Grief Is Really Just Love

This quote really spoke to me because somehow when anything really hard enters my life, this is how I always handled it.  In my mind I have this room and it has shelves with boxes of all sizes.  When I am overwhelmed with pain or any other negative emotion I don’t know how to handle, I go into this room and pull down a box and put the story I am telling myself inside of the box.  Then I let the story go.

When some time has passed to where I feel I can handle some of that pain, I will pull down the box, work through what I can and then put the remainder inside a smaller box.  I do this over and over until one day it is just an empty box.  The pain is gone, the story has “the end” typed onto it.

Grief is like the ocean; it comes in waves, ebbing and flowing.  Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming.  All we can do is learn to swinm” – Vicki Harrison

Those boxes are my way of swimming.

When deaths nightmare enters your life, people will ask you – “How are you?”  And when they ask you, you will quickly filter through a million answers.  And the one you will land on most of the time is “I’m fine.”

I’m fine, are two words when strung together actually say the opposite.  They say I am lying to you, because it is too hard and too much to tell you how I am really doing.  And really you don’t want to know, because then you will be at a loss of how to respond.  So, instead I am going to say, “I’m fine” and you will be relieved of any burden to fix it or make me feel better.

When someone has lost a loved one, instead of asking how they are feeling, ask can I give you a hug?  Will you give me the honor and privilege of letting me support you even if it is only for a minute?  Can I tell you from my heart that I know your heart is breaking and just let me hold you for a minute or two so that you can borrow some of my strength and love to carry you just a little further down this dark hallway?

“Grief is a solitary journey.  No one but you can know how great the hurt is.  No one but you can know the gaping hole left in your life when someone you know has died.  And no one but you can mourn the silence that was once filled with laughter and song.  It is the nature of love and death to touch every person in a totally unique way.  Comfort comes from knowing that people have made the same journey, and solace comes from understanding how others have learned to sing again” – Helen Steiner Rice

No one can grieve for you.  But they can grieve with you.  No one will ever fill the hole that has been shot through your heart, but they can help heal the edges of it.  No one can fill up all of the silence when you mind reaches for the sound of the voice that is missing, but they can help you to hear the voices that are still there.  This journey of loss is yours alone, as each of us grieve in different ways for those we lose.  Each loss is a totally different kind of grief.

But the comfort comes from listening to those who have a similar story, a similar loss.  When my mother died, I found so much comfort from words I remembered from an NPR interview.  They were talking about grief, and they said, “grief is a hole you walk around during the day and fall into at night.”  During the day, you can be busy and keep the grief locked up behind a fence.  But at night that grief slips through the fence, slides under the door, and creeps up to engulf you so tightly that you can’t breathe.

A few weeks ago, one of my nieces lost her son to suicide.  For our family, this is a new grief.  A devasting kind of loss, because it naturally makes you ask why?  Why didn’t I know he would do this?  Why didn’t I question how he was really feeling?  Why couldn’t I tell what was going to happen?  Why didn’t anyone see it coming?

There is the infamous hindsight, where every action, every sentence he said is questioned – was that a clue?  So much self-blame to go around.  And none of that self-blame is true.

“There are losses that rearrange the world.  Deaths that change the way you see everything, grief that tears everything down.  Pain that transports you to an entirely different universe, even while everyone else thinks nothing has changed” – Morgan Devine

They say that there are things in life that will change you.  Some things like music and art open the world up to you in ways that can never be taken away.  They fill your soul and help you to lead a life of passion and joy.  Art and music can open you up to every single emotion.  It can bring you up into the heavens.  It can take you into the darkness and threaten to drown your soul.

There are other things in life, like love that change you forever, as well as being subject to loss.  And loss is in a category of itself in being a life changer.

When you experience loss, it is important to remember that you are a brave soul.  That this is a battle that feels never ending, but that is losses lie.  It is losses untruth that keeps you drowning in grief, when in fact if you just took a moment and tried, you would find you can stand up and bring your head up above the water.  You could take a deep breath and just breathe.  Water isn’t what drowns you.  What drowns you is forgetting to stand.

“I don’t believe that time heals everything.  It helps, it does.  After a while you won’t cry about it all the time.  It won’t consume your every thought anymore.  You do get better.  You’ll laugh, and smile.  You’ll even have a lot of great days.  But it’s still there.  You just learn to live with it.  This is how things are now.  So, you get used to it.  But that doesn’t mean it ever goes away.  It’s still deep in your soul.  Still makes you cry when you think about it too much.  Still stops you in your tracks when something reminds you of it.  You’ll have those moments when your heart hurts really bad.  I don’t think time heals everything.  Sure, it gets better, but it’s a scar that never goes away.  A broken bone that still aches on rainy days” – Melinda Caroline

The thing to remember is that life changes.  Every moment it changes.  Years ago, after my nephew was murdered, and our family was struggling to understand what had happened I came across a story from a grief counselor.  She was talking to a woman whose baby had died.  It had been close to a year, and she just wasn’t getting any better in dealing with her grief.  She finally sought help because she thought, “I’m doing grief wrong.”

The counselor told her, “The amount of grief you feel, is comparable to the amount of love you had for your child.”  There is no right way or wrong way to grieve.  There is only your way.

“You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.” – J Rowling, Harry Potter

What is important is that you don’t get stuck.  It doesn’t matter how many stages of grief that you go through.  There isn’t any kind of order that you have to follow.  What is important is that it flows.  Like water it flows toward a destination.  It might become hard like ice.  It might be hot and angry like steam.  It might be like a flood or a simple drip.  What’s important is that it flows.  Because what it does is remake your life.  You become forever changed by it.  Just don’t forget the second part.  When it remakes your life, it begins a new chapter.

Be Yourself, An Original Is Worth More Than A Copy

Revised 4/13/22

Mother Nature freely expresses herself every day, and she doesn’t apologize for it. Most of us learn at an early age what we are taught as “good manners”. Good girls are seen, but not heard. Don’t express a different opinion. Never contradict an authority figure, even if they are wrong. And so on, and so on.

“Sometimes our lives have to be completely shaken up, changed, and rearranged to relocate us to the place we are meant to be” – Unknown

Have you ever been in a building like a lighthouse when a really strong storm comes into shore?  The whole cliff shudders and shakes.  The waves are so strong it feels like it can actually tear apart the bedrock foundation of the lighthouse.  Sometimes you have so bought into being the story of pretending to be someone else, that you have totally forgotten who you really are.  It takes a severe storm to shake up the foundations and uproot your life.  It is time to bring you back to who you are, and what your purpose in life is.

I love the writing of Don Miguel Ruiz and his book The Four Agreements. The Four Agreements have more to them than this, but this gives you a taste of them.

Be impeccable with your word– I love how it includes not speaking against yourself. How many times have you called yourself dumb or stupid or something equally demeaning?

Don’t take anything personally– What people say and do is a projection of their own reality, not yours.

Don’t make assumptions– This is for me the most important thing, as you assume you know what someone else is thinking and they think they know what you are thinking and the truth is that most of the time we are having two totally different conversations.

Always do your best– The only way to avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret is to do your best.  I love that saying, when you know better, you do better.

Don’t be afraid to be who you are.  Don’t let fear convince you that you are less than you really are.  What people think about you is really none of your business. 

What you think about yourself should be your primary concern.  Be the best you can be, and when you make a mistake (like we all do) then own it.  Clean up anything that needs to be cleaned up and move on.  Don’t pack it in your suitcase and carry the weight of it around for the rest of your life.  That kind of baggage creates limitations and keeps you in a cage, afraid to be who you are. 

When you have reached the place, where you no longer require validation from others as to who you are, what your gifts are – that is when you become the most feared person on the planet.

“If you find yourself asking yourself (and not your friends) Am I really a writer?  Am I really an artist?  Chances are you are.  The counterfeit innovator is wildly self confident.  The real one is scared to death” –  Steven Pressfield

Reveal your authentic essence, the part of you that isn’t watered down.  This is what makes you a “one of a kind” authentic original human being.  The world, especially the social networking world. will judge you for who you are. So why not just be what makes you happy?  Be proud of who you’ve become.  Hug yourself with both arms and be passionate about how you live your life.

