Saying No

When we think of relationships, remember that we are in relationship with more than just the people in front of us. I saw more than a few of my friends (and me) express their discomfort with their relationship with the word 'no' this week. Communicating our preferences to others can be both exciting and scary. Exciting because we are finally being real and true to self, scary because of anxieties over how we will be perceived by the 'other'.

Ever had someone in an 'authority' position get angry when you expressed your truth? And because you cared about their opinion of you....Well there you have where the anxiety came from. Especially in child-parent relationships.

Invite the relationship with 'no' to grow and be aware of the opportunities to practice as they come into your experience. Remember you asked for the opportunities to practice and that the discomfort is arising due to fear programming, so that you can kiss it goodbye, layer by layer. Saying 'no' to controlling people was the most difficult for me until I realized that saying 'no' to them was saying 'yes' to so much more.

I'm with you on this. One of the people in my life that I had to learn to say 'no' to was not happy at all with this change in me. It took be a couple of years of practice with her because I'd allowed myself to defer to her wants and desires for over 40 years and she did not like the change in me. She was a great teacher. An antagonist. The antagonists in our lives are there to help us flex our muscles. In the body the antagonist muscles must relax for there to be strength in the primary movers. See them this way, they are helping you move forward.

 

 

On Controlling Behaviors

Controlling behaviors are born from a view of separation and unmet needs in childhood. If someone feels helpless, unimportant, and unseen as a child, they may try to be the one in control (power) as an adult. This is why we see cycles of abuse in families such as manipulation and one-sided conversations repeating generation after generation. The children of the abusers grow up to be the ones who control others in order to feel like they matter, in order to be seen, in order to be heard and in order to feel alive. Behind the mask of the controller is an insecure wounded child, full of anxiety, who is just wanting validation and is acting out the role they think will give that to them, because they never learned how to attach to their own source of love and validation.

Being Real

Why is it so hard to admit that we are experiencing resistance to life until after we have had some measure of recovery from it? I am tired of doing it. I am tired of seeing it done. There is no shame in not knowing the answers, no shame in being stuck, no shame in being human. Please be real. So I'll start. I had a breakdown yesterday in the tub. I was angry, I was controlling, I was drowning in survival fears. All it took was saying 'yes' to that, knowing that it was not my natural state. I was bigger than that momentary meltdown. Then out-of-the-blue the outward circumstances shifted. I didn't have to lift a finger. It is ok to be real. I won't stop loving you.

The Inbetween Place

When I hear the old caterpillar words coming out of my mouth, I am beginning to pause and take notice. Asking others things like "where do you live?" when I have no intention of dropping by. Why of course they are not limited to a zipcode.... I forgot. Or asking others, "How old are you?" Of course they are not limited to an age. Too radical you say? Sure, sometimes you need to know that kind of information for practical purposes. I need to know you are over 18 to give you a massage without parental consent. But isn't it lovely to speak from expanded awareness and inner truth. The things I've said about myself were limiting too. I am beginning to not answer questions from others that insult my divine heart. It feels like I'm at an inbetween place right now as the old language deconstructs. And it really isn't about the words as much as the energy behind them anyway.

Art by Regan Mendenhall See More

The Way We Were

 When I was very young, dad would bring me gifts from Europe during his time overseas with the Navy. Gifts like Droste chocolates and a tiny, embroidered, leather purse from Spain that I wore sideways over my small torso. In our early years, he loved to take us on Sunday drives to museums and on tours of gothic revival-style castles and mansions, where I would get scolded for trying to swing on the burgundy, velvet-roped, crowd-control stanchions.  Dad would stop our station wagon at every garage sale and historical site, including old battlefields. We were a family of five on a very low budget, but we were explorers. Happy memories from when we used to drive to Rhode Island to Misquamicut State Beach or to the apple orchard to pick apples with a long pole.  During one of our many trips to the beach our dog, Prince, a black Lab, hiked his leg and peed on my mother. It would be something we teased her about for the entire ride home.  I nearly drowned while swimming in the Atlantic. The waves kept crashing into me as I would surface to get a breath of air and my tiny frame would get sucked under the tow. I swallowed a lot of sea water that day and never told my parents of my near-death experience (fearing that I wouldn’t be allowed to go into the water again if mom found out). Mom was a habitual worrier and we called her a ‘worry wart’ behind her back. I know...ten Hail Mary's.  My father only made 4K per year as a Naval officer during my early years, yet housing was also included.  At one gift shop, he bought me a lucky rabbit’s foot, which gave me allergies. Not so lucky for the rabbit either. My brothers would play with their tiny green army men in the back seat of our station wagon. My oldest brother Rick was very imaginative and really liked strategy games that I could not win, so I preferred riding in the fold-up seat that faced the back window, where I would wave at strangers and pull my imaginary rope to get the friendly truckers to honk at us.


