Looking for Meaning in Life?

A dear friend recently observed that in reading over several of my blogs she thinks my underlying angst is that I am searching for meaning in my life! Right! Well said. What IS this all about? I get up, brush my teeth, make my bed, take Aimee for a walk, see clients, read a book, blog, talk to a friend or two, go to bed, have some food somewhere in all of that, get up, brush my teeth...hmmmmmm. Where is the meaning or what is the purpose? What is the goal? When will I know when I have done IT?

I am discovering that I loose meaning in life when I feel anxious, vulnerable, powerless. When I feel solid, secure, connected, doing what I love and love what I am doing, it all makes so much more sense. Life, for me, is about intimate connection. Thus my obsession with my family and my drive to help couples and families heal. Therapists do for others what they long to be able to do for themselves. I think that might well be true.

As I am loving and trying to guide my adult children, I am also loving and trying to guide those I work with, and in all of that, somewhere I am healing my own family of origin. An anxious, depressed, and overwhelmed mother, and an emotionally absent and overwhelmed father created a quiet little girl who played with Bradshaw, whom no one else could see or hear. Think about this for yourself, for your life. What are you trying to heal in your family? What got missed when you were growing up, because for sure something did, it is impossible to meet ones every need, that you are trying to make up for with your current family? Be incredibly honest with yourself. Are you over-doing it? I was. I tried too hard to heal me and missed some of what else was going on.

I suggest you and your partner spend a good hour or more talking about what you wanted and needed and deserved to have gotten as a child and didn't. Then clarify together how that plays itself out in your family now. Then decide if you are satisfied with how the two of you are doing with the children, or if there might be some changes that would be smart because these kids are not who you were and their needs really are unique to them and not what you missed.

Enough for now. Think, share, write me, read: Hold Me Tight, Sue Johnson; or Anatomy of the Spirit, Caroline Myss. Warmly, Nancy

Mind, Body, Spirit: Total Connection Forever

Caroline Myss has written a helpful, readable, excellent book that makes sense and is empowering. The name is: Anatomy of The Spirit. One of the many things I like about the book is that she is clear about the mind AND the spiritual connection to our body. She talks about every single (not just the big ones, but every single one)event, happening, memory, thought, experience, lives in the cells of our body.

Amazing! I have tended to believe it is the bigger, or more significant, or somehow more extraordinary happenings that affect us. I have always understood that these happenings build up and it is not ever one single event that has affected us. But I never realized that it is ALL that has been said, done, left undone, noticed, understood, not understood. Simply put: everything lives in us and impacts us. As we get older, the impact often becomes physical. Especially if our tendency is to focus our thoughts and feelings on the negative and not quite so much on what is positive about our life.

Physics has proven that everything connects. Everything is vibrating energy. We really are one with all that is. I believe this, I intuit this, science supports the truth that we are all one; and again, that affects our health, our body. The amazing hugeness of this as real hovers above me as I think of 3 solid years or more of highly significant challenges with my heart. Absolutely that was about every single thing that has ever happened in my life and largely about the negative spin I may have put on many of those events. Beyond my own body and spirit however, what is equally true, I believe, is that what happens to our bodies is also a reflection of what is happening to our world. The very heart, the very core, of our world is changing and is in pain and is protesting. Protesting. Good word. I like that.

My heart and my spirit were protesting. I was out of rhythm. I beat too hard and too fast. I felt sorrow, pain, fear...lots of fear. Our world is filled with fear. Babies are afraid that they aren't safe, parents are afraid that they can not feed their children and keep them secure, mothers are afraid for their family's well being, fathers are afraid they are failing. Our hearts are aching and our spirits are trembling. Caroline Myss says we need to feel secure and we need to find the positive and live less in the negative.

I agree. At my brother's cottage on Hamlin Lake near Ludington, Michigan, last week, we watched the most magnificent sunsets each evening. We shared our meals in love and gratitude. I walked Sporty, their 11 year old Jack Russel with joy and pleasure. My sister-in-law is very, very sick with cancer. She joined us each day and celebrated life with us, getting a chuckle out of my sailor brother's sea sickness the day before we came. My brother is one of the most positive people I have ever known. His minute by minute devotion, commitment, and love for his wife brings peace, healing and security to all of us. Blessed be.

