to go.  Of course I got defensive: you had the audacity to insult or patronize me for what I told you could happen and then come to me with your tail between your legs demanding I do more work to clean up your mistake. 

I wielded my perfectionism like a weapon because I tried to avoid situations where I would be cleaning up after someone’s mistake.  It stressed me out so much I despised hanging out with people.  I drew these things toward me like a magnet and I didn’t want the responsibility of fixing things anymore.  So I stood in my lane and I did what I had to, to keep my sanity.  I took a long look at myself and realized that I physically look like someone easy to take advantage of—and there is nothing I can do about that.  I realized that my insecurity sought out situations where I would be accepted and people loved having someone to take on their crap. So I took on the responsibility to be accepted.  It took a long time to realize it wasn’t necessarily that I had to be responsible for cleaning up after people, I needed to learn to be more discerning in the company I kept.  THAT changed everything.

As soon as I cleared up the crowd around me, the need to control slowly began to dissipate.  I’m a pretty open person and I don’t like seeing people struggle so I still draw other’s problems to me, but now I know how to guide them to clean up their own mess.  More importantly, I know how to focus on my own crap rather than trying to change the world around me.  All those years of dysfunctional relationships and me trying to be the perfect example was time spent running circles when I could have been elevating.  The world doesn’t care if you’re perfect, it cares about your movement.  When you’re trying to create a life for yourself, you need to ask what actions will take you forward and what will keep you in place.  People with like-minded focus, keeping your mind open to options, a willingness to learn will get you where you want to go faster than pretending you have it all figured out.

Brene Brown calls perfection a 20 ton shield.  We may look like we have it all together on the outside, but inside we are terrified, carrying the weight of this disguise and drowning under it.  We think we are protecting ourselves when we are holding the weight that will take us under.  It gives us the excuse to stay where we are, the excuse to not start because we aren’t ready, and the excuse to hide something that could be really great for the world.  So put it down.  Put down your expectations of yourself and others and look at what is.  Then make the move.  You’ll see how easily you move without that shield and you will see a whole new world of possibilities open.  As I said above, the universe doesn’t care if you’re doing it perfectly, it cares about the moves that take you forward.  It cares about the openness to what IS and how that shifts the possibilities to what will be.

Today I am grateful to remember.  I’ve spent the last few days going through decades of things, trying to decide what to keep room for and what to release.  I wrote the other day about the things I’ve carried with me and how that is literally crowding my space.  There is an emotional crowding as well.  But as I’ve been seeing the beautiful life I’ve led to this point, it makes sense why I want to hold on.  I have been so fortunate and every little trinket, photo, pin, piece of work, book is a direct link to that time.  I know it isn’t healthy to live in the past—and I tend to romanticize it—but I look at these things and I am so proud of what I’ve accomplished, and that is something I’ve never been.  I locked so many things in boxes and sought out the next opportunity, thinking it was never enough.  Seeing this laid out before me not only brings back the nostalgia, it is a history of what it took to get here.  It’s a reminder that I have always been enough, and while I am always looking for the next thing, I can make peace with what I’ve done.  This life is a blessing.

Today I am grateful to accept.  Like so many, I’ve suffered from imposter syndrome most of my life.  I never quite fit in no matter how hard I adapted to the environment around me yet I managed to connect well.  I see that now.  For all of the awkward moments and the fear and anger of being excluded and mocked for who I am, I have a lifetime of people who have supported me.  And those who don’t (or didn’t) showed me the way to who I am now.  I told myself that I wasn’t enough and that I wasn’t right or that I didn’t belong and I believed it.  Now I see that I was an insecure child, afraid of being alone and ostracized for who I was.  All of that falls away with time.  It may take several decades, but it all falls into place and it is beautiful.

Today I am grateful to understand.  I’ve spent so much time planning and preparing next steps that I missed where I was and I missed the point of being.  I see how much I complicated…everything.  The reality is I never needed to adapt—I need(ed) to awaken.  The word decide means to cut and I was always afraid of cutting something out.  Now I see the act of deciding cuts away the extraneous.  The hard part is letting it go.  We can’t partially move in a new direction.  We have to honor where we’ve been and let it lie.  It’s a death but with every death is a rebirth.  Sometimes we mourn the moments we had and even the person we used to be, but that frees us up to be who we are meant to.  It’s as simple as marking the end and stepping forward.  It hurts, but we heal, and the phoenix emerges.