When you pretend to be someone that you aren’t, you are only hurting yourself.  This habit you have of saying what you think others want to hear, is what leads to so much miscommunication.   The mask you put on talks to the mask he puts on.  So no one talks to the real people behind the mask.  Miguel Ruiz really speaks to the removing of these masks you have created in your life.

“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything.  Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place” –  Unknown

• What are your dreams, visions, your life purpose?
• Are you on track to bring them into reality and complete them?
• Have you allowed distractions to sidetrack you?
• Are you unclear on what your life purpose is or how to bring it into reality?

Remember that LemonadeMakers is here to walk alongside you.  We love the deep conversations 🙂

Notions of Grief

Notions is a word that reminds me of creative arts.  Sewing, paper arts, crocheting/knitting and so on. Tools that you use to make something beautiful and wonderful.

The dictionary says notion is also: “a conception of or belief about something,” and/or “an impulse or desire, especially one of a whimsical kind.”

In the case of this quote a notion is a belief about what grief is all about.  It isn’t something that is just outside of you – or inside of you.  It’s both about how you are inside of yourself and how you impact the world outside of yourself.

It’s about vision, both internal and external.  And like looking through a kaleidoscope, what you see outside of you changes each time you turn the mechanism inside.  For you, each of those moving pieces inside the kaleidoscope are made up of your personal stories.

• the stories you tell yourself about who you are – your definition of who you see yourself as being, your self-worth.
• the stories you tell yourself about your experiences in life – did they happen to you or for you?
• the stories you tell yourself about the roles you have in your life – do they reflect the true you are or they an act?
• the stories you tell yourself about what your potential is – are you living up to it or running away from it?

In a recent article in the Washington Post, they were discussing political views around Russia in a recent poll.

“It goes to show you that in terms of public opinion, people remain in their silos” Vera Zaken, an expert on the intersection between information and foreign policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me.  “They’re going to believe whatever truth or disinformation fits their views.”

I thought this was so interesting in how we all live our lives.  We live them filtering out anything that doesn’t support our beliefs.  It’s as though we don’t hear or see anything that contradicts our worldview.  Like we have this force field bubble around ourselves that bounces out any contrary beliefs, thoughts and only lets in what will confirm our beliefs.

This is what change, loss, and grief is about.  It’s an opportunity to examine your beliefs.  To peek out of the filters that keep you confined in your comfort zone.  To see the possibilities of something else.  To see the potential that is waiting right across that line of the comfort zone.  To admit in new truths and let go of whatever no longer serves you.

Like shedding an old skin, the process of grieving requires you to transform your life.  To alter in some way, from who you used to be into a new person, a new self-definition.

These beliefs you protect are really all about who you have been told all of your life that you are.

• Smart – or not smart.
• Pretty – or not pretty.
• You let others in – or you keep them from getting close.
• What you draw your meaning in life from – a job, a spouse, a parent, etc…,

Watch any good detective mystery show.  The main character is always a flawed hero in some way.  Yes, they catch the bad guy, but their motivation to do so comes from a brokenness.  Going back to the main quote, whatever happened to you, became an altered part of you.

One of my favorite stories, is about how you throw a rock out into the water.  It creates ripples that expand out to every part of the shore, until slowly the ripples fade back into the still calm water of the lake.  It looks like nothing happened.  The lake has the same water line, as the rock wasn’t large enough to create an impact to the water levels.  Yet the lake has forever been changed, as at the bottom lies a rock that wasn’t there before.

The stories you tell yourself about your life are like that rock.  Each story is created by the impact of that rock as it breached the surface of you, the lake.  As time passes, the ripples of grief you experienced die down and everyone around you thinks you are fine.  You even think that you are fine.  But you are changed forever by the rock that impacted you.

You experience a form a grief for every rock.  Some rocks are very small – someone hurt your feelings.  Others are larger, like losing a job, or not getting the promotion you worked so hard to get.  Then you have a huge boulders of grief from the death of a loved one or a divorce.

Some rocks are just part of life, like the kids going off to college or moving out to get married.  Retirement.  Things that are part of “normal” life experiences, that aren’t viewed as life altering but really are.  Because what they do, is alter or change how you view yourself.

The empty nester wonders who am I, if I no longer have kids to mother on a daily moment by moment basis?  The retired person wonders who am I if I am not “this job title”?  They both wonder what do I do with the rest of my life?  What is my purpose if I am no longer …, (what I have identified myself as)?

These rocks are not problems to be solved.  There is no mystery to them.  They are just the reality of your life.  These rocks are experiences that shape who you are.  It is what you do with the rocks that matter.

So, enter into the world of unfiltered “what if’s” – take out a piece of paper and write down 4 things that have happened to you recently.  And start writing out possibilities of what you can paint on your rock.

• What if…,
• What if…,
• What if…,
• What if…,

The easiest way to do this is through imagination and curiosity.  Take any experience that happened to you from conception through the age of 18 that you believe has impacted your life in some way.

If you are really honest with yourself, you will be able to find some silver lining to any experience.  I read years ago something that has profoundly changed how I view all such experiences and it was around forgiveness.  It took me a long while to incorporate this into my belief systems, because for many years it was just too big of a leap.

It is around the concept of how you come to earth to experience things.  And you travel in this soul group, there are members that volunteer to be the catalyst for some of your life experiences.  How that person loved you so much, they volunteered to provide either the negative or positive experience required as part of living your purpose here on earth.  The author stated that if you can find yourself in this space, then you can honestly say “thank you” for what happened.  It incorporates the saying, “life happens for you, not to you.”

What this belief allowed me to see was a different way of looking at what I have experienced in my life.  From there I could see how each thing in my life has built upon what was already there.  If some of those “steps” had been missing, then I wouldn’t have made it through some of the harder things.  It was like I was being trained for an Iron Man – each thing strengthened some part of me.  I didn’t see the patterns of strength training being connected, but when I look backwards, I can see how everything is connected.

When you see how everything is connected, what you realize is that removing any piece would cause the whole construct to fall apart.  Each piece however painful at the time, was necessary.

When you first start training for an Iron Man, you probably experience sore muscles.  You probably received blisters.  You experienced the moment when you thought you couldn’t take one more step, and then broke through a barrier and found you could go another mile.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.  Only through experience of trail and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired and success achieved – Helen Keller

What if…, every time I experienced a breakdown, I smiled and started celebrating the breakthrough?

Growing Beyond Your Current Life

I recently watched “Around the World in 80 Days” a new movie adaptation of Jules Verne’s book.  The story is the typical hero’s journey.  Transformation of life is a requirement of the hero’s journey.  It is not only the main hero’s transformation that is necessary, but the whole cast of characters around him also go through life changing transformations.

Phileas Fogg, the hero of the story.  A man who’s spent the last 20 years existing instead of living his life.  Jean Passepartout who needs to learn to trust both life and those around him.  Miss Abigail “Fix” Fortescue who just wants to break out of the stereotypes and be treated as a liberated woman and be judged accordingly.  Bernard Fortescue who needs to deal with past mistakes and become a better man because of them.  Nyle Bellamy who needs to transform the most but doesn’t.

If you were to travel around the world in the shortest time frame possible today, you would have to make conscious choices of how that would work.

• Would you fly?
• Would you travel by water?
• By car?
• By camel?
• What would be the order of countries that you would go through?
• Contingency plans would need to be made.
• Rules and requirements would need to be in place.

Honesty with yourself is what is necessary for transformation.  Phileas Fogg stopped living in school when he was bullied.  When he was engaged and was going to leave his comfort zone and go on a real journey outside of England, he allowed the bully to make him so afraid that he left his fiancé on the boat and returned to his home.  He spent the next 20 years blaming that moment for his lack of courage.

