August 2011- Turing Points Update

I recently re-read my post from January of this year entitled: Turning Point, a new start for 2011.

It was powerful to read the message I wrote at the beginning of this year and ever so relevant to my life now, 7 months later.  The end of my entry I quote part of a song from David Wilcox, taking my favorite lines.

And so I will start this post with those lyrics and my closing remarks in m post.

“Your compass is within you

You’re holding out for something real

How long the distance

Getting by and getting through

Your heart’s strong insistence, says nothing else will do

But it’s hard to breath inside some cheap disguise”

-David Wilcox, Turning Point

I make no resolutions or promises in this new year to do or refrain from certain things.  Instead, I take the oath to continue on my journey of life and self discovery, aiming to be a better version of the person I strive to be.  I accept my shortcomings and mistakes as part of my journey.  I strive to focus on my strengths and tune into what I do want to see in my life to draw more of the same to my life. I aim to spend more time writing and thus working on myself which is key to helping anyone else in my life.  I must first put on my own oxygen mask before I put on my child’s.

Every moment in my life is a turning point.  I make a decision in every moment, a decision  of who I now choose to be.  My only goal is to be “the grandest version of the greatest vision ever I held about who I am”.*

Changes in my life….a brief overview

August 24, 2011

I moved here almost 19 years ago, after graduating college, started my first full-time job in my chosen profession,  got married over 17 years ago, had my first child nearly 14 years ago, moved to this home over 10 years ago, had an early miscarriage over 10 1/2 years ago, had my second child 9 1/2 years ago, was able to stay home full-time when my husband sold his business and got full-time work, 4 years ago, he lost his job 3 years ago, had my second child 2 1/2 years ago, returned to work outside the home 1 1/2 years ago,  started writing my mini books for the movement of change almost 1 year ago.

My daughter has had OCD for at least a year and a half.  We have had our dog for almost 10 months.  It has been almost 8 months since I hurt my back.  It has been over 3 months since my husband had his heart attack.

All these experiences in my life have been turning points.  They have been changes in my life that have had positive and negative impact upon my life.  And with most if not all of these experiences, there has been an opportunity in each challenge and the decisions I made, further impacted my life from that moment on.

I will now  relate my own experiences as they relate to the lyrics from this song.

“your compass is within you”

The answers are within me.  I must tune into myself to see them.  In order to help my child who has been experiencing OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, an anxiety disorder, I must first look at myself and be in tune with my own feelings, beliefs and my authentic voice.  Sure I need to research and reach out to others to help her but just as important, I need to turn inward and use my own intuition and consciousness to know the best decisions to make and the path to follow to help her recovery.

“You’re holding out for something real”

I pause as I read this one.  What first comes to mind is my writing.  And really living the life as I choose to live it, working from home and doing what I love and earning a living from it, spending my time  doing what matters most to me.  Yet, as I write even that, I know there is something deeper to this.  I am holding out. I haven’t realized my dream of earning a living doing what I love, writing, parenting, finding a path to earn income from my writing.

Ah-ha!

I was holding out,  with my writing, and then I found the Message of Change program and dove in head first and immersed myself in the process for over a month writing a mini book to share a message of truth with the world.  In fact, it was after I enrolled in that program August of 2010, that I finally started my blog here and begin sharing my writing with the world- in an open manner where others could read what I was writing.  Up until that time, I had written many things but had not yet really shared my thoughts , my best writing, with others.

As I write this, I feel myself coming back on path again.  I have just brought such clarity to myself and my writing.  It is time to move forward after being stalled for to long- well, that is a judgement on myself, let me rephrase that- after a delay, to the process of writing my mini book or books.  And I don’t really know what that will look like or how but I know that coming here each week to blog is foremost the best step I can take.

“How long the distance”

I am nearly 42, and will begin my 43rd year of life. Everything in my life has brought me to write here and now.

“Getting by and getting through”

Yes, many times in my life I have functioned in this state of getting through the day, getting past where I was from high school to having to work full-time when I wanted to be home full-time with my newborn child and surviving life after my husband had a heart attack.    Lately, especially over the past month or two, as my husband has recovered more from his heart attack and has been able to return to the level of activity he had before May 4, 2011, I have found myself feeling like I was just” getting through life”.  And it was this feeling of just going through the motions that brought me back to myself.  I knew deep within that I did not want to continue to live in this method.  I wanted to live my life more fully and intentionally and with more meaning.

“Your heart’s strong insistence, says nothing else will do”

When my husband suffered a massive heart attack and cardiac arrest, and lived, I knew more deeply than I have ever felt, that I needed to write through the experience.  I knew I needed to write,  I “had to”.  Writing is more than putting words on paper for me, it is the way my soul breaths.

And that thought leads right into the next line:

“But it’s hard to breath inside some cheap disguise”

It is hard to breath, to live fully, when I am not being who I really am, when I am not being my authentic self and expressing authentic self.  Parenting from my heart, living from love (not fear) and expressing my inner truth through writing that I share openly.

 

And I end with David Wilcox’s words again:

“you can live your life completely

that true path you’re hear to find

Or stay scared, leave your destiny behind

It’s right now, here’s the turning point in time”

 

“just one thing can kill this dream

To compromise your vision”

“we find our truth, or live some lie”

“It rides on this decision”

-David Wilcox, Turning Point

Letting Go of “My Story”… of loss

Grief is a multi-faceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something to which a bond was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, and philosophical dimensions. While the terms are often used interchangeably, bereavement often refers to the state of loss, and grief to the reaction to loss.- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grief

Yes, I just quoted Wikipedia, this is my blog, not a research paper.

I choose that definition because of the last statement ” grief”  “the reaction to loss”.

Merriam- Webster defines it as “deep sadness especially for the loss of someone or something loved”.

