Category: healing

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Extraordinary repair – a quick love note (and breathing exercise)

How do we repair the hurts we’ve carried in our bones through most of our lives? I believe we start with our breath – practiced and intentional breathing; breath focused meditations; setting an alarm randomly through out the day to remind us to take a deep inhale and forced exhale.

As we connect with our breath, we connect with our body. And with practice we can expand our practice to connect more deeply with our body and the stories and wisdom that live within.

We can start to dig into our stories that tell us who we should be or what we should do or how we should act and consciously decide if they are right for us or if it is time to let them go.

We heal by connecting to our body, our mind and our spirit. And this healing always starts with our breath.

I invite you to a little breath practice of counting exhales:: randomly throughout your day, focus in on your breath and count your exhales in sets of 10. Notice how it feels to exhale. Notice how complete your exhales are. Notice how you feel before you count and after.

If you would like to connect more deeply with your body, to explore your stories of too much and not enough and fight yow own Shame Beasts, I invite you to join us in Exploring Our Shadows. We begin to gather on May 1. More details and registration information can be found right here.

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Owning our stories (a quick note)

We write our own stories.

Yes, we are given lines and plots by our family, our culture, our lived experience.

And yet, these are only plot turns, they are the points in which we, the main character, the heroine, get to decide how we are going to be. We don’t have control over our genetics or how people treat us or life events like earthquakes or rapes or being burglarized.

We do have control over how we respond to each of these events. Yes, we may have the after effects of trauma or shock living within us. AND we have the choice to heal those pains, to become present again, to engage in our lives instead of allowing our reptile brain to take over.

We have control over whether or not we remain stuck in anger or bitterness or hurt. This is not to say we don’t feel those things, rather we allow them to be fluid, to process and pass through and allow the next emotion to come.

With practice and intention, love and compassion will enter into your heart and being. And you will not remain in this place forever either, because again life will happen. And perhaps when life happens again you will come out of it differently, perhaps the anger or bitterness or hurt will pass more quickly.

Regardless, you have the right to write your own story; you have the privilege to be the person you chose to be; and you have the responsibility to take these rights and privileges seriously, to be present for your one lived life, to write your own story and not let others write it for you.

xoxo

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Ancestral Stories

Last week I guided over a hundred women in exploring our power and strength, connecting to our bodies, excavating our stories and digging into who we truly are. It was an intense week and fast paced and rich with ways to dive into our depths. And even with this being true, I have been left feeling like we barely skimmed the surface of this work, that we barely dipped our toes is. That there is so much richness  in this work of power and strength for us all to uncover, to become curious about.

During our week we touched on the stories of our mothers. We spent one day of thinking about and connecting to what our mothers brought to us. That day is still lingering within me, simmering. This digging into their stories reminds me again how the more we each know of our own history the more we can make sense of our Self. We can’t ignore the past. The women and men who came before us made us, both metaphorically and literally. Pretending that what they lived has no impact on us only puts up another block for us to overcome to get to our own core and true, whole Self.

Sometimes though we don’t have a way to learn the stories; the people who held them had died or we aren’t in contact or they simply don’t want to share them. And it feels like then the stories are lost, and a part of our Self is lost with them. How can we know the experience of our great-great-great-great-grandmother? How can we know how her children felt? How she felt about motherhood? What her internal struggles were with loving and being loved?

We can begin with our own stories. The ones that live in our heads, real and imagined. We can begin with our own struggles and how motherhood affects us or our relationship with our own mother. We can begin with how we embrace or avoid loving and being loved.

Because all those stories that we have, they didn’t start with us. Our struggles with living and loving and being didn’t begin with our birth. They all began a long time ago, with women we never met and yet are as much a part of us as we are part of our children. We are made of their DNA and with that comes the stories and struggles and sadness and joy of their lived experiences.

So we begin understanding our ancestral stories by beginning to understand our own. By acknowledging the stories we hold. By exploring all those shoulds and have-tos and fears. By examining our daily struggles and getting curious about them. By knowing that we are not the first or the last in our line to experience life as we do, our trials and strife are our threads to our past, to understanding, to embracing our own embodied knowing.

We may never know the specific literal details of the lives of the women who came before us. And we can imagine their internal experiences, the stories that swirled within them, by understanding our own internal stories.