If it wasn’t for the courage of his servant Passepartout and the spunky reporter, he would have once again abandoned his need for transformation and returned to his comfort zone.  Slowly as his journey takes him around the world, he sparks the creativity needed for transformation and while he many times goes back to the comfort zone, each time he stretches is a little further, a little wider.

When he reaches New York and has the conversation with his ex-finance the final piece moves into his transformation.  He realizes that he had fixed his lack of happiness on her, and that she in fact was not where his happiness lived.  To have real transformation in your life – this is a critical tool to have.  Honesty is when you realize that everything you want or need in your life resides in you.  Not someone else, not someplace else, not in anything outside of you.

Once you have stepped into being real with yourself, the next step is to release everything that doesn’t serve you.

This happens for Phileas when he has arrived back at the club in England and confronts Nyle and exposes him for the man he really is.  It happens for Passepartout when they were shipwrecked.  It happens for Abigal when she meets Jane Digby and then later confronts her father.  It happens for Bernard when his daughter tells him she knows what he did and then he later is told she has died.

There is a point in each and every hero’s journey that you take, where the pivot of the transformation takes place.  In most cases it is a point of failure.  A point of falling from grace.  A death, divorce, being fired from a job – something that devastates your soul.  It is the time of letting go of what no longer serves you – because it has just failed you when you needed it most.

For Phileas he saw this happen time and time again.  There were some intentional failures due to agents trying to make him fail.  There was the failure of “England” his country of origin putting him into jail, flogging him. The failure of friends with Passepartout and Abigail being true to him.

The journey always gives you grace in return.  The grace of forgiveness in acknowledging that you are imperfect and those who love you are imperfect too.  The grace of revitalizing you to continue your journey to the end of that destination and realizing that your journey isn’t over.

The scene at the end, where they get curious about a story being told around London, about a mysterious ocean creature that may in fact be something mechanical.  It is the realization that curiosity will keep us moving forward.  That it will being us new adventures.  That you in fact are living the “never ending story” in your own life as you seek out new ways to reveal your hidden potential.

There is a process that many use in business, where at the end of task you do a “postmortem”.  You analyze what went right, wrong and sideways as the task was worked on and completed.  You do this to see what lessons have been learned.

In a transformation journey you do the same thing.  It is a matter of “unlearning”, which is really false assumptions of what you thought was happening, versus what was really happening.

False assumptions are a rush to judgment.  Someone makes a comment, and you take it the wrong way.  You assumed because of your own filters/thoughts that they meant one thing when in reality they meant something totally different.   It’s how the majority of arguments and hurt feelings happen, simple miscommunication.

Only when you have released all of the incorrect data/thoughts that you have can the last piece of transformation happen.

As you close the door on this journey, a postmortem helps to cement in the new learning, by releasing the old bias, thoughts and judgments.  This happens because you have become more intimately knowledgeable about someone or something.

In the case of the three main characters in “Around the World in 80 Days”, they are about to enter into a new journey of transformation because they have a new destination to go on.  In this second journey, they will have the benefit of all of the learnings from the first journey.  They built strong friendships with each other.  They know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and how to support each other in the journey.

Most importantly they know more about themselves because they released the false narratives, they had about themselves.  They unlearned the false stories they had about who they are and why they are going on the journey.  They learned to trust themselves.

The journey is what is important.  It is what leads to transformation.  It is what makes life worth living.  It is why you are here.

If you are ready to take the next step in life’s journey, get ready to get uncomfortable.  Get ready to unravel the false truths you have in your life.  Remember that in each transformation you are completely remade from the caterpillar to the butterfly.  While it can be painful, it is also beautiful, amazing, and it is always worth the cost.

Living Your Life From A Place Of Curiosity

Albert Einstein traced the root of his accomplishments to curiosity.  What triggered Sir Isaac Newton to discover gravity from a falling apple, as apples had been falling from trees hundreds of years.  Had no one ever got curious as to why the apples fell in a downward motion?  How much of the world around you, do you observe with wonder?

Awe is a part of wonder and curiosity.  Psychology Today has described awe as “an overwhelming, self-transcendent sense of wonder and reverence in which you feel a part of something that is vast, larger than you and that transcends your understanding of the world.”

Taking a walk in nature can result in being awestruck.  I love that word.  If I am going to be struck with something, please let it be awe.  To suddenly see something with new eyes will send you off with a sense of adventure.  To me it is like the photo of these two boys.  They will question everything they see.  They haven’t yet entered into the age where they think they already know everything.  They will ask a lot of “why” questions seeking to understand.  They will see things in a different way, because they don’t yet know the “rules” of how something is supposed to work.  And that is where the sense of discovery, wonder, and curiosity begins.  It is the beginning of an adventure.

“Noticing the world as constantly changing can help us dance with the flow of life.” – Sarah Jane Shangraw

In reading an issue of Mindfulness Magazine, they stated the following steps in taking a walk in nature what will bring “awe” into your life.

• turn off the electronics on your person.
• believe you are going to experience awe during your walk
• use all of your senses in discovering that sense of awe
• go someplace different – a new park, or a different path
• look at the details, see the veins of the leaves, the depressions in the bark or look up into the higher branches instead of just seeing what’s at eye lever
• slow down, powerwalking is not a voyage of discovery
• pay attention to the details, listen into what you thought was silence and hear the breeze stir the leaves, rattle the branches or hear the small creatures digging into a hiding place

Curiosity and exploration floods your brains with dopamine, which makes you feel happier.  It gives you higher levels of positive emotions, lower levels of anxiety, and greater satisfaction with your life.  It’s a skill that can be developed. It is a habit of applying wonder, and feeding your desire to learn more.

Curious people want to try new things – so next time you go to a restaurant, try a food you have never eaten before.  Curiosity begins with asking questions.  In searching for different answers.  In making a new or different connection.  In taking what you discover and using it to make sense of your newly expanded world.

“Becoming happier is one of the most vital and momentous things that you can do for yourself and those around you.”  – Sonja Lyumbomirsky

Some adults think that asking questions somehow implies they lack knowledge.  But what I have found through the years, especially with the meanings and emotions triggered by words, is that there are a lot of words that I think are communicating one thing, but were received as another.  Words can have more than one meaning.  So I try to communicate what I have to say, using a lot of examples and analogy’s.  Then I watch how it lands.  If it seems to have landed wrong, I then use another analogy.  I keep doing this until I know that what I meant, is what is understood.  I ask a lot of questions, seeking understanding and connection.

Asking yourself the right questions can make a huge difference in how happy you are.  We can train our brain to look for answers by asking it to focus on a certain task.  If you ask yourself these three key questions everyday, your brain will step outside of the negative self judging that your mind tracks down.  These questions will help rewire your brain to focus on the positive.

• What have I done well in the last 24 hrs? (Celebrate it!)
• What is one thing I want to improve in the next 24 hrs? (Discover, investigate from a place of curiosity, not judgment)
• What is one action step I can take to help make this happen? (Curiosity, ask more “how” questions)

Curiosity is a strength within the virtue category of wisdom, one of the six virtues as described in Positive Psychology.  The other strengths in the wisdom category are creativity, judgment, love of learning and perspective.  According to Wharton University, curiosity has a genetic component, which can be grown or limited according to ones environment.

NASA’s rover on Mars is named Curiosity.  She’s been on Mars since 2012 and since her battery is thought to be able to last for only 14 years, she’s nearing the end of her lifespan.   NASA is looking for answers by collecting data on Mars.

It will certainly be interesting to see what they discover in that adventure – answers they were looking for – did Mars ever have the proper conditions for life to survive.  So far they’ve discovered that Mars had sulfur, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon – all key ingredients for life.  What things will be discovered that no one knew to ask?