Sadness is a reaction to the loss. There are many other reactions to loss, other feelings and states of being.  I think they are missing something.  I personally think Wikipedia does a much better job of defining it than Merriam-Webster.  It is muti- faceted.

And I am going to go one step further and define it as reaction to change in one’s life.

We can grieve the loss of a job, change in our financial situation, change in our life roles, and so many other large and small changes in our life.

Change

It’s time for a change…

Today, I decided to let go of my story of loss.  I wrote out all of my losses over the past several years, all the big ones, and decided I would let go of “my story of loss”.  What does that mean? I don’t know but what comes to mind is Debbie Ford.  And so I googled to jog my memory and found this:

http://www.debbieford.com/media/NewAgeRetailerArticle.pdf

The following is taken from an article in the  New Age Retailer from Jan/ FEb 2007.  The author and editor in chief is Kathy McGee.

You will find the following starting on the bottom left of page 5:

The interviewer, McGee asks Debbie Ford how does she get rid of her self- criticism and self- doubt.

Debbie Ford replies:

I haven’t gotten rid of it.  When I dip into my story (the negative internal dialogue that keeps us stuck), it’s there anytime I want to revisit it.  It’s part of the collective unconscious, it’s part of our humanity. But today, I know that’s the inside of my story.

When I feel like I’m being self-critical or insecure, I know that I’m deeply in my humanity. Inside our humanity, inside our story, it’s all fear-based.  We compare ourselves, think there’s something wrong with us- we’re not smart enough, pretty enough, don’t have the right whatever.

I try to pop myself out of my story and into my divine self.  I ask myself, “What do I have to do right now?  Do I need to get on my hands and knees and pray?  Do I need to meditate?”  it’s as simple as asking, “If I totally trusted and were in connection with the Divine right now, what would I hear?”  Start to listen to that new frequency, and it raises you right out of your story.

I think what you just asked me is so vital to the process, because most people are trying to get rid of their self-doubt, their self-criticism, and their fears.  you can’t get rid of it.  It’s part of your humanity.

And then the interviewer, McGee, sums up the rest of it when she adds, “And by trying to get rid of it, we’re creating more fear and digging ourselves deeper into our story.”

And Debbie goes on about fear saying that it is a healthy emotion.  She says to identify the feeling of fear and ask what it looks like, what it feels like in order to give fear its own personality, different from your own.

“Anything we are identified with has control over us. So, if you’re just scared and in fear, fear has total control.  If you can make it separate from yourself, you will have control over it.  If you give fear a different name, face, smell, color, or size from yours, it becomes something other than you.  You can say, “OK fear, I see you.  What do you need from me to lie down and be peaceful?””

Today, I wrote the post, What Does it all mean?, and now I can understand that I was “in my humanity”.  I was also in my story and therefore in fear.  What is wonderful is that I have a better understanding of what it means to “let go of my story”.  I have only read Debbie Ford’s First book, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, but here I am understanding better what I sought to do when I first posted the title for this blog.  The beauty is that I had no idea where I would go with this when I wrote the title.  I only knew that I was in fact, ready to let go of my story of loss.  I used prior knowledge and found my answer.

I don’t have to get rid of my story but I can move away from it. I can also see when I am “in my story” and use my tools to step outside of it if I choose.  No matter what, I don’t have to beat myself up about any of it.  I can be ok with being in my story and with choosing to move out of it.  Because I choose, when I am consciously choosing, to move out of fear, I know that I can have more moments of moving out of my story and stepping back from it.  Even Debbie Ford, author of 7 books, speaker and founder of a Life Coaching Business, admits to still  having dark days.  It is a process.

What does it all mean?

What does it all mean?….  A conversation with myself

I was writing on an online journal community that I belong to, when I felt myself fading out and wondering, “What does it all mean?”

I knew I needed to pause and think about that some more.  I immediately knew I needed to write more about that. So here I am.  Now what?

I have been in a ‘funk” lately, a sort of semi-depressed, laissez- faire, just going through the motions way of living.  I know there is anger that goes along with it, anger about everything that has happened from my husbands heart attack to our financial situation.  And stress over finances and my own health and my husband’s health and my children and their needs and issues.

Reading over that list, I see that what is really going on is that I have way too much on my plate and so I have been avoiding or maybe just pushing through and doing what needs to be done.  When I put it that way, it doesn’t sound so bad because after all, I am trying despite all that is going on in my  life.  Sure, I can think of things I am not doing, but hey, there are many things I am not doing because there is only so much I CAN DO.  Let me say that again, to myself,  THERE IS ONLY SO MUCH I CAN DO.

I needed to hear that. And I don’t mean it in a defeatist way.  I am functioning as a human, having a human experience, however I phrase it, I am human.  Sure, I believe I am really a spiritual being.  But maybe right now, I am just human. Well, sure I am more than that yet maybe right now.  Hmmm… I don’t know.

As I wrote that, I began to wonder because I don’t feel like I am particularly grounded or functioning from a very “in my body” state of being.

This is making my head spin.

I am more confused now than when I started.

Let me go back to my question, What does it all mean?

Nothing.

It means nothing.

I put meaning into my own life.  I give it all meaning.

Wow, that feels  too heavy,like  too much.  Why do I have to put all the meaning there?

Maybe I do not need to come up with an answer but just stay in the question.

I am in a state of wondering right now.  I am living and doing things and wondering, What does it all mean?

I feel this urge to ‘fix it”- to bring myself out of this undefined state of uncertainty.  I feel troubled that I am in this place.   And yet, part of me, is ok with it.  Part of me is OK with not knowing and being in the question.

It is temporary.

This too shall pass.

I can be ok with being here right now, in the question.

So much has happened and so much is going on in my life and it has left me wondering,

What does it all mean?