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The Pain of Staying in the Pain.

"How are you?

I am fine, taking care of the grandkids as usual.

I didn't ask what you are doing, but how you are doing. So how are you doing.?"

She changed the subject and we moved on.

She was obviously not doing ok, but didn't seem to have any insight into connecting her situation or how she was feeling.

She was choosing to stay in this current pain for any number of reasons, not the least of which is denial.

The trouble with staying in the pain is the pain we continue to cause our self and others. Pain begets pain. If you have made it this far into my website you have likely moved beyond denial, and are in full on learning, healing, growing mode.

But even for us that have moved beyond denial, there are likely areas of self that are holding or carrying additional pain that we are not even aware of, or we are having trouble locating and working with.

I encourage you to rest, allow, and let it naturally flow to the surface for transmutation. In my energy and intuitive work, I find it can come in layers and as we are ready. Just like a child is not ready for adulthood, our healing has its own time line and staying in the pain has its purpose.

Allowing compassionate love for our self and especially our pain points can be the swiftest path to wholeness.

On the Way to the Meadow

As a child we have all kinds of ideas of what life should look like and be. We have our favorite places and things we like to do. So many of us experience chronic childhood stress, lack of nurture, lack of protection, and lack of consistent safety. All of which lead us to developing the coping mechanisms that keep us safe in the moments of childhood but then muck up our adulthoods.

We know life should be a meadow full of flowers but all we have achieved is mud. If we just keep at it, it will get better right? If we can just push harder, it will work. And we keep spinning in the mud until we can't.

Do not lose hope, as it means you are doing some deep work and/or allowing yourself not to be perfect or completed yet. Spinning in the mud is the grit of coming to the end of ourselves, to the end of the capacity of our current tools for living.

Just like we may want the perfect wedding day or any other achievement, we may not have what we need for all the work and sacrifice it takes to make a "wedding day" perfect. I don't know about you, but I have never seen a perfect wedding especially if you see behind the scenes. But each "wedding" has it's own unique experiences and memories that give each person their own perspectives.

This is where this journey to the meadow begins, looking at what has brought you to now, to today and the stories and the people that connect you to this place and time in your life. It is never about perfection, but that which in process, as living is never an end, always an ongoing beginning. Just like a "wedding day" is just one part of the path on the way to the meadow.

Energy Management versus Time Management Strategies

So many of our self improvement advisors all have tools for time management. But the concept of time management is linear and masculine in nature. It doesn't allow for layers, interconnectedness and flow. What we need to consider is a whole different perspective, that of energy management.

Given that many of us are starting to understand that we need to become aware of hormonal cycles, let alone circadian cycles the only way we can align with such cycles is by energy vs time management.

We have energy variations through out our year, month, week, day and hour. We start by becoming aware of these cycles, what exacerbates stress during these times and then incorporate approaches that support our energy instead of drain it.

With such awareness we can capitalize on our productivity and become much more effective in our work and our creativity. We can prevent burn out and experience greater life satisfaction.

Just being aligned with nature's rhythms has its own gifts, but our clock focused society has demeaned and disparaged those gifts for the sake of productivity and inherent but subconscious competition and scarcity mentalities.

Energy use can be frenetic and constricting, think caffeine and energy drinks, and is ultimately life draining. Energy use that is life sustaining is open, expansive, nurturing and empowering .

Enneagram teacher Russ Hudson shares that with any task that we perceive as negative creates frustration. The energy of frustration could be applied to any default negative emotion. He said that frustration is an addictive emotion because it causes us to be adrenalized and stressed. Most don’t like being frustrated, but most can default to it if they are not aware of what is going on. Seeing this as an addictive response is enlightening. More importantly, Hudson said, “Lifeforce gets trapped in frustration.” So that extensive energy I spend being frustrated is trapping life force energy that might be funneled toward more useful, productive, creative pursuits.

Not all frustration can be avoided and so many of our tasks of daily living are that. To cope, incorporate them throughout your day to balance the stress, breath into them in the midst of them, acknowledge the frustration and notice the emotional energy of it, the connection to a negative self-belief, and allow the flow of compassionate self love to trump the inner critic of it all.

Will I Miss My Opportunity?

Spring brings that rush of new life that is just determined to be birthed, winter be damned!

In the push to come alive again, somethings can become overlooked and under supported. We may not take the necessary time to really prepare for this new life and then have to do a lot of back tracking to keep it alive.

We have been so deprived of warmth and sunlight and refreshing rain, it feels as if we are going to die from the pregnancy of a prolonged winter.

Of course all the seasons are quite messed up right now and nothing is as it should be.

But the trees bud, the spring flowers jump from the ground and we throw off our winter coats to romp in the fresh rain, strong winds and moving clouds across the blue sky.

And Mother Nature laughs as she pummels us with another cold front, snow and damaging freezes.

When what we are trying to birth is delayed, we may despair. Please know, what was meant for you, WILL NOT PASS YOU BY!!!

To Flower or NOT to Flower. That is the question!

We are made in the image of a creative God that loves us and exudes overflowing love and blessings upon us.

We are then able to be and do the same for ourselves and others.

I find that spring and planting flowers for my yard brings me into such a space and time that transcends the day, hour and minute.