From Britannica Curiosity Compass, “10 Ways to Improve Your Curiosity”

• Power up your passion – doing what you love keeps those curiosity juices flowing
• Ask awesome questions – “tell me more about that”, “why do you believe that or why is that important to you” – then listen with an open mind/heart
• Teach and be taught – ask about someone’s most treasured memory, their biggest passion, favorite hobby – all of which helps you to “know” something about someone.  It stirs your curiosity to learn more.  It opens doors to others teaching you something new, to learn about something in a new way
• Connect the dots – how can you use the fundamentals from a game or the basic elements of cooking in other areas of your life?
• Walk it out – taking a walk stirs your natural curiosity and stimulates your senses
• Get uncomfortable – Try something new.  Push yourself to do the thing you are scared of trying.
• Embrace thine enemy – Part of being a critical thinker is understanding the other persons viewpoint – argue both for and against all of your beliefs.  You will gain empathy and learn something new about your own beliefs.
• Tech Time-out – play a musical instrument; drawing; cooking; any hobby that doesn’t involved a screen.
• Explore your environment – walk in a new direction; check out a park; hike in the woods.  Get to know something new.
• Mirror, Mirror on the wall…, – Reflection is also an important part of having a curious mind.  Through reflection comes a higher understanding and brings you even more curiosity.

Curiosity makes your brain more receptive for learning.  It is like a muscle and the more you use it the stronger your mind becomes.  When you are curious, your mind expects and anticipates new ideas related to what you are curious about.

One of my favorite things about Jim Rohn was when he would get this look on his face, with his hand on his chin and say, “I wonder what happens next?”  It was his way of not going into negative emotions when something you might judge as a bad experience happened.  He used the analogy, when someone cuts you off driving down the road – instead of getting angry, say “I wonder what happens next?”  I started saying, “Thank you for getting in front of me, because you are in a hurry and I don’t want to be the person you rear end when you follow to close.”  This is because I have been rear-ended several times and gotten hurt twice.  So I am truly grateful when this kind of driver passes me, even if he is cutting me off.

So using curiosity, and “I wonder what happens next?” thinking – what things happen in your life, could you turn around from a negative experience?  How instead, could you turn it around, staying calm and centered in wonder?

Life is full of change.  Seasons change.  You change.  Use the fall season to complete and release what no longer serves you.  Use the winter season to rest, digest and restore yourself.  Use the spring season to get curious about what new things can you seed into your life to grow you as a person.  Use the summer season as a time to harvest the new beginnings that you started in the spring.

So go on some new adventures.  Ask open ended questions.  Listen intently and ask others why this is so important to them?  Give others experiences instead of things.  Learn a new hobby.  Go on long walks, listening, looking, smelling, – using all of the senses to discover what you have missed.  Live a full, happy life!

The Darkness You Go Through Defines Your Light

Are you a half empty glass or a half full glass kind of person?  I think that neither one of those statements are true.   I don’t believe in either or statements.

I think that the truth is always contained in an “all of the above” kind of answer.  I think that every answer depends on the situation and the day it happens.  Sometimes you will view your life through your limitations and sometimes you view it through your strengths.  It’s all up to you and the choices you make.  Your emotions will always be the colors of how you see your life.

Sometimes you will allow your limitations to rule your emotions.  What if it is your limitations that make your story have real value in helping someone else in their own life journey?  When you think about the “feel good” books, movies, stories that we love to watch and listen to – isn’t that what makes the heroes journey so amazing?  The fact that they were able to rise above the limitation?  It’s what separates your story from simply being an “ordinary boy meets girl, falls in love and marries to live happy ever after” kind of story.

There is no growth of character in that story.  It is the overcoming of the obstacles to true love that gives the story a reward.  If Snow White had no wicked stepmother that was jealous and wanted her dead; if Sleeping Beauty wasn’t cursed by the evil fairy; if the Little Mermaid didn’t foolishly trade her voice for legs with the Sea Hag; all of those wonderful stories we grew up with wouldn’t have survived through the centuries.  It is the drama of overcoming the limitations that feeds our souls, not just the “happy ever after” ending.

It is from the damage you have had in your life, that the gold within you is purified.  It is the refining of your soul through life’s fires that makes it into pure gold and shines out brightly for others to see.

“The light you’re seeking out there is already within you.  You hold the light of millions of stars inside your own beating heart.  Stardust runs through your veins and comets shine through your eyes…, My beautiful friend, no one can dull your spark because it comes from within you, it’s yours.  Your spark comes from being wildly yourself; it comes from accepting yourself – strengths and flaws and all.  It comes from being the person that you’ve always wanted to be.  And the more you align with your heart, the more you allow your true light to shine.” – Nikki Banas

It isn’t that some people are heroes and others are not.  It is in the overcoming of the obstacles, the living through the adversity to the other side, that you are revealed as a hero.  It is in the doing of the thing that you thought you couldn’t that your inner strength is revealed.

J.K. Rowling said, that if she had succeeded in anything else, her true calling would never have been called forth.  The one place that she belonged, would never have been uncovered.  So when you think that you’re just a failure, think again.  It simply means you are still revealing who you really are and what you were born to do.  Failure is simply a matter of opening the wrong door.   Keep walking down the hallway and trying more doors.

Adversity is a stepping stone, not a stumbling block.  Boiling water soften potatoes and hardens eggs.  It’s not about the water boiling, it’s about who you are and what you are made of.  You have the strength to be a shining star in the dark night.  Just keep taking one more step.  Don’t look at how far you still have to go.  Just keep taking one more step and give it all you  have.  You can do this!

“People are like stained-glass windows…, when darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”  – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Just remember each time you made it to the goal line.  Each time you climbed another mountain.  Each time you were defeated and got back up again.  It is in the conquering the challenge, that you begin to understand just how strong you are.  Every time a doubt enters your mind, think of all of the times you conquered a similar doubt.  Every time a fear tries to stop you in your tracks, think of all of the other fears that you have walked through.

A really good friend of mine has a different kind of bucket list.  His list isn’t of the places he wants to see, or the things he wants to do.  It’s a list of the things that he’s afraid to do.  And every year he crosses out one or more things on that list.  He loves the feeling of conquering a fear.  It gives his life a special meaning.  It lights him up.  He sails high on the adrenaline rush for months afterwards.

“Do the things that light you up from the inside out.  Write that book that you want to see written.  Make the pottery that you want sitting on your shelf.  Cook the delicious meals that you want to enjoy.  Fill your walls with art that you adore.  You are meant to live your life beautifully and entirely yours.  You are meant to fill it with all of the colors and art and wonderful things that fill you with delight…, You are meant to live in a way that lights you up from the inside out.” – Nikki Banas

Are you living through a challenge right now?  Get excited about it.  Get passionate about fighting for your dreams.  About living your passion.  About tearing down the barriers.  About crossing the line and living the life that scares you.  Discover what you are made of.  Broaden your horizons.  Learn something new.  Experience something that scares you and makes you heart beat faster just thinking about it.  Create a bucket list that challenges you and changes you.

“Be a warrior.  Fight for what you believe in and never, ever hold back.  Fiercely go towards your dreams with boldness and lust.  Hold your ground in the face of conflict.  Knock barriers down with courage and grace.  Do not give up when you find yourself face to face to an obstacle, instead continue forward with abandon.  Keep the fire in your heart burning strong and do not ever let your flame fade away.  Remind yourself that what you are fighting for is worth it.  And remember that you will overcome everything that comes your way – because my beautiful friend, you are a warrior.” – Nikki Banas

This Letter Is To You

I love that we are all the same at certain points in our lives.  No one is perfect.  No one lives a life without getting scars, both the kind you can see and the kind that no one is allowed to see.  There are days when you feel all alone.  But in truth you never are alone.  Not in what you are going through.  Not in how you feel.

When the storm is raging through your life, there is that moment of calm, right before it all blows away.  The sun comes out and the winds blow away all of the clouds.   In a short time you can’t even tell that there was a storm.  It seems like life has gone back to “normal”.  But you know what changed.  You know that sometimes nothing can be the same again.

So when life’s storms batter you, and leaves you feeling lifeless on the ground – you must remember that you are loved.  And while it might not be in this moment, or even this week,  the day will come again, where you will be having the best day of your life.

