Choosing Healing

Even healers can be afraid of their healing…

Oh, how I’ve been aching for myself.

A pattern has emerged in this healing, loving, returning journey of mine back to me.

For the most part on this journey, I actively, courageously, mindfully choose love. I choose and I choose again, and in those times of consistent and powerful showing up for myself and in love and not fear, I reach a breakthrough. A breakthrough so potent and revolutionizing as to dismantle old, un-serving beliefs and permit a rise so completely anew in healing, in love, in bliss, in contentment.

My first reality-shaking breakthrough on this healing journey was forgiving my father for being human; and in doing so, restoring faith, communication and love, into 24 years of an otherwise broken relationship.

Forgiveness changed my and my father’s life and relationship with another, and it was the most liberating experience I’d endured yet. When his visit out in California was over and he left, I sunk deeply, even subconsciously, into a state of escapism and self-sabotage by drinking alcohol to excess, distracting myself with a partner with whom love did not exist, neglecting my self-care, my health, my self-love.

Five leaps forward and ten stumbles back. This resistance to healing continued for longer than I wish to admit, in my mind’s attempt to create more suffering in the wake of the rejuvenating healing that I had just allowed myself. Patterns.

Just a few weeks ago, I tuned in so deeply to myself that I ran the other way yet again. I sat gently and quietly enough to love myself back into remembering my life’s purpose.

The reason I am on this planet.

What I am here to share.

It felt good to know it, to return to it, to exhale and surrender to it.

And then, before I even knew what was happening, I found myself blocking out and engaging in various distraction and resistance techniques in attempt to un-see what I had seen. Truth.

Truth is scary. Truth is unavoidable. Truth will catch up to you and surface, no matter how far, how fast, how strategically you run. And once, and only, when truth– and self-awareness– are present, you can take monumental action.

Until you shed light and awareness in a space, you can continue living in ignorant darkness; to change a thought, behavior or state of being isn’t an option when you’re unaware of its reality.

But when you tune in deeply enough to reach a state of awareness and the truth reveals itself to you… now you have a choice.

You have a choice to do something with that truth– acknowledge it, accept it, work with it, act on it– or run the other way.

Last week, I ran. I ran in the same way I did after re-building my relationship with my father. And I’m finding all too soon that running doesn’t work for me. Running leaves me feeling empty, resistant, closed off, and fearful.

This week– today– I choose courage.

Today, I choose love, presence, faith, and surrender.

I know what I’m here for.

And I am here.

 

@leahlivefree Photography.

@skaythephotography.

 

I am here to break myself, and then others, back down to love: to soft, to water, to open flow.

I am here to guide myself, and then others, back to sacred empowerment, to wild, to connection, to knowledge. I am here to do this through nature.

5:36 a.m. (views from a tent)

 

@Janisskribans Photography.

How Fleeting You Are, San Diego Rain

 

The Scientist’s Dance

 

Take and Give

Ocean Depths

 

@EddieWorden Photography.

Dreams + Nightmares

Heart Fear

@EddieWorden Photography

How To Love One’s Demons

Demons. Monkey chatter, the ego, fears, self-doubt, that voice inside your head that tells you you’re not good enough– we all have them.

It wasn’t until an honest conversation with a best-friend-mirror last night in which I realized my demons were paralyzing me from writing.

I am well-versed in embracing the light. In loving it, channeling it and sharing it. I am much less comfortable and fluent in loving the dark. I knew deep down that an error in a recently published article of mine was instilling such fear in my mind that I had been avoiding Good & Grateful and neglecting the addressing of these deep-rooted emotions, and everything I had been trying to write in recent weeks felt inauthentic because of it.

It felt inauthentic because it wasn’t the piece that needed to surface; they weren’t the words of love and acceptance that my very demons needed more than anything, and anything else was neglect. And healing holds no space for neglect.

This morning, I embraced a healing first: I have journaled my demons in tangible written form for my eyes to see. I acknowledged them instead of neglecting them. And I went through each demon-fear and without judging it or trying to change it, I thanked it for being present, and I told it that I love it. Holding my heart, I went through each fear and thanked it for being here, because each of them have taught me exactly what I need to heal. I spent generous time with each demon until the flutter in my heart ceased upon reading it and instead transformed into hosted contentment, and I thanked them again.

I share this with you all because it was a powerful experience for me in working alongside my demons in the process of healing. It was an expression of love and light to the places that need them the most; the icky, messy, uncomfortable places to reach and hold onto. I also chose to embrace a further layer of vulnerability by sharing my particular demons, the ones preventing me from writing.

We are not strong, admirable or beautiful for the light we give alone. We are magic because of the way we light-work alongside our darknesses. The mind is incredibly powerful, and often times we forget that we are our toughest critics. Thank you to an inspirational, talented best-friend-mirror who helped me see this by sharing her own demons with me.  I encourage us all to explore the heart space in offering love and gratitude instead of avoidance next time our demons surface, for they will– and I know that my heart and I will be waiting.

---

My demons:

• I’m terribly insecure about the title error in my elephant journal article
• I’m embarrassed
• It makes me feel like:
  • I’m really not a good writer
  • I shouldn’t have been and don’t deserve to be published
  • My writing is emotional fluff and I have nothing substantial to write about
  • All I do is share my feelings like an over-emotional little girl who’s trying to make up for 24 years of silence, misunderstanding and repressed expression 
  • My followers, the editors at the journal, and I think I’m not credible and that I have lost my credibility as a writer
  • My blog and Good & Grateful Instagram are now tainted with the error and they are no longer “clean” and attaining to be perfect 
  • I have nothing to write and I know nothing worth sharing that brings value to other people

And after it all, with love for the darkness and the light that makes it so,

XO, my Good’s & Grateful’s

@Goodgrateful: Journaling + making vision boards with a soul sister = a solid Friday.

We Got Lost