A picture of me and my father visiting my grandparent's in Tulsa with my pony Silver.

Communication from the heart

Words need to match what you really think and feel and there can sometimes be a gap between those two things. That's why I was frustrated, because there was not good integration between my thoughts and my feelings. Communication is starting to feel safe again. I was missing the frequency component. My heart was separated from my words and they felt hollow even to me. I've used words as a shield to steer conversations away from hidden pain rather than using them as a tool to bridge understanding between others too. I heard today in this webinar that the opposite of depression is expression and words should not be used as a substitute for actions. I need to develop my art of communication. Thank you to those who are connecting with me at this time and giving me support as I take these baby steps. http://webinarjam.net/webinar/go/replay/6539/d2614e9408/accessok

Dear Guru Dudes

Dear Guru Dudes, Please lead yourself first and do not tell me how to think or feel. Let me be with my pain if I need to feel it, don't rush me or try to fix me. I don't need fixed, I need to accept myself. Remind me that I am connected to divine wisdom too. Do not go on and on about your great accomplishments and perfect world, I am not impressed. I need to see how you handle your struggles and let downs. Please do not take advantage of others 'mistakes' as opportunities to teach from. Teach from your own 'mess ups' and let me see the gold that you brought forth in your life as a result of going through that holy chaotic process. And I will remind myself of this too on days when I feel like being the 'teacher' is better than being the 'student'. They are both one. Namaste, Guru Dudes.

 

 

Love is here and now

This month brought me some painful, yet wonderful opportunities to see with new eyes. It is easy to fall into the grooves that wore deeply in my mind from dripping, unresolved conflicts that happened before I had the ability to cope. The grooves of lies that I needed something outside of myself to resolve this old pain from old traumas, and that healing would take place somewhere in the future when I had recapped my life with some spiritual meaning and transformed my shadow. The lie that I didn't have what I needed here and now to heal. That I wasn't good enough for love. That I had to remove the unwanted qualities in myself. That my value was somehow tied to my virginity or my sanity or my ability to transform these experiences into something beautiful, and it felt like I fell short again and again. I was trying too hard to find meaning or to find some purpose in the pain. To rise from the ashes. I wasn't rising, I was conceptualizing a new me but that is OK too.  We crawl before we walk. There is infinite love that has been expressing through multitudes of avenues that I had not been aware of before. Thanks to my friend in Costa Rica, Katerina Edwards, for helping me see that my preferences for how love should appear in my life were blocking me and for helping me open to the love in the now moment, in the birds, the breeze; the love in the flowers, the love in the puppy licking his paw. I was too busy focusing on just a few dead ends and wanting them to open their love to me that I was missing the love right in front of me--within me.

 

My Dream of Whitney Houston

Had a dream of Whitney Houston today. I was her representative in the dream and I immediately understood what that meant. I was another her and she was another me. In my humanity, it was I who perceived a fall from grace and innocence. From forsaking my divine potential…yet unawares. But maybe even that is an unnecessary judgment of self. We all crawl before we can walk or run. I just appeared to crawl beyond the normal stage of development and could not keep up with my peer group. Childhood neglect does that. The theater was full of fans, but it was dark there and I could not see their faces. I could not receive the light or their love, because I knew of my past and my secrets. So I just finished watching a video of her singing, “The Greatest Love of All” and I know at the time she didn’t get what she was singing and I tried to sing it with her and it was so bittersweet. I don’t know why I am sharing this, but perhaps it is just for me to express and release more layers of regret and to stand in my own power to move forward.

We Don't Need Another Hero

One of the lessons that I've been teaching myself these past couple of years is that people do not need to be sheltered from the consequences of their fear-based actions and choices. Life has not been sheltering me from mine; and I must admit, though painful, it has been good for learning the lessons that I wanted to learn.

I used to be a 'rescuer' of others and burned myself out by either giving to people who weren't giving to themselves, or by using them as a distraction from feeling my own stuff. One of the best lessons in life is learning how to choose actions that support a healthy and loving level of existance. If my choices are unhealthy, it is going to show up in my life so that I can choose to include love in the equation.