“Don’t forget while you’re busy doubting yourself, someone else is admiring your strength.” – Kristen Butler

Until then, remember you are loved.  There are people like us everywhere, who are just waiting to know you and love you.

You are like a wildflower, so let yourself be scattered by those winds when they come.

• Grow wild wherever you land.
• Grow tall and brave to face whatever the weather brings to your door.
• Grow in the cracks of the brokenness of your past.
• Grow into your full potential.

Put your face to the sun.  Let it warm your soul.  You may have blemishes.  You may have scars.  You may feel tarnished and dirty and like something the cat dragged in.  But beneath the dirt and dust your soul is shining like a jewel.

“I am changing…, but not in a way you’d expect.  I am changing how I view myself.  I am changing how I talk to myself.  I am changing what I allow and who I allow in my life.  But most of all.., I am no longer changing myself for others, the pressure to fit it and be anything other than myself.  I am creating a revolution in my own self care.” – @ MOULE_T

When you look at the word struggle, it seems too much.  It has a weight to it that makes you feel like it can’t be lifted.  But if you just adjust the meaning, a tiny little bit – you see it hides the sparkle that is laying beneath it.  Struggle is like see the sign on the highway, rest area ahead.  Your journey has been long.  You might need a bathroom break.  You might need to just stretch your legs.  You might need to grab a snack or something to drink.  Struggle means:

• Change, and change is good.  It means something new and exciting is entering your life.
• Growth – Remember as a child measuring your growth against the wall and seeing how tall you were?
• Expansion – a good stretch and walk to widen out the boundaries.
• Progress – Remember when you were in grade school and you took home a progress report?

If you change your definition of something that seems scary, like struggle and change – you widen your worldview to see how all of those words are something to celebrate, not fear.

I learned something a long time ago about decisions.  It came from antique shopping, of all things.  I had started collecting those green milk glass dishes because my grandmother had them and they reminded me of her.  There were times where I found a unique piece, but it was a stretch financially to purchase and I would vacillate on whether I should spend the money or not.

Sometimes I didn’t, then I would go back a few weeks later to buy it, and (heavy sigh) it would be gone.  So I started asking myself this question – “If I come back tomorrow and this is gone, how upset am I going to be?”  Sometimes the answer was “oh well”.  And sometimes the answer was “very upset”.  I always walked away from the “oh wells” and bought the “very upsets”.

“Trust the wait.  Embrace the uncertainty.  Enjoy the beauty of becoming.” – Unknown

I started making decisions in life the same way.  Opening up my heart and asking “what if…?” this works or doesn’t work.  How will it affect me?  How will it affect my life?  How will it affect those I love?  When you get quiet in your soul and ask the right questions, the right answers are found there, just waiting for you.  You have to step out of the wants, needs and desires of others.  You have to feel into that space of inner calm and see what surfaces.

It really is simple.  Living life as your true self is what will make you happy.

• It sounds hard.
• It sounds like you are being selfish.
• It sounds like you will lose those you want to love you.

But those are the lies that are told to keep you in that place of being the good girl and doing what you are told.  That place that leaves you unhappy inside.  That says you are not enough and just need to try harder.  That is the place that you need to grow from.  The place that needs to be expanded, so that you can grow into your full potential.  To be the sweet wonderful person you are at a soul level.

“The only difference between where you are and where you want to be is the steps you  haven’t taken yet.” – Rigel J Davidson

Don’t Live Your Life On Other People’s Terms

I love words.  They are so much more than squiggly lines on a page.  They have width and depth to them.  They affect our emotions.  They have layers and layers of meaning.  So I love when I have the chance to explore a words meaning beyond the formal dictionary definition.

Some words change meaning over time.  In Biblical times the word shambles (which means a mess to me) meant the meat market.  Thomas Crapper was an inventor and he invented a toilet, and in time his last name took on a whole new meaning because of his invention.

This past week I was reading an article that was really talking about decision making.  It was focused around two words, Anxiety and Entitlement.

Anxiety (which is fear fully expressed) is triggered in response to the perceived threat of our values.  If one of your values is around honesty, truthfulness, integrity – whatever word you choose to mean you don’t tell lies (you hate, hate, hate, being lied to), and you suspect that this value is being threatened, this would create anxiety for you.  Say for example, your mom told you to lie and say she wasn’t home.  You want to tell the truth, but your mom (authority figure) is telling you to lie.  Do you go against your values?  Or do you tell your mom no?

Anxiety lives in the space of worry about how to make the decision.  You might make a trade-off for example, and “squish” the truth, telling them that she’s not available at the moment.  Once you’ve compromised yourself in some way, that is when anxiety morphs into something new.  It becomes resentment.  “How dare mom make me tell a lie.”  You blame the other person for your compromising your values, rather than taking responsibility for the decision you made.

“All of us have the privilege and responsibility of choosing our attitudes, no matter what circumstances or situations we find ourselves in.  The key word here is choosing.  Attitudes don’t just happen; they are the products of our choices.” – Joyce Meyer

This is where I came across a new shade of a word that we’ve heard a lot about, entitlement.  For me entitlement was always about “the right” I have to something.  I am entitled to an education, for example.  It also has the meaning of special privileges, which is where the words “white entitlement” has come from in reflecting the ways that racism has been expressed in society.  When you feel entitled to something it amplifies your anxiety, feeding it so that it grows in guilt and blaming others for your current situation in life.

This article I was reading was discussing how denying the reality of your situation is a form of entitlement — and entitlement breeds resentment.  When you deny the reality of your situation, what you produce is anxiety – which is a fear of something.  Going back to the example of your mom asking you to lie about her being home.  Is there a more creative way to do what your mom is asking and not be lying?  Can you protect your value of truth and honesty and still obey your mom?

There are probably many ways of doing this, but what came to mind for me was what if you said, “My mom can’t talk right now, but maybe I can help you?”

My mom once told one of my sisters to answer the door and say that she wasn’t home.  So my sister answered the door and said, “My mom said to tell you that she’s not home”, needless to say, that was the last time my mom did that.  LOL.

“Your life and how you experience it is entirely your making.  Only if this absolutely sinks in, will you make the necessary changes” – Sadhguru

So lets just say that as a child you were asked to lie for your mother on a regular basis.  As a result your value of truth and honesty was constantly being bombarded.  Now imagine that you are in a working environment where you are being asked to lie.  Telemarketing comes to  mind as a kind of job that could impact a persons values for honesty.

I remember back when we still had a landline that my husband answered a call that was from a telemarketer about home loans.  She said that was she was returning our call, pertaining to the refinance of our home.  That we had asked to be contacted regarding reducing the mortgage payment for our home.

She went into her sales pitch and once she paused my husband asked her why she was working for a company that required that she lie with her first sentence.  He told her that not only had we never contacted them regarding a refinance, but that his wife worked for a bank and that if we were interested in refinancing that is where we would do it, because of the benefits for employee loans.  He suggested that she think about finding a job where every sentence she said wasn’t a lie.

She was neglecting her values, by failing to take responsibility for them.  She probably blamed her job for this.  She probably felt in conflict with meeting her financial obligations and keeping her job and failing to live up to her own personal values.  She was probably ignoring the inner conflict, tapping it down.  Her inner emotions would be in a turmoil and her whole life would be impacted.  Feelings of guilt can turn into anger and rage.  When you live a life in this manner, you think that you’re mad at the unreasonable demands of your job, but in reality it is because you are failing to be responsible to your own internal values.

“How people are is their choice.  How I am is my choice.  No matter what they do, no one can make me angry, happy, or unhappy.  These are privileges I have kept to myself.” – Sadhguru

When you hate Mondays, because you hate something about your employment – it is time to take a look at your inner values.  If you find yourself in a relationship either with a person or a job that is creating a lot of stress, anxiety, and emotional turmoil – it is time to take a look at your inner values.

Don’t neglect them.  Take responsibility for your own inner conflict, your own needs and priorities.  Don’t blame others for the misery.  Instead start making changes to bring your life back into connection to your inner values.

