Triggers - Feelings Vs Fear

Every story in our head can be rewritten. In life, each moment we are breathing, it's another chance to course correct.

Negative emotions, so many of us, we run from them. We hide behind food, alcohol, pills, etc. We run in fear from feeling. We don't have to live on that vibration though. We can chart a different way of deliberate intent. We can co-create anything we get into alignment with.

The key to getting there though, it's the feeling. The feeling is what sets us free. Don't be afraid to feel. To navigate it. To grow through it. Our feelings create our life because they send out our belief system into the Universe. The best part of feeling, is owning it. Of allowing it to just be as it is. Once we know what doesn't feel good, we can get about the business of creating what feels right. Trust and believe, it can all serve your greater good. If you let it. FEEL.

Remember that. I love you.
🙏📿☮️💫💙📚📼💽🔊

Dots Along The Journey

Life, it's never dull around here. I have a father in the throws of dementia and fading away, most days not even knowing who I am, or how much he loves me. A mom who lives in the opposite direction travel wise, not feeling herself, in and out doctors and hospitals, afraid of what's ahead for both of us. Afraid of being a burden. Oh the lies we tell ourselves when we are vulnerable. Family, love, it's NEVER A BURDEN.

Yet, despite these consuming life stresses, and having my entire world turned upside down about 90 days ago as it pertains to best friends and my volunteer/work life, I can see the dots.

I now see how one of my closest cheerleaders on this Lipedema healing journey, since I learned its name in 2012, how her betrayal and mean girl behaviors pushed me to own my truths, and to move away from that which wasn't healthy for me. How the most painful experiences were catalysts for change.

What wasn't making me happy, had to go. She wasn't making me happy. My volunteer work for another wasn't making me happy either. Not owning my truths, those truths, was making me uneasy, and unwell. In the end, she set me free.

Reciprocal relationships, those make me happy. Healthy, that makes me happy too. Thriving, now that makes me the happiest. It was time my day-to-day relationships evolved in alignment with my body, and my healing.

You see, you tolerate a lot of bad behaviors from people when you don't have a grasp on your own self worth, when you are unwell. I swore when I found the courage to leave my ex-husband who was verbally abusive (over 8 years ago), that I would not repeat patterns of the past. That I would take however much time I needed to heal from that. I honestly thought I had done so.

Thing is, I hadn't. Even with continued therapy. Not completely. The events of June showed me that truth.

I found myself instead around, and in love with, narcissistic personalities. Supposed friends who had no follow through to ever really treat me the way I treat people. Both persons showed their true colors when my back acted up in February. Those March ripples broke shore as violent waves come June. By July, I was done. Shattered, and ready to move forward, drama free, healthy, whole, and at peace. 

So, that brings us to today. And, today is freedom.

Yesterday, I did a damn thing. I allowed myself to be filmed, talking about this fucking disease Lipedema and all that it has done to me, and made me, in the last 30 years. 30 YEARS. 30 YEARS!!!!

I was vulnerable. I was raw. I hid nothing. I owned it all.  Every mistake.  Every lesson. This is me. Beautiful, fragile, and once broken by Lipedema, me. An hour of showing, educating, and just being unapologeticly, me. I laughed. I cried. It was, without a doubt, an exercise in expansion. The hardest and best thing I have done yet since knowing its name.

I know that I own this disease now, that it doesn't own me anymore. I also know that if we never give up, the dots will connect. We will get to eventually see what's being drawn before us.

We get so hung up in the how. We really have to remember to just trust in the process, trust in the pulls. I started going public two years ago, and became intentional 90 days ago. Had I not done those things, been fearless, owned its name, I would not of just had the opportunity I had.

The people who hurt me, the mean girl who used to comment on every transformation photo, who wanted me to get made up, dress nice, and GET THE GUY, she in turn gave me the best parting gift in her wake of damage and betrayal. A reminder of my self worth. A reminder that, as my grandma Irene once said, WE ARE THE DREAM.

That gift allowed me to be who I was yesterday, talking about Lipedema, just not giving a fuck, and being fearless. Those painful experiences with her equalled a resolve and peace I had forgotten I could procure.

Jealousy and addiction does crazy things to people. Love them anyway, just from afar. After all, they're struggling and evolving just like the rest of us.

Then, it hit me hard, thinking about it all, the dots to be able to even handle yesterday. Like an avalanche, as my stomach was turning in nervousness yesterday morning, it all came full circle. If I was losing my mind the last week reliving 30 years of the dream and trauma attached to it, sane and sober, how in the world did someone I love ever do it unwell and addicted? Talk about it all coming full circle. About compassion. About, twinning, and timing. Yes, twinning. Oh yeah, I own that too these days. No fear. No regrets.

See, that's the thing about never giving up. You don't get to see the beauty of it all unless you stick and stay long enough.

Please, never give up on your own fights. Somewhere along the way you're connecting someone else's dots, just as someone else is connecting yours. Remember that, I love you.

You deserve to be well, too. 