In handling the plants, all of them in a different place of growth, I am struck by all the factors needed for a plant to grow, for a flower to bloom. So often a plant doesn't become its full potential or only blooms a few things if any or blooms like a crazy fool in the midst of neglect or lack.

We are the same way, there are just going to be some flowers of your life that are not meant to bloom. But there will be other flowers pushing forth out of you that you had no idea were there.

This life of ours allows for so many choices. We can develop the power to be intentional about the garden of our life. We may need to have a lot of fertilizer, more water, more sun, less fertilizer, less water, less sun. We may need to be vigilant about the weeds that seem to have deeper roots than we do ourselves. We may need more time in hibernation, since most of us a ignored or pushed past what was supposed to be a dormant season to allow for all the inner work needed.

We may need to pace ourselves, or readjust away from the expectations of those around us. Aligning with our soul self allows us to flow the most easily and naturally into what should bloom verses what is a waste of time and energy.

Once you are blooming, you are now also vulnerable. I don't know of anything more vulnerable or sacrificial than the bloom of a flower. A flower in full bloom is profoundly beautiful and is intended to draw attention. Be careful to have healthy boundaries to protect your beauty in bloom.

And just like flowers blooming in nature, they are not always seen or appreciated but they bloom because it is in their nature. They give their fullness, their best, not to be seen or acknowledged but because they just can't help it.

Being in our beauty, being in our bloom speaks to staying in our humility to stay in balance.

So what do you want to bloom in your life?

The Power of WITNESS and the Unwitnessed Wound

Much of what we hold is because what we experienced was never witnessed, never validated, never identified as wounding and painful.

When we grow up in chronic stress and dysfunction, it may becomes normal to not feel or feel too much. And those that are meant to be there for us are not. They are too busy holding there own pain, playing out their own unwitnessed wound.

What we don't heal we perpetuate so that it becomes obvious there is something wrong!

When the child self is not seen nor heard, it will scream its truth in some way or fashion until it is seen and heard right straight through your whole life causing havoc and chaos on multiple levels.

This is where the Power of the Witness comes in.

A number of years ago I had an opportunity to intuitively bless several family members after a funeral for their mother. When I came to the middle child the word for him was WITNESS. He was the symbolic witness for the whole family's pain. Unbeknownst to any of them, his dysfunction in the midst of the the apparent success of the others bore witness to the pain they all endured in growing up with an alcoholic and very abusive father. While most overcame and went on to have "successful" lives, the middle child's life was the epitome of all their collective pain. Seems his soul signed up to be the sacrificial lamb for the family wound, until it is no longer needed. If the family were to engage in trauma healing, his witness would be released as well. This is rare, in these generations, for a whole family to engage on this level. But as an individual we are able to engage this power to heal our self and lead the way for any other family members that are ready to do the same.

With increased understanding of trauma, we can bring healing by allowing for the Witness of Self to Testify to what happened so that Justice can finally Prevail and the wound can be released.

Going up to the Witness Stand can be intimidating, painful, and terrifying. Doing so brings us alive by giving voice to the injustice.

And an opportunity for Restorative Justice to take place, whether on a physical, energetic or spiritual realm. And of course what touches one, impacts the other.

I See YOU

DO YOU SEE ME?

In some cultures they use the words, " I see you" in their greeting, instead of "hello". What a validating statement! ( Kwik Trip has captured this power by instructing employees to say, "SEE YOU NEXT TIME!" as you leave the check out. And it hits home, that someone, somewhere, will SEE me again! ) So many of our daily interactions with others are shallow hellos if we get that. We don't have time for more than that and for many of us there are too many of us. BUT we are losing something, if we don't SEE each other, we lose our connection to humanity and a part of ourselves starts to feel forlorn. We need to be at least be "SEEING" a few of each others through out our day. (Allowing for personality and neurodivergence of course).

Blue Zones that have the greatest longevity capitalize on this concept of connection. With connection we can experience knowing ourselves and having others know us. This takes increasing levels of self revelation and increasing levels of receptivity and openness to others. This leads us to intimacy, without which we cannot feel fulfilled.

Intimacy, can be a two edged sword of pain and pleasure. We are taught to grow up independent in our tough American culture. Needing someone is seen as weak and therefore we are quite confused when it comes to intimacy, as intimacy is ever threatening to the walls of self protection it takes to be independent. But those can become the walls of a lonely self prison.

Allowing space for intimacy requires vulnerability and therein lies the rub, the irritation, the reactivity. To be vulnerable is considered to be weak , and therefore feels very threatening. But there is a substance that is the very essence of human love that can only be experienced in intimacy. Vulnerability is the power to gain that substance.

Substance addiction to drugs and alcohol and any other wounded behaviors are the very opposite path to the substance we really need. Very often finding the release from addiction lies in finding the substance of ourselves and how we can be that to others. Our "self-substance" has become covered in masks, shame, guilt, defenses, self-protection and proactive offences.

Who knew how we say hello could say so much about ourselves?

So when I ask, May we please SEE EACH OTHER? I am asking you to lower your shield, your defenses, your ammunition. And allow me to do the same.

For us to experience "intimacy". We need to be able to, " IN TO ME SEE".

There is an exercise of just holding another person's gaze for an extended period of time that can expose your level of comfort or discomfort with intimacy. It is a form a staring contest we did as children. But for this, it is an opportunity to experience something beyond a contest.

I see you, do you see me?