You need to create psychological safety for yourself.  You need to experience the “truth” of what is happening in your life, the reality – not the story you are telling yourself and others.

The choice is always yours.  You can fix yourself – make the changes in a job or a relationship by staying true to your inner values – or you can try to “fix the truth”.

Fixing the truth, or bending your values and choosing to stay in relationships with a person or a job that is not in your best interests just keeps you in conflict and misery.

“Privilege can either blind or be an eye-opener.  The choice is ours.” – Renita Siqueira

• It is your Privilege to live in an “anxiety free zone”.
• It is your Privilege to “face the fears” and conquer them.
• It is your Privilege to stop being “entitled” and denying the truth and the reality of where you are.

Take a stand.  Stop letting others push you into denying your values.  Instead, put life on a pause.  Take the time to regroup.  Make the time to nurture your soul and start taking small steps to live your life from the place of your values.   Always have faith that God will lead you where you need to go.

Be Yourself, Everyone Else Is Taken

“The day you find yourself will be the most beautiful day, because after that –  you will never accept less than what you deserve. – Ruby Dhal

It’s not about “finding yourself” in the terms of you being lost.  It’s about remembering yourself – finding that person you were before life started shaping and molding you into who others wanted you to be.  There are so many stories of people who go through the proverbial hero’s journey to re-discover and fully accept who they are.

“Don’t spend all of your time trying to FIND yourself.  Spend your time CREATING yourself into a person that you’ll be proud of.” – Unknown

From earliest childhood we all knew that one of my sisters was gay.  But she never acknowledged it.  When she got married we were all shocked.  My mom tried to talk to her about it, but my sister just pushed it away.  She had a daughter Kelly, and when Kelly was around 4-5 years old my sister was in a car accident.  She had fallen asleep at the wheel and went off a ravine.  She spent over 6 months in a hospital for back injuries learning how to crawl.  She was diagnosed as a parapalegic and told she would never walk again.  All those months in the hospital and almost dying scared her enough that she finally came to terms with her sexuality.

You hear similar stories, like the man who was in college to be a lawyer.  He was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given 6 months to live.  He quit school and started playing the violin.  He loved music and it gave him great happiness and joy.  6 months passed, then a year.  His cancer had went into remission.  He continued his musical career and left behind the legal field that his parents wanted for him.

“There will be very painful moments in your life that will change your entire world in a matter of minutes.  These moments will change you.  Let them make you stronger, smarter, and kinder.  But don’t you go and become someone that you’re not.  Cry.  Scream if you have to.  Then you straighten out that crown and keep moving.” –  Unknown

Both these examples highlight, that it wasn’t a matter of the person not knowing themselves.  It was a matter of accepting who they were, and pursuing what made them happy.  As children you learn to please others.  To put others desires above our own.  You have to unlearn the thought that pursuing what makes you happy is somehow selfish and wrong.

“Finding your passion isn’t just about careers and money.  It’s about finding your authentic self – the one you’ve buried beneath other people’s needs.”  – Kristin Hannah

When people are in hospice or extended care through the transition of life, the most common thing that they regret are the things they didn’t do for themselves.  The things that others wouldn’t have approved of.  They realize how much they missed of the life they really wanted to live.  That belief that they weren’t good enough or deserving of the happiness that they saw in others lives.  They let their fears of judgement and insecurities hold them back.

“To work on yourself is the best thing you can do.  Accept that you are not perfect, but you are enough.  And then start working on everything that destroys you.  Your insecurities, your ego, your dark thoughts.  You will see, in the end you’re going to make peace with yourself.  And that’s the greatest thing in the world.” – DogTrainingObedienceschool. com

It’s extremely important to accept and acknowledge who you are.  To live your own life, your own way – without regret.  Let go of the compulsion to conform.  Instead be drawn, pulled in the directions of what you love.  Creativity, curiousity, exploring playfully whatever grabs your attention.

When my kids were small, I put off writing until they were all in school.  Then with working fulltime and having 4 kids, I put off writing until they were all grown up.  By that time, the habit was to put off writing for the magical someday, when I had the time.  Then my nephew was murdered and the only way I could process the grief was writing.  I started posting what I was writing and before you know it LemonadeMakers was born.

“Finding yourself is not really how it works.  You aren’t a ten dollar bill in last winter’s coat pocket.  You are also not lost.  Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are.  Finding yourself is actually returning to yourself.  An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering of who you were before the world got its hands on you.” – Emily Mcdowell

I know how hard it can be to let yourself be drawn by what you love.  You tell yourself you don’t have any talent for it.  Or you can’t make money doing it.  It isn’t the career for you.  Nobody will want to read what you write.  Everything you want to say, has already been said by lots of other people.  And so you constantly put it off to someday.  Please don’t deprive the world of your talents and gifts any longer.  You will be shocked at how much they will be valued and how much they are needed.

“You don’t have to be what other people want you to be.  You don’t have to be interesting or agreeable or entertaining.  You don’t have to tone yourself down, quiet your voice, or hide your feelings.  You don’t have to be outgoing or spontaneous or sociable.  You don’t have to be thin or beautiful or anyone’s definition of attractive.  You don’t have to be anyone other than who you authentically are, and you sure as hell don’t have to spend your time and energy trying to convince people that you’re worth keeping around.  The right people are going to recognize your worth.  They are going to respect you, appreciate you, and accept you, without forcing you to compromise who you are.”  Daniell Koepke

Just like a fingerprint, you are absolutely unique when you live authentically who you are.  The things you find interesting, the things you find humorous.  Your sarcasm, your wit, how you approach everything in your life has its own individuality that belongs to you.

It’s self judgement that keeps you from being who you are.  When you relinquish judgement, you let go of the feeling that you have to be different than who you are.  That is when the beauty of who you are shines out. It is your difference that is the beauty of who you are.

“Finding yourself is a time of harmony because you develop that philosophy or belief system that will carry you throughout the rest of your life.  When you love yourself and who you are, you will savor and enjoy both life’s pain and pleasures.” – James Spector

What would your life be about, if you fell so deeply in love with who you are, that you spent the rest of your life doing whatever it was that would make you happy?  No guilt, no labels of selfishness.  No more living a life to meet others expectations, but rather creating a life of meeting your own expectations for you.

What if you picked up the keys of self discovery and took yourself for a drive?  Seeing each new sunrise and sunset with new eyes, breathing in the fresh air of change and transformation.  Listen for the symphony of living life to your own music.  Hearing the beauty of your own soul.

So lean in.  Hear the calling of your own soul.  Be brave enough to cross that river, taking only the essential parts of you and letting go of everything else.  Be courageous, be authentic, and trust the magic of new beginnings.

The Unending Silence of Grief

This blog is a little heart rendering, so I am warning you ahead of time.  It might be the one you need, and it might be the one you want to avoid.

I thought I knew what grief is all about.  My mom died from cancer when I was in my 30’s.  I was one of the primary caregivers the last three months of her life.  It was a wonderful gift to be able to care for her as she made her transition.  I thought I was ready, but I don’t think that anyone can ever be ready to lose a parent.

About a year after her death a lot of secrets came out of her closet.  It was probably the hardest year of my life, even harder than losing her.  It ripped that window of grief wide open.  I thought that I had made it through the grief process.  I was wrong.  I had to then  process the anger of what she had hidden.  The anger of not being able to talk it through with her , so she could explain it all.

Eighteen years later I lost my 19 year old nephew when he was murdered.  Starting this blog was how I started processing the loss not only of him, but what we all lost in relationship to our sister.

Nine years later I lost my birth father and had to process the grief of not just losing him, but losing the opportunity to have the kind of relationship I always wanted, but he wasn’t able to provide.

The following year I lost what I call my bonus dad.  He had a long journey of heart disease that slowly took away his health.  His was probably the easist death to process, because in the 15 yrs he lived with us, he had cleaned up what needed to be cleaned up with me.