The Skip

I have a friend who genuinely tries to let me in. This person is someone with whom I have a reciprocal friendship with. The kind of friend, who randomly thinks about you, and picks up their phone to see if you have responded to their last text. The kind of friend, who no matter how hectic life gets, reaches out to ask how you are, and actually waits to hear the answer; and, the kind of friend who reaches out again, when time has passed, and there isn't a reply.

I call these friends my lifers. They're around me by design, co-creating lives, and sharing in the human experience. They're committed to us by a force that's far more determined than shear human choice. It's as if there isn't a choice. It just is, and that's that. There's no other story to be written, they're in our lives "by design."

I like to consider myself an open book as well. Anyone close to me, within that tribe of people, can connect with me. Yet, despite that proclamation, I skip with this one friend who genuinely tries to let me in. Meaning, I do this annoying thing of not answering the inquiry with this particular friend.  So much so it became down right annoying for both of us, and I had to figure out why I wasn't being my normal self.

I skipped to be a shield.  

At first, I would do it because I was trying to protect this kindrid spirit from any additional details of my life. We all have been there, when our own life is already so discombobulated that we simply can't absorb that which is being told to us. And, we sure as hell have no business taking it on. But, we do it anyway, because we love those in our tribe.

Then, I skipped to avoid retelling. 

Life has become challenging remembering all of the important lessons my grandfather's passing taught me. Lessons I must remember now as I walk my own father down familiar paths. Between the PTSD of those events a few short years ago, and this marathon of loss we have been running since, it's deflating. I can tell my lifer in TX. I can tell my childhood neighbor over a phone call. Yet, I was skipping in one relationship, and not allowing this person in who wants to be there.

Then, I was skipping because I wasn't the one who normally seeks comfort, wisdom, or laughter. I was Superwoman (not my words), the one everyone else goes to. But, if one person is so much to so many, then who gets to be that person's comfort, wisdom, and laughter? Basically, who is Superwoman/Superman in Superwoman's life? Welllllp, mine are already deceased/home (gulp), or on their way home (sigh). Then it hit me. Like a brick.

Finally, I realized what was really going on! I was continuing to skip because I have walls up.  I was skipping to avoid an intimacy and vulnerability that simply put, just felt different. I was skipping to avoid a pull and energy I hadn't felt so fiercely since 8th grade science hallway walk on the way to shop class.  Each day that I skip, that I keep the wall up, I am avoiding.

Life is too short damn short for avoiding. Enough.

I am working to bring down my walls, one brick at a time. Oh, and there's a cracked foundation I am rebuilding too. I've spent the last 8 years diligently rediscovering myself, and making peace in the pain of the seasons of life.  Change is the one inescapable constant. We flow better through life when we observe those changes, versus reacting to every moment of them.  Healing is a course of direction, and not a destination.  Going forward, I have made a pact with myself to stop skipping. To stop deflecting. To stop putting up boundaries.

One of my dearest friends and teachers Thomas once said, "you can't fight nature." Meaning, we are what we are, and we are a species built to be driven to survive through the bonds of our tribe. He was reminding me of the Universal Wisdom of life, of letting go, and of being in the now. Remember that. I love you.

The Shift

It was December 30, 2009.  I had ended a decade long relationship of love and toxic turmoil earlier that year, with a man I *know* I was tied to in a "way beyond this place" planned life.  My pulls are never wrong, ever. 

Since that time, I've treaded lightly in love, from not allowing myself to get close to "what I know" won't last, to cautiously believing in 2015, that I was on my way to a mutually respectful relationship headed towards a "real" marriage.  Instead, my heart was shattered by a coward.  Which, in the big picture, is OKAY.   Okay because my grandmother taught me, there's no room in a woman's life for a man without a spine to do the right thing.  Add to that the deaths of 2 other men I let into my day-to-day art of living these past 8 years, and well, needless to say, I've stayed single. Purposely single. Healing.

I haven't given up on love, on true partnership, on another pull walking into my life and rocking my world.  Just as I never lost the love I have towards the one I had to walk away from.  I will always love him from afar.  I will always be energetically tied to him.  I can tell you on any given day what mood he is in, or even when he thinks about me.  I will always love and appreciate what I learned in my time with him, raising his daughter as my own, enjoying the healthy days of energy between us, and becoming a strong woman walking away from them both (couldn't take her with me) to a healthier life, one free of his sociopathic, controlling, & narcissistic ways. 

God has a way of allowing us to create peace in any pain. We just have to look for the things to be grateful for in the situation, once removed from it. The 20+ years I spent knowing both the pull and the coward, I believe, laid the foundation, for whatever comes next for me. That one day, I'll have what was good and right about both of them, manifested in someone else. One taught me to trust my pulls. The other taught me that someone can and will love my Lipedema body, love me, accept me, with paranormal activities,  and everything that comes along with being a light, and a healer. That I can be me, 100% in my own skin.  A real partner, a best friend. No walls. No boundaries. Just effortless being. Yes, that's what's ahead. And, I'm happy being solo until I get it! Eight years later, I know my worth.  I hope you know yours. You're priceless. Remember that, I love you.