How many times in your life has it not been working for you? Where you don’t want to get up and face the day? Where you are stuck in a job that you hate or a relationship that is suffocating you? How many times in your life has it come to a stand still and you knew something needed to change and maybe you even considered checking out of life all together? How many times do you sit in a private head space, navigating all the places you are wrong, that you have screwed up and where the misery is definitely yours and deserved?
I HAVE DONE THAT A LOT……. and…… I STOPPED BEATING MYSELF UP……..
I CHANGED with the use of many different tools. The most dynamic tool in my toolbox, is me. Yes… Me, my capacity to choose me even if it takes ten years to do it.
I hear this all of the time, “you don’t get it because you have never been there, your life is great.”
You know what, my life IS AMAZING and YOUR LIFE IS AMAZING… It’s all perspective…
and…
I have experienced things you would never guess or know or consider based on my life today.
When I left my second husband, my best friend said to me… How can you be so optimistic about dating and men after all you’ve been through. I had to think about that. In this reality I should be bitter, hateful, vindictive and so on. I am not.
My son recently told me that he doesn’t get how I can be friends with both of my ex’s and I thought about that and what that should look like in this reality.
Is it all the years I have ventured into the core of my being and shed light in the dark corners. Is it all the years I looked at myself from the place of introspection and owned my behaviors? Is it that I have a gift to see the best in people even when they are not choosing that path? Is it the tools of all the modalities I have studied?
Maybe it is a combination of all of the above and that, everything changes all of the time whether we like it or not. Even people change. Neither one of my ex’s are the same as they were when I was married to them and although they may still do life in a similar way, I have changed and that in itself, shifted everything.
Resisting the change is where I find myself the most frustrated. When things are happening at light speed, the way I like it, and I can’t see through the darting stars coming at me, I stop breathing, stop acknowledging, stop creating and trusting…..and that blocks everything.
and
In all my experiences, there was something in me, something that just wouldn’t give up, a light, that at times, was just a glimmer and always, just bright enough to see.
Do you see that in your story?
- There was a day in my life when I was pregnant, alone and lost. After spending a year totally checked out, not caring if I lived or died and doing a lot of things to promote death. Choosing to have my son actually saved my life. In the midst of crisis, not in a relationship, not even sure how I would afford to have a child, not sure how I would make it all work and with all the turmoil in my family, I still chose him and somewhere deep in me, knew I could do it. Getting pregnant was the light at the end of a dark tunnel of disaster. He saved my life, called me to the table to face myself, my demons and everything I was running from. Choosing to take the responsibility of another life regardless of what everyone’s opinion was, regardless of the fact that my grandparents never spoke to me again, that my dad shared his disappointment through some harsh and ugly words and I was too sick to work, I had the push I needed to demand more of me.
- There was a day in my life when I woke up naked in a closet covered in bruises, two black eyes and little memory of the night prior. A day where I stood in my underwear being photographed for pictures that I could use later, later when I was strong enough to leave. That was the gift, my capacity to see in the middle of trauma, a future where I would choose me.
- There was a day in my life when I didn’t get out of bed and I actually wanted to die. I have told this story many times, you can read more about that here. She woke me up, her little voice calling me back to reality and asking me to get myself together.
- There was a day in my life when I drove circles around the courthouse just considering the idea of restraining orders because the thought of actually getting one terrified me. The thought of actually breaking free meant I had to stop hiding and find a way back to me. Parking, getting the papers, filling them out and turning them in… That awakened something in me, resurrected a strength that was long forgotten.
- There was a day in my life when I sat in a room with a group of other people and embraced my inner trauma, pulling myself out of the of torture, taking responsibility for my self, my life and my future. Choosing this path, sticking it out even through all the moments I was ready to quit, that was the perseverance calling me for more.
- There was a day in my life when I sat in a therapists office and listened to my husband tell me he had a secret life. I went numb with this information and it took me to all the places that I had been, my healing journey, my exposed secrets and the support that assisted me. I chose in that moment, to be there for him, to be his friend and support him. I didn’t allow myself to experience the situation as his wife and that opened the door to a process of forgiveness that lowered all of my barriers and asked me to stand in vulnerability of my life’s journey. At the end of this raw year, I fell in love with me.
- There was a day when I sat alone and decided I would spend the rest of my life with a man I loved, whom I never wanted to be intimate with again and then, there was the day I decided to leave, even though I was in love with him.
Falling in love with myself was greater than the sacrifice I had been, shinning a light through my dark tunnel exposed on all the places I was actually alive, brilliant and worthwhile and in that, staying in sacrifice was no longer an option.
It’s interesting, once you know anything, you can’t unknown it and whether you choose change or not, change chooses you and nothing is ever the same. What we do with it all is where ease comes through.
I did a lot of different things to get through, learn, understand and be me over the years. Some of those things were digging in deep to the core of my being, sweating, crying and trekking through the muck of trauma and pain, it was worth it and it worked for me. It was also hard. I did other things that were easier, fun and dynamic that gave me more of me and when I had my Bars® run for the first time, it did all of that and cleared the chatter in my brain that held me hostage on the hamster wheel of figuring it all out.
When your world is crashing down, what are you aware of that you are trying to hide from? Are you choosing from awareness or trying to go back to unaware and familiar?
Are you choosing what is heavy and trying to make it light? Does it feel like taking a brick and trying to turn it into a cotton ball? That doesn’t work. The whole point of awareness is to give you choice and what ever you choose is okay…
Michelle