I thought that with all of these losses, I knew what the grief process was all about.  I had experienced it many times.  I understood the grief stages.  More importantly I knew I would survive.  I thought, “I know how to do this”.  Then a few months ago, my three year old grandson was killed in an accident.  I now know grief in a totally unique way.

This journey I now understand is not only individual to the person, it is individual to what has been lost.  The loss of someone so young rips apart your heart.  Then experiencing the loss through your own child, as you witness his struggle to find his way through the grief process, turns your heart to ashes.

“You will lose someone you can’t live without and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly – that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with a limp.” – Anne Lamott

The truth is that grief for every person is a solitary journey.  I can’t know how great my son’s pain is.  I can’t understand the anger and depression that he is currently working through.  I have no real idea of how to help.  I struggle for the right words to say, and even if I feel I have found them, I struggle to know the timing of when to say them.

I also know from my own history of grief that just showing up and giving a hug can get someone through one more day of loss.  What tends to happen with loss, is that at first everyone is there to support you.  But time moves on for all of those dear friends and family members.  They have  processed the loss.  They have moved on with living life, because that is what life does, it goes on.

When you have a loss that happens too soon, that feels too much to bear, your time line moves much slower.  So it becomes a solitary journey. No one but you knows how great the hurt is. No one but you can know the gaping hole left in your life, especially when that someone is your little boy. And no one but you can mourn the silence, that was once filled with laughter as he ran around your house chasing the dog. It is the nature of love and of death to touch every person in a totally unique way.

“You’re under no obligation to be the person you were before life flattened you. You’re just not. Trust yourself to navigate this part of the journey.” Stephenie Zamora

Grief is not a journey in which you just push yourself through the stages and arrive at the end.  There is no pushing through.  What there is at the end is acceptance.  You absorb it deep inside and it lives forever in your broken heart.  Like a deep cut, it eventually scabs over.  It is a healing process, where you pick at the scab and it bleeds and produces a new scab, over and over.  Until one day you are picking at the scab and it just falls off.  It leaves a scar that fades with time, but never completely goes away.

Grief never ends, but it changes. It is a passage, not a place to stay. Not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith, but the price of love.  If you find yourself stuck in stage for a long time, it is time to seek a qualified therapist that can help you unblock the dam that has been created.  If you find your friends and family are worried about you; if you find yourself putting on the fake smile and working hard to create the impression you have moved on (when you haven’t), it’s time to seek counseling.

“Grieving is a process. There’s a process of the shock, the anger, and then coping with the situation. You have to experience all of those levels to move forward, and sometimes you need help in that” Angela A Bridges

5 Facts about the stages of grief

• 1 – Our grief is as individual as our lives. Each person is unique in how he or she copes with feelings of grief.
• 2 – Not everyone will go through all of the 5 stages of grief
• 3 – The five stages of grief do not have a predictible, uniform or linear pattern
• 4 – You can switch back and forth between each of the five stages of grief
• 5 – The five stages of grief are simply tools to help us frame and identify what we’re feeling

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All of that unspent love gathers in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in the hallow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” favin.com

3 things to know about the denial stage of grief

• 1 – it’s normal. It is a defence mechanism that buffers the immediate shock of the loss
• 2 – it’s temporary. It carries us through the first wave of pain
• 3 – there is a grace in it. It’s nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle.

“A thousand moments I had just taken for granted…, mostly because I assumed there would be a thousand more.” Morgan Matson

Anger – You may feel as though the whole world seems to be conspiring against you.  You are mad at everyone, especially God.  You feel as though you are walking a road to your own death, burning in the fires of your devasting anger.  I think this quote describes perfectly why there is so much anger.  You’ve lost all of those future moments.

“In grief, depression is a way for nature to keep us protected by shutting down the nervious system so that we can adapt to something we feel we cannot handle…, as difficult as it is to endure, depression has elements that can be helpful in grief. It slows us down and allows us to take real stock of the loss…, Allow the sadness and emptiness to cleanse you and help you to explore your loss in its entirety. when you allow yourself to experience depression, it will leave as soon as it has served its purpose in your loss.” Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Depression – I think it has to do with the hole in your heart.  It is consumed with emptiness.  You can’t fill it up or sew it back together.  So you mask it.  You deny to others that you are continuing to grieve.  You’ve run out of tears, out of anger, out of the ability to cope.  So the quiet emptiness just grows until it consumes you.  You’ve shut off the support system and isolated yourself behind the mask.  You are alone and feel like you will be alone until you die.  You feel that your family and the world would be better off without you.  You think that you are all alone in your grief, that everyone else has moved on.  It’s depression that is controlling the mindtalk and thinking.  When the grief turns into this kind of depression it’s time to take off the mask and seek help.  Even though you think you can’t escape the sadness, therapy will help you see past the depression.

At the end of the grief process, it is not so much a moving on, as a moving forward – as you bring your loved one along in your heart and your very breath. They are a part of you now and always. You move forward with them.  You continue to engage in life because you’ve become inspired by this love.  That is my wish for all of us.  To reach that space where we are able to continue our journey with a peaceful heart.  With the good memories that make us laugh and smile.  With that inner knowing that your loved one is still in your heart.  The connection is still there, it is still real, it has just changed form.

To Understand Your Full Potential, It Is Necessary To Step Into The Unknown, Part One

Every story has a story.  How the story is shaped defines how you grow.  The way forward is never down a straight and narrow path.  Growth is like what happens in the “Alice In Wonderland” story, where you do “Six impossible things before breakfast”.

We think that growth is a linear measurement.  But all growth doesn’t happen with forward momentum.

• Progress can happen when it feels like you’re sitting still
• Progress can happen when it feels like you’re backing up
• Progress can happen even when you are walking in circles lost in the woods
• Progress can happen at one minute before the midnight deadline

Charting your course means that you need to be open to adjustments, revisions, false starts, rewriting your goals, refocusing your passions.  You need to be able to both dig in your heels and let go at the same time.  You must, must, must have a willingness to change.

Step 1

In starting any journey of self discovery, it is important to engage your curiosity muscle.  When you are around a little child you see that muscle in action moment by moment.  From the minute they are born, they are wide eyed looking at everything.  Everything is new and wildly uncertain.  They are on a mission to discover and understand this new world they were born into.  They grab onto everything.  They put everything into their mouths.  When they start talking, everything becomes a “why”?  For every answer you give, you get three more “why’s”?

For some reason you lose this voracious appetite as you grow older.  You start thinking that you know the answers, or you are afraid that everyone else does but you.  So you stop asking why.

A great exercise to start bringing more attention to your curiosity muscle, is to start putting a question mark behind your first thought when trying to solve a problem that has come up in your life.  Start asking why is this, the way it has to be done?

Most things in life can be successfully completed in a variety of ways.  There are usually multiple solutions, and multiple paths.

Focus on using curiosity as a focal point for engaging with creativity.  Sometimes you have a better journey when taking the long way home.

Step 2

Uncertaintly is hard to live with.  You want to know everything there is to know about something, so that you can feel that you’re making the perfect decision.  That your work will be perfect.  That your life will be perfect.  But that isn’t how anyone’s life is.  If you were to talk to anyone who you think has the perfect life, they will tell you that fame, fortune, status – whatever criteria you want to measure by – doesn’t make their life perfect.  They still have problems.  They still make mistakes .  They still make bad decisions.

When you throw away the word perfect, you are left with imperfect.  Which is how we all are.  We are all perfectly imperfect.  We are all left feeling like we are blind as to how to make the best decisions in our lives.

So what are we left with then?  Uncertainty.  We are left with blindly following rules that have a multitude of exceptions, based on faulty or fuzzy logic, and sometimes just plain guesswork.

Watch any good mystery or crime drama and at some point someone is going to say, “I have a bad feeling about this”, or “My gut is telling me not to walk away”, or something similar.  In the real world you use your gut instincts or intuition a lot.  Subconsciously you may be making decisions without your mind even knowing why you just turned right instead of left.  It just felt like the right way to go.