How will you connect with your stories? With the gifts and non-gifts the women before you handed down? Are you ready to dig into who you are, what you are made of, literally and figuratively? Are you ready to grow your mermaid tail and dive to your own depths?

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On Grief, Mother-Wounds, and Self-Love

It’s Halloween morning.  As I sit down to write this, the rest of the family is still in bed, sleeping peacefully. My coffee has brewed and I have finished my first cup, along with a couple of peanut-butter Snickers (oh so good!). The wind is blowing like mad and the rain is coming down in ways it doesn’t usually here in Seattle: hard, heavy, filled with sadness and melancholy and grief.

We have been talking about the Mother-Wound in the (Un)Becoming circle, and the grief work that is involved in this healing. The grief of not having the mother we wanted or deserved. The grief of our mothers not having the mother they wanted or deserved. The grief of our grandmothers and our daughters. We have been talking of healing and empathy and finding ways to repair our Self.

It is heavy work. I feel the weight of the grief of the circle as surely as I feel my own. My grief of not having the mother I needed or deserved as a young child. The grief of just when our relationship was becoming what I had always dreamed of, she died. The grief of not always being able to be the mother my daughter (or son) need and deserve. The grief of being human and therefor flawed, imperfect.

In this healing, we learn that our flaws are yes, what make us human, but they do not make us unworthy. They do not make us undeserving of love or nurturing. They do not make us tainted or valueless.

These flaws simply make us human. Just like our mothers, and grandmothers, and sisters and best friends. Just like our husbands and bosses and teachers. Just like our children. We each do things we may not be proud of at times. We each have the capacity for cruelty, even when not intentional. And we each have the capacity for deep love and vulnerability.

I told the circle in my video this week that sometimes I think our fear of love is what makes us do crazy things. It was in reference to the truth that our mothers have to had, or have to currently, love us with the same fire we love our own children, they simply may not be able to show it in healthy ways, in ways we can feel it. I shared a bit of my experience as a mother when my daughter was very young, and the absolute terror I felt at the love I felt for her. My love for her, and hers for me, terrified me to my core. It was too raw, too pure, too unconditional. I was unable to feel or process this love and so in my own ways I distanced myself from her, from us.

Eventually I was able to come back, do the work I needed so that I could be closer to the mother she needed, the mother I needed and wanted to be. This is a slow and ever evolving process. I have my own wounds to heal, as each of us do, and I know she will have hers to heal one day too.

We each have days of not being the people we hope to be, for ourselves or for our children. We each have times of too much yelling, too much distancing. The vulnerability of the love we feel for our children, and they for us, can be overwhelming even in the best of times. And so we screw up and we come back and repair as best we can and we move on to the next moment and the next and sooner or later we will screw up again and come back and repair again. It is the truth of our human experience. It is what makes us human.  It is also what makes us divine, sacred, holy and yes, magical.

In the repair is where our magic lies, where the holy lives. When we are able to come back to another we have knowingly hurt and say “I am sorry. I will try to do better next time” — that is where the sacred comes through. When we are able to admit our own humanity, and show others that it is okay to be human, this is when the Divine flows through us and into the world.

When we are able to not only repair with our children, spouses, and friends, but can also come to our Self and say “I’m sorry, I will do better next time” that is healing. When we can look to our own mothers and grandmothers and on down the line and recognize they were only doing the best they could with what they had — not excusing their behaviors, not saying it didn’t or doesn’t hurt— simply acknowledging their experience, the wounds are able to be cleaned. In this acknowledging the humanity of others around us, in finding our empathy for them and their experience, we start to have empathy for ourselves. We can start to see how while we are flawed, we are worthy of love, of nurturing, of respect.

And here’s where the magic comes in: We start to love, nurture and respect our Self. We start to do the little things each day that allow us to show our Self that we love her. We start to breathe a bit easier. We start to feel the ground beneath us. We start to sense the sacred, holy and Divine within us. This is self-love. This is healing. This is magic.

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Dare, Jaguars, Pink Hair & Wonder Woman

Since I began dreaming up the Being & Unbecoming circle four things keep appearing to me, declaring a piece of this next iteration of my work circling with women, this next iteration my own soul work: the word Dare, women with Pink Hair, images of jaguars, and Wonder Women (and other super heroines, but mostly WW). Over and over the images came up or the word makes itself known to me. Over and over I get a small thrill, a chill that runs through my bones and womb and heart, when these images and word appear.

