Gwynn Raimondi, MA, LMFTA

  • Individual Sessions
  • Blog
  • About Gwynn

Acknowledging growth

May 25, 2013 By gwynn

I have days, like many do I imagine, where I’m just plain tired. I’m tired of constantly growing and changing. I’m tired of shedding layers. I’m tired of putting time in practices that keep me centered and grounded. I’m tired of healing. I’m tired of doing.

Days that I’m just plain tired. Days where I know deep in my Soul how my practices benefit me and also know deep in my Soul that it is time to rest and replenish and give myself space to be where I am in those moments.

Then I also have days where my practices are effortless. Where I can snap myself out of a bad mood by simply taking in a slow, womb-deep breath and then slowly exhaling, releasing the frustration and fear and anxiety that was building up. Days where things that in the past would have sent me  in a fast and anxious downward spiral of fear and stress, bounce off me as “oh well. I guess I’ll do this instead.” The days where I hear the messages my body or the Universe is sending me, where I acknowledge those messages and react to them in self-loving and world-loving ways.

Days where, when I step back, I can see the fruition of all my practices. Days where I see the joy on people’s faces when they spend time with me. Days where I am able to deeply touch another soul and open to having that soul deeply touch me.

I had one of those second days on Friday. I was having a wonderful Skype session with a participant in one of my e-courses and at the 50 minute mark, my laptop shut itself down. Completely turned off. When I was mid-sentence. At first I thought we had lost power in the house, but then quickly realized that the lights were still on  in the room, the wireless router was still blinking at me. Weird, I thought. I restarted the laptop and reconnected with the person I was talking to.

My laptop shut down again, this time, in the middle of her sentence. What the hell, I said to the Universe and laughed. I reconnected a third time, and my laptop shut down again. I took a deep grounding breath. I slowly exhaled. I said, “I am listening” and restarted my laptop a fourth time. This fourth time, once I reconnected, I asked her if she had anything she had left to talk about. Miraculously my laptop hasn’t shut itself down since.

My observation of the technical difficulties, and my reaction, is that aaaaahhhhhhh. I have transformed. If this same sequence of events had happened one year ago, or even six months ago, I would have started to spin into panic. I would have spun into feelings of worthlessness and not-good-enoughness and told myself that age old story of how I can never do or get anything right.

That didn’t happen Friday. Friday I laughed. Friday, after the third shut-down I slowed down, grounded and rooted myself, and opened myself to listening. I released my own agenda and thoughts that I felt compelled to express. I listened. To the Universe, to my body, to my client.

I listened.

I have released so many of those stories of not being good enough, of never being able to do anything right, or not having worth or value. I have found myself in these last few years in ways I never thought possible. It’s been an amazing journey. I look forward to continuing it and excited to see what transformation I will notice in October or next May, or whenever it is the Universe feels I need to know and see and listen.

I will continue to transform in expected and unexpected ways. It will be terrifying and beautiful and exhilarating and calming. I can continue my practices, continue to release, continue to come into Being. The true beauty of this is, I never have to get it right. I can continue to be human, continue to make mistakes, and know, this is part of the journey, part of the practice, part of the transformation.

Lifetime practices. Always.

 

Filed Under: Connection, Transformation Tagged With: abundance, being enough, centering, connection, gratitude, growth, healing, opening yourself to the possibilities, release, soul work

A Love Affair

May 13, 2013 By gwynn

I’ve been clearing out our garage and in this process have been sorting through boxes of family memorabilia: photos, diplomas, report cards, letters, greeting cards. My grandmother, and then my mom, saved every single card she was ever given and after she and my grandfather were married saved every card he was ever given. I inherited these stacks and stacks of greeting cards and have been sorting through them, finding love notes and letters and viewing the love affair of Thomas Warren Goulette and Reta Fern Inman Goulette that extended over five decades.

There’s a depth to these Hallmark cards, a beauty of a love I witnessed as a child and young adult. My grandparents, while imperfect, were madly, deeply and truly in-love with each other their whole lives. They set the standard for me for what a marriage should be. My grandmother loved my grandfather, she cared for him and tended to him during his long battle with lung cancer and emphysema. She doted on him and the look in her eyes when she talked of him and to him was breath-taking. My grandfather loved my grandmother with a passion that can best be related by the story of his death: My grandfather had been dying, fighting cancer for over a year. The doctors had been saying that whole year that he only had a few months left and every time he lived past their prognosis they gave him another month, max. What the doctor’s didn’t know is that my grandfather had promised my grandmother he would live long enough for them to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. It was so important to my grandma to have that 50th anniversary, my grandfather knew this. He fought to stay alive and they celebrated it with him in a hospice bed in their living room. Two months later he passed away.

My grandfather did everything he could, always, to give my grandmother what she wanted. This came through in material things of course, and also in non-material things: how he lovingly collected walnuts from the walnut tree and cracked them (hundreds of them!) by hand every fall and set them out to dry so Grandma could use them in her baking; how he stood by her, holding and supporting her while she watched her daughter and granddaughter’s relationship fall to pieces; making sure that she took care of herself instead of always taking care of others.