One thing that I have learned in the corporate world, you can make facts and figures, statistics say pretty much whatever story you want to tell.  I love logic, but I also know from experience that if I walk out my front door feeling like there is something I am forgetting – I am 99% of the time forgetting something.  I have sat in my car ready to leave going down a mental checklist as I tell myself that I can find nothing that I have forgotten.  But the minute I get to my office and sit down in my chair, a random thought surfaces with the thing I forgot.  My intuition was right.

Knowlege is always provisional and incomplete.  There are always new facts that surface as time goes by.  New evidence comes to light.   If this wasn’t true then there would never be a drug company being sued for side effects discovered as time went by.  No airplanes would fly in the sky.  The world would still be flat.

So when you think you know everything there is to know, just be aware that you don’t.  So what do you do?

Step 3

Dragonflies have large, compound eyes, with thousands of lenses and photoreceptors sensitive to different wavelengths of light. Although we don’t know exactly how their insect brains process all this visual information, by analogy they see multiple perspectives not available to you.  Dragonfly-eye perception is common to great problem solvers, as they take in 360 degrees of perception to encompass multiple viewpoints and ideas at once.

Kalidescope eyes that view life through multiple lenses. This way of thinking is a way to see beyond the familiar patterns that your brain pushes into place. By widening out the periphery of your vision, you can look out beyond all of the filters your mind sees the world through.  You look at a problem from multiple perspectives.  This is where compassion comes in.

When a two year old has a meltdown at a store, many times you will see a mother about to have one herself.  A compassionate viewpoint sees two over-tired individuals, not a bad child or a bad mother.

• The two year old that doesn’t know how to express his/her feelings in any other way.
• You see a mom who is also overtired.
• A mom who worried about if she is just doing this whole motherhood thing wrong?
• A mom who is flinching from her own self judgment and self perception, that she is now being judged by those who are witnessing the meltdown of her child.
• A mom who has a million other things she has to get accomplished on her “to do” list, and now she’s wondering if she just go home and forget life altogether as this is a complete disaster.

Your brain like to think in patterns.  Good or bad.  Black or white.  This or that.  Putting things in containers that belong together free’s up your brain to think faster.

By using dragonfly eye’s, you can view the world around you in an entirely new way.  Whatever problems you are facing; whatever decisions need to be made; you can start to see the many possibilities and probabilities in front of you.  Instead of just:

• Rabbit holes – unlocking secret doors and passageways, or
• You can start down a new life path and go to a tea party, or
• This way or That way, or
• Wrong way or Right way, or
• Down here or Down there, or

You see “and” not “or”.  You can go up, down, backwards, forwards, straight, crooked, ladders, slides, caves, etc…,  you see all of the possibilities at once.  The secret to developing a dragonfly-eye view is to “anchor inside yourself” rather than outside as a starting point.  To work on that curiosity muscle.  To develop more trust in your intuition muscles.  To exercise your compassionate view of yourself when you try to be perfect.  To embrace uncertaintly.  To have dragonfly eyes.

1 – Be Curious

2 – Live life as an Imperfectionist

3 – Have Dragonfly Eyes

In this blog we covered steps 1-3 of the below diagram.  Read the next blog for part 2 as we review steps 4-6

Say Yes To Living An Inspired Life

If there is one thing that is making a big turnaround today, it is the thought of how you influence and inspire others.  For years in social media many have had this misconception that you can create a perfect life online.  That somehow this “perfect” version of yourself would inspire others.  All of the posts were about these “perfect” moments that were happening in a persons life.  Nothing was posted that didn’t fit into this perception of perfection.

Like the years of photoshopping models into this idea of what a perfect body should look like, instead of inspiring others to reach towards perfection, it created the opposite.  It fed into the lie, that some how you are not good enough.  Not rich enough, not skinny enough, not smart enough – that your breasts were too small, your stomach not flat enough, your thighs were too large, you had the wrong kind of hair, the wrong color skin, etc…, this idea of perfection (which shifts with the seasons and years) is not how we inspire others.

The problem is that perfection isn’t how life is.  It’s messy.  It’s imperfect.  Most of the time it feels like a disaster.  Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, not the advertising agency or the social media influencer.

“Seek the approval of no one.  Never change who you are.  Don’t fit the mold that others have created for you.” – Adverstu.com

I worked fulltime when my kids were growing up.  I tried bribery, threatened grounding and created punishments.  Nothing convinced my kids that they should walk into the house and put their things in their bedrooms when they got home from school.  Nothing I tried convinced them that when they finished raiding the refrigerator because they were starving, that they were capable of putting those dirty dishes in the sink – let alone the dishwasher.

Instead, this was our pattern.  On Mondays the house looked presentable, because I had spent the whole weekend cleaning.  Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday our house slid downhill in a mountain of toys, discarded clothing, schoolwork that fell out of bookbags, whatever the dogs and cats had played with or destroyed, and of course dirty dishes.  By Friday I would collapse under the mountain and pray that no one would come knocking at my door expecting entry.  My house never looked like the perfectly organized home I always dreamed of.

You don’t inspire others by being perfect.  You inspire them by how you deal with your imperfections.

“When you are living the best version of yourself, you inspire others to live the best version of themselves” – Steve Maraboli

For me the inspiration came not from working myself into exhaustion.  It didn’t come from yelling and screaming at my kids in frustration.  It came from doing the things that I knew were the most important.  Those things changed as my kids grew older, but it all started from the same place – spending time with my kids.  Sometimes that was just relaxing and watching T.V.  Sometimes it was watching them play in the back yard.  Sometimes it was taking them to the movies and watching something that I never would have chosen to watch, but that they did.  We went roller skating, to bonfires on the beach, to backyard bar-b-ques with friends and families.  As they grew older, it was transporting them to outings with their cousins and friends.  Then it was the terrifying years of being in the car with a student driver.

It was different activities, but the inspiration was the same.  Supporting my kids in whatever way I could to grow up happy and healthy.  Now that they are all grown up and having families of their own.  Now I get to laugh at them going through the same states of imperfection in raising their children.  And I get a lot closer to that imagined state of a perfectly organized home 🙂

What is being inspirational to others about?

• You seek inspirational people to inspire you – without the burden of putting them on a pedestal and thinking that they don’t fall short themselves.  Remember no one is perfect.
• You try to always come from a space of love – everyone has something going on in their life that they need to be shown love to make better.
• You are mindful and compassionate first with yourself, and then with others.
• You have a curiosity to understand and explore who you really are deep inside, which then deepens into a curiousity to better understand others.
• You are passionate about living your life.
• You are open to learning and understanding more about yourself and others.  You realize that todays truth may be discarded tomorrow, when your opinion is changed by a deeper truth.
• You give without expectation of how that gift will be used, or of getting anything in return.  Your gift is a hand up, not a hand out.
• Having a value filled life.  Living with a strong sense of purpose, reflected in both professional and personal life.
• Living a life filled with possibilities.  Seeing and reaching for the highest expression of your human potential.

Simone Biles demonstrated what being inspirational is all about in the 2020 Olympics, when she pulled out of some events to focus on her mental health.  There is greatness in listening to yourself and advocating for your needs.  She identified within herself where she was.  She drew her own boundaries in order to keep herself safe and healthy.  Like Naomi Osaka, she recognized the interconnectedness of mental and phsyical well-being.  When Simone decided she couldn’t compete in several of her events, she stayed and supported her team.

She took a different path than expected and it took tremendous courage to stand up before literally the whole world and do this.  She demonstrated the courage to protect her heart, soul, mind, body and spirit.

I love the thought, that each decision we make to walk our own  path, is a comma, not a period.  The path didn’t end.  It is continuing onward.  There are times when we need to stop and refuel.  It isn’t a period, it is a comma – a pause to take a breath.  You refuel so that you can have the energy to finish – it’s the finish which is a period.

And at the end of each finish, you get to choose what new adventure awaits.  You get to start down a new path of self discovery.