Today I am grateful to step into discomfort.  The more I understand that my behavior came from what I was told to do, the more I’m questioning what I continue to do and what I teach my son.  I mean, I want to keep my kid healthy and I will do whatever it takes for that.  But I am no longer going to dismiss his wants and his schedule as if mine is better.  For example, if he wants to sleep on the weekend and if he wants to skip breakfast for the day, why does it matter?  He knows when he is hungry and he is able to get snacks himself now.  If we stay up later than we normally do every once in a while, does that really matter if we were having fun spending time together?  Routine is important, but we have to break the monotony every now and then.  And really, if we are meant to break the generational patterns, that means doing things differently.  That is the best teacher we can ask for—just do it.

Today I am grateful to trust.  These next steps in my life will directly confront my fears related to letting go and jumping into the unknown.  I’ve been at this point before and I have consistently backed down from what I knew was on the other side—and the unknown that would come with letting go and accepting the next phase.  While I am still nervous, I am ready to move forward.  There is no point in staying where I’m at mentally any longer.  The fears no longer serve (not that they ever did) and I know that I have been prepared for where I’m going.  I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t ready and if it wasn’t the right thing to do.  It’s exciting.

Today I am grateful for self-care.  I splurged a bit and bought some new skin care and bath products.  These are things I normally don’t spend money on since I follow a pretty basic routine.  But I’m getting older and I recognize that it’s time to take care of myself differently.  It’s a privilege to be able to do that.  It’s also a privilege to be able to say that my body is worth taking care of.  As we transition to new things in life, it requires different behavior.  Taking care of myself is no longer an option—it’s something I need to normalize for myself and others.  We need to normalize loving ourselves and understanding that it isn’t selfish to take care of the vehicle that supports us.  We’d do the same for our cars, yet we run 24/7.  Put in the time to nourish and love your body.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead. 

“Is that really how it went or just how you want to remember it?” via mindset therapy.  Earlier this year I talked about one of my relationships and how this person always seemed to remember things differently than I did—or anyone else who was there.  It drove me insane.  For a long period of time, I had a really good memory to the point it was nearly eidetic—pregnancy hormones took that ability away 6 years ago (still waiting for that to go away, doc). I would literally remember what you were wearing and where you were sitting when you told me something and I could replay the conversation in my head, verbatim.  After pregnancy I still remembered a lot but it wasn’t quite as clear but I really struggled retaining new information.  So I started holding on desperately to what I could remember.  When the pattern this person created used to come up I would become irate because what they said verged on outright lies.  We talked recently and my perspective shifted.

There was a long chunk of this person’s life where they weren’t themselves.  As we discussed that time period, more and more of my part in it was left out.  That was when it hit me: this person isn’t being malicious, they have completely blocked out this portion of their lives.  They weren’t cutting me out—they were trying to cut out what happened.  That took away the pain of believing they wanted me out of their lives but a new pain erupted.  I started to realize that as traumatic as this time was for her, it was just as traumatic for me.  You can’t negate what happened in my life because you wiped it out of yours.

I’ve had other relationships to similar effect, and the table has been reversed.  There are people who will tell me what I did and I will have no recollection whatsoever of the event.  It makes me feel like a different person because how can I have done these things and have no memory?  It doesn’t feel like it’s my life when people tell me what happened from their perspective.  It’s like watching a video of myself: I can see it’s me, but I don’t have ANY recollection of it.  Then I started thinking of my emotions surrounding the actual memories and the perceived memories: In reality, are we all living in a cycle of self-induced trauma?  Are we torturing ourselves by telling a story over and over again?  One that may not have even happened?

I’ve also learned that the conviction of my youth was often mis-spent.  I need my memory now more than ever, especially in this society, so I feel like I wasted a lot of years filling my mind with junk.  I spoke the other day of carrying the memories with me and how I always had to make room to continue to carry it with me.  I realize now that I did that, I held onto the things of my past because I was so afraid of not remembering what happened.  So, on the opposite end of the spectrum is romanticizing what happened and living in a world of imagined perfection, a world of bliss that didn’t exist—at least it may not have played out like that for those around you.    

We are so caught up in the day to day, in the race of what we are told to do that we have lost the ability to remain connected with our bodies and our souls.  We have dampened the ability to hear what our mind is truly telling us.  We live in a state of strain and emotional stress to the point that we can’t tolerate reality.  In order to stop that and get some semblance of what we need, of our bearings, we need to stop.  We need to slow down the stimulation and learn to be with ourselves.  We have great capacity to do things—we just need to listen to how it’s done. Not everything is as it seems—even if we “know” it was.  But if we learn to quiet the rush of our minds, we just might be able to connect with more of what IS.