Caroline Myss and my brother Bud. Two peas in a pod and never would they meet nor would my brother agree with her spiritual focus. However, he is a living example that positive helps keep us alive and can turn adversity into doable and you can find beauty in the doable. For Bud the secret is love. His relationship with his wife is a living symbol for the meaning of love. He has a great deal to teach us all. Even Myss could learn from him! (:

Love each other. More later. Nancy

Healing the Disconnection

Because I use this blog as a place to process my own journey and try to turn that into suggested next steps or possible learning for others, I feel you deserve for me to update you re: the stress between my daughter and me. All is well. We came together in the bathroom in the House of Flavors in Ludington with heartfelt hugs and words of sorrow and willingness to explore together what happened. Both of us felt no need to process at all at the moment and are relieved to feel the loving reconnection.

Lesson for those of you who read this and care: take your time and be patient and stay grounded in the loving and the desire for connection. Defensiveness is not useful. Open mindedness and good intent facilitates disconnection every time. This is true for you with partner, family, friends, at work, neighbours,just generally speaking in life.

Write to me about your successes. Trusting that under the hurt lives the love and what everyone of us wants is security: helps to heal the disconnect as well. More about security. I use the word safety. Caroline Myss uses security. We mean the same.

Have you read her book: Anatomy of The Spirit? It is excellent. I will spend some time this afternoon sharing what I have learned and relearned. She makes so much Imago sense.

Have a good morning. Nancy

Don;t Notice the Garbage

Some days it all just seems to come together. You smile at your beloved and the sun shines! You look out doors and the wind blows. You check your computer and someone new connects, you look at your home and the colours and designs just fill your heart.

Joy!

Every day can be joy. The deal is we just don't see it. We are so blind sometimes. All around is love and joy. All around instead I have been seeing the garbage and plethora of someones years of mess; not mine, but the neighbour's messy, unattended to life. Blinded by their mess, I lost my focus. Not a good idea actually.

Today I woke up with my blinders off. What I like is that I am in charge. I can wear blinders and only see my neighbour's mess, or I can take off the blinders and see the sunshine and feel the wind blow.

This is not just about neighbours, of course. It's about life. My partner is the same partner each day. Sometimes I see smiles, sometimes I feel frowns. Your partner deserves for you to see the whole picture. Life is SO not one dimensional. People are complicated. Forget what you think you see(I think I see a dirty mess next door). And notice what else might be hanging around.

Listen, and screen out what you make up. You are the centre of your universe. But you have to forget that sometimes and tune into the world around you. Life can be filled with joy when you screen out the messy neighbour's garbage and notice your partner's smile. Land! My metaphors get weird sometimes. You know what I mean. Take charge and choose to live in joy.

Words of wisdom for the day. Nancy Ross (:

Am I A Good Person?

I wonder if everyone’s greatest fear is that they might not be a good person? Not good enough, anyway. Underneath anger, hurt, sadness does there simmer a tiny flame of fear that what we have done, what we have said, or thought, or not done, suggests to someone we care about and love that we are basically bad? By bad I think I mean not enough, not the right person, not who it is you really want me to be and who it is you really love. I am bad. It does not necessarily following that you are good. But I am bad because I don’t fully see you and am unable to fully meet your needs and hopes and what you really do deserve from me.

That is what my client feels about her daughter.. Her daughter deserves to be fully seen and embraced by her mother. Her daughter does not feel like my client is doing that. My client feels bad. She feels like a bad mother and a bad person who hasn’t been smart enough and brave enough to do the right thing.
she tortures herself needlessly! NO ONE can do it totally right. We ALWAYS get it only partly right. She is not bad. She is human.

My client’s daughter knows that too. The mother is the one who needs to remember.