My grandparents set the standard for romantic love. I wanted a love affair like theirs, one that would last the test of time. I wanted a partner who would be as devoted to me as my grandfather was to my grandmother, fighting back Death himself, to give her her heart’s desire.  I wanted to have a love that flowed so deep from my heart that people knew by the look on my face when I spoke of my husband how deep that love was. I wanted what they had.

I didn’t see their hard times, except in the last years when Death came knocking. I didn’t see them fight or argue. I didn’t see how hard it was for them to be parents or know of their struggles, financial and otherwise. I only knew they loved each other with a passion that couldn’t be measured or described.

And that in the end is what matters. Not the details of day to day living, but the eternal love we have for those we share those days with.

I’m blessed to share my life with a man who makes my heart sing, who makes me want to be a better person, who I enjoy staying up all night talking to and who I miss desperately when we are apart, even after our nearly two decades together. I am blessed that we have an amazing little girl together and that we have our daily struggles, as all families do, and at the end of the day we know that we love each other with a passion beyond measure.

I’m not reliving my grandparent’s love affair, theirs was in another time and place. Their love for each other was uniquely theirs and theirs alone.

I do have what they had though. Realizing this as I read birthday and anniversary cards from a time before I was born has been a beautiful, awesome, centering and humbling experience.

For all their flaws, and there were many, they showed me how to live passionately and deeply in-love. And in the end, I believe that maybe, that is all that matters: that we live each day passionately and deeply in love.

The mistakes we make, our flaws and  imperfections, at the end of lifetime or the end of a day, can be forgiven if we lived passionately and deeply in love, every moment. The details of their daily foibles don’t seem to matter or to make these people I knew and love, what I remember is their love: their love for each other, their love for our family. This love is what has guided me even when I didn’t know it, it has defined me in ways I have been unaware of or unable to fully comprehend.

It all boils down to love. Our love of those close to us. Our love of our lives. Of love for the world. Expressing our love for all to see, stepping into that vulnerability and not caring what the world thinks, because our love is so strong, so robust and beautiful, the world can’t truly hurt us.

Acknowledging this love has been a powerful gift over the past few days. I’ve wept, missing my mama and grandparents. Having questions and wanting to know the stories behind certain photos or letters and knowing these questions won’t be answered in this life. Coming to a place of acceptance that those details don’t really matter has been deeply personally profound. Releasing and opening, breathing in deeply the lessons they offer me over a decade after their deaths, has shown me how eternal love truly is. And that is a beautiful lesson to receive.

My grandparents on their 42nd wedding anniversary (February 14, 1990)
My grandparents on their 42nd wedding anniversary (February 14, 1990)

Filed Under: Connection, Family, Gratitude, Grounding, healing, Peace Tagged With: beautiful life, connection, family, finding joy, growth, healing, love, peace, relationship, release

A prayer

March 4, 2013 By gwynn

To my ancestral mamas,

I forgive you.

I forgive you for being human. I forgive you for clinging to your own hurt, terrified and lonely little girls inside your souls. I forgive you for not being able to pass on the love, the acceptance, the connection, the beauty that you wanted for your daughters, for yourselves.

I forgive you all for thinking you were terrible mothers. I forgive you all for being terrible mothers at times. I forgive you the hurt, the pain, the loneliness that you all passed down, generation after generation, all the way to me.

I send you love. I release the heavy burden you passed down to your daughters because you didn’t know what else to do with it. I’m setting it down for us all. 

I send you freedom. All of you I carry not only in my DNA, in my blood, I carry you in soul. As I repair and grow and transform and heal, you do too.

I give to us all a beautiful relationship with my daughter. The pain, the fear, the loneliness no longer serve us. It is time to connect, to bask in the joy and beauty of motherhood, to release the fear of fucking it all up. 

I soak in your strength. I bask in your love. Together, we will start to enjoy today, to enjoy our beautiful children, one moment at a time.

 

Filed Under: Connection, healing, Mamahood, Peace, Repair, trauma Tagged With: attachment, connection, family, fear, growth, healing, intergenerational trauma, mamahood, mindfulness, motherhood, release, transformation, trauma

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

I'm so excited you are interested in talking with me to see if I am the right person to join you on the next steps of your own personal life journey. Please fill out the form below, then confirm your "subscription" once that email shows up in your inbox and then within 48 hours I will connect with you to schedule our 30-minute chat.

By subscribing you agree to receive our promotional marketing materials and agree to our Privacy Policy (found at http://gwynnraimondi.com/privacy-policy). You may unsubscribe at anytime.

Be sure to check your inbox, spam folder and/or promotions tab now to confirm your request.

  • Cultural Relational Trauma
  • About Gwynn Raimondi
  • Let’s Work Together
  • Blog

Copyright © 2019 · Parallax Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in