A letter to