Check out your relationship with loved ones. You are not bad. You make mistakes. Some are long-term mistakes and some have long lasting results. And you learn from your mistakes. That is what makes mistakes a good thing. Always they give you to opportunity to learn. Oh, the relief! The joy! The delight: in knowing you have stretched and moved into a greater space. A place where you are more than you were.

You are never bad. You are always learning, growing stretching. Love yourself, don’t torture precious you. You deserve joy.

Heads and Tails

I have been reading some of my past blogging. Don't have regrets about what I have written. What I like about blogging is I am who I am. All by myself. Sometimes someone out there reads who I am. Once in a while, someone comments. But on the whole, I see this as my story as I tell it to myself. I am so very aware that as I commit to helping couples and families with adult children heal and grow, I am trying desperately and valiantly to heal and grow myself. It amazes me how hurt and sadness and fear can raise their snarly heads and beat their heavy tails (read tales) on my heart. And I let it happen.

How can we simultaneously be the centre of our universe AND know when it isn't about me?! Absolutely I lead with my awareness, my information, my experience, my soul. So does everyone else. Thus, it feels about me and it very well may not be the case. Sorting that out can only be done via dialogue. Having a third person help guide that dialogue can help. I am right. You are right. I need to give you more information so you can know why I believe myself to be right. And I need to listen to you and understand you and have more information so I can see that you too, are right. When we both feel seen, we both can relax. It is safe know. No one is bad or wrong. Life can continue and I can move closer and closer to joy.

The goal for life as we know it in the physical on this planet is to learn how to always walk in joy. Especially how to walk in joy with each other. That is love. Feeling our natural, innate, god-given, primary right to embracing joy to it's fullest.

Let me help you practice. I will focus on the positive with you. Negative hurts. It hurts our heart, our soul, our self esteem. Positive heals. It helps us feel safe and happy. And as my father taught me in his 80's, it takes less muscles to smile than it does to frown.

Take care. Enjoy the rain. It comforts, washes us and the stones clean and nourishes life.

Nancy

Stress and Sadness

I'm feeling sad. I don't think life has to be so sad. I think we are meant to be happy and we create our own sadness. But sometimes I just don't know how to stop myself.

It's sad when someone I love distances from me. It is sad when change I don't want is imposed upon me. I feel sad when I believe myself to be tooting along doing life as best I know how and I find that clearly I am not enough.... I suddenly felt like I am whining and I HATE whiners! So, enough of that.

Stress is much like sadness: To me it feels like it is imposed upon me from the outside. But I really know I created it all by myself from inside me. I think, thus I feel. Given that appears to be the case, what I need to do is change what I think. Then I can change how I feel. Soooooo I have contributed to a significant rift between my dearly beloved daughter and myself. I am sad I did that. She needs time. I tell myself bad things about myself. Not helpful!

What I can do is walk gently in love and joy: for her, for my life, for the universe. My sad and probably frightened feelings create negative energy and that is what I walk in. When I breath, focus, pull inside myself, I can image joy, I can image the sun, blue sky, soft breeze, smiles and love. Remember! Remember times of love and laughter, closeness and joy. Let go of, walk away from, darker feelings. The darker, negative feelings simply perpetuate the disconnect and discontent and increase the feelings of stress.

This is true for you and your partner as well. Decide to shift your focus. Decide to feel music, light, smiles, to remember the fun and safe feelings that were once there. And know with all of your heart and spirit, that that positive place of safety and joy belongs to both of you. Laugh when it isn't very funny, smile when you feel down, skip when you want to sleep, fast when you want to gorge, breath when you want to cut yourself off from your feelings, hope when all feels dark and gloomy.

Intentionally shift. And write to me to let me know if being intentional relieves some of the stress. And when some of the stress is lessened, let me know if you feel safer and more connected. And when you reach joy, which takes time and intentionality, give a loud whoop of pleasure and rejoice in your wisdom and strength.

Enough preaching. Man, do I do that a lot. Let me hear how you are doing. I care.

Warmly, Nancy