Dare.

Dare to do this work.

Dare to dive into the depths of who I am.

Dare to shed all that has been holding me back.

Dare to rebel against those myths and stories that have tried to box me in, to define me in ways that aren’t at all me.

Dare to circle with other women, ready to do this deep work, ready to reconnect with their own power and strength and embodied knowing.

Dare to take myself to this next level.

Jaguars. Every where jaguars appear to me. In the magazines. On mailers. On TV. In books for the kids and for me.  In my social media feeds. Again and again, they step out of their dens, inviting me in,  to do this shadow work, to embrace my own power, to release this layer of fear, to connect to my own embodied knowing.

Dare.

Dare to release fears. Dare to connect to my own power. Dare to awaken that inner sight, that embodied knowing.

Women with pink hair. Everywhere again. In the same yet different places the jaguars have been beckoning me. I’ve had pink hair on and off since I was a teen. For me it represents both rebelling against social norms and embracing my “traditional” femininity, my “girlness.” Pink hair both declares: I’m not going to play by your rules, and I love all things traditionally female. Pink hair is bold. It’s brazen. It makes a statement. It says fuck you to the status quo while giving it a nod and knowing wink. Yes, I’m female and I’ll wear pink, but only on my terms, only in my way.

Ironically, since leaving engineering I have shied away from my pink hair. Stories of what a “proper therapist” looks like swirling in my head, wanting to be taken seriously, not wanting to work so fucking hard for respect and understanding from those in power, those in authority. “Real” therapists have natural colored hair, my inner shamer says. It was okay to be so daring in the corporate world, but honey, you’re going to have your own business, you need to calm down and grow up.

What??!!! Because having pink hair as an electrical engineer… what? It made me stand out. It made me both noticeable and memorable. It added to my glow, not detracted from it. It made me different from the rest of the pack and my clients loved that. It added to my image of thinking outside of the box, of giving them something fresh and new and unique. Because, tell me, how many pink haired electrical engineers do you know?

Exactly.

And why would this be any different for me as a therapist? Why would it not make me stand out. Why would it not add to what I have to offer those who come to see me? Wouldn’t it only add to my image of writer, rebel and guide? Wouldn’t it add to me being uniquely and authentically me? Isn’t that what I want to model for women, for my kids? To be unapologetically yourself, rainbow hair or clothes or whatever and all?

(Because, tell me, how many pink haired therapists do you know?)

Dare.

Dare to have pink hair.

Dare to take that next step of releasing those stories that aren’t true.

Dare to let go of my need for approval from those in “authority.”

Dare to allow myself to be seen, noticed, remembered.

Dare to allow myself to glow right on through.

Dare to be wholly and holy me and set this world on fire, pink hair and all.

Wonder Woman. Oh Wonder Woman. How I have worshiped her since childhood. How I wanted to be her. I so desperately wanted WW under-roos, but never got them. I did have a WW swimsuit though. And my WW Barbie. Who I loved so much. So very, very much. I watched Linda Carter portray WW each week, and practiced my spin to turn into her myself. I made my own golden lasso out of some rope and my bullet bracelets out of some old costume jewelry.

Wonder Woman loved animals, was kind and strong and knew how and when to kick ass and when words alone would do the trick. She had the lasso of truth that would make the bad guys admit just how bad they were. She was a gentle mother figure and protector, both things I so desperately needed and wanted as a child. She was both who I wanted to become and who I wanted to save me.

And in some ways, both have happened: I have become her in many ways, and in many ways she has saved my life by giving me a role model to look up to, by allowing me to honor my own softness and strength and kick-assness and diplomacy. By reminding me, over and over, that the Truth will always come out, and that the bad guys will be stopped.

Dare.

Dare to find strength in softness.

Dare to have the wisdom to know when to kick ass and when diplomacy will do.

Dare to know the truth, my own truth, of my own power.

Dare to unbind myself from the chains of the myths and stories that hold me down.

Dare.

Jaguars.

Pink Hair.

Wonder Woman.

….

I feel the power of these images, these words, what they speak to me, how they are speaking through me. I get a literal zing in my body each time a woman steps forward to join this quest to unbecoming and being. Thinking about the program, the energy it holds, brings the biggest smile to my face. I feel it, the magic, the power, the energy, of this next iteration.

For me. For the women who have gathered. For the women who are finding their way to this work.

The power of women joining together. In love, support and witnessing.

….

One of the questions on the check-in questionnaire is if you agree to follow the three guidelines for this circle: 1. No comparing or judging; 2. What we share in the circle stays in the circle; and 3. No giving advice (unless specifically requested).

One and three are particularly tough for most of us.  Not comparing ourselves, or our experiences, with others. We sit and think of where we “should” be or what we “should” have accomplished by now and can get lost and sucked so deeply into that downward spiral of guilt and shame. Comparing only serves to make us feel less than, not enough, not good. Here’s the truth: our experience is our experience. It is neither good nor bad. It should not have been any other way, because it is part of what brought you to where you are today. It is part of what will get you to where you are going tomorrow, next week, next year and next decade. It is your journey, the one you needed to find your way home to you. Each step, each experience, vitally important.  Each journey has unique details, and if we listen and honor each other we’ll see our common threads and how they have played out in our unique lives. We’ll see what brings us together, what links us in sisterhood. It’s not about comparing. It’s about knowing, deep in our bones, that regardless of what another has (or has not) experienced, we are all in this together.

Number three is the one I have received several comments on. Not giving advice. We’re fixers, us women. We see a problem, see a person we love in pain, and we want to heal it. We want to make the issue go away, and honestly if the person would just take our advice, it would all be so simple. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). I’m a chronic advice giver. Seriously the worst. I’m admitting this as a therapist in training: sitting and listening to another person’s pain, holding the space, not interjecting, not trying to fix—hardest thing ever. It doesn’t come naturally for me. I want to wrap my clients up in warm blankets and hold them and rock them and (here’s the bad part) tell them exactly what they need to do to feel better. I’m getting better at not giving advice in my professional realm. And I’m very much a work in progress in my personal world.

Here’s the thing about giving advice though: when we give advice, we aren’t honoring the person who just spilled their guts all over the floor for us. We are, unintentionally, telling this person, who is in his or her most vulnerable place, that hey, that’s nice, and really if you only did this thing I’m going to tell you, you’d totally be out of this mess (or would have never been in it in the first place). It’s telling the person we don’t have time for their pain, to shut up and fix the problem already. It’s showing the person that it certainly is not safe to share intimate pieces of themselves. And here’s the truth: it’s judging. Because if the person were only wise enough to do what you tell them, well, it would all be okay. And clearly there is something wrong with the person if they don’t take your advice, if they don’t just “fix it.”

Advice giving comes from a place of discomfort. Being a fixer comes from being uncomfortable with what is “broken” or messy or raw. Part of not giving advice is learning to sit with this discomfort, to allow our own messiness to bubble up. To be as okay with those icky parts of ourselves or our stories as we claim to be with that of others. Not giving advice means honoring and truly seeing the other person, allowing ourselves to give the space for another person to simply be, to find her way in her own time, to uncover and reveal her truths not only to everyone else in the circle, but most importantly to herself.

So.

Dare.

Jaguars.

Pink Hair.

Wonder Woman.

Wonder Woman never gave advice, by the way. She listened empathically and then acted appropriately (either by kicking ass or continuing to listen, to hold space).

Dare to sit with the discomfort.

Dare to witness other women. Dare to be witnessed.

Dare to be okay with the messy, the raw, the “broken.”

Dare to listen, and not only that, but to hear others and their experience.

Dare to be heard. Dare to speak of your life without comparing, without shame.

Dare to show up, just as you are.

Dare to shed the stories that no longer serve you.

Dare to glow.

Dare to embrace your inner jaguar. Dare to don pink hair. Dare to be Wonder Woman.

Dare to come home to you. Dare to be exactly who you were meant to be. You may have taken the long way, and you have known your destination all along.

You.

Dare to be you. Fully. Unapologetically. Unashamedly. You.

the long way homeThere is still time to join the next iteration, the circle-quest to you. Click here to request a short check-in questionnaire so we can get to know each other. Space is limited. Dare to join us, dare to come home to yourself, dare to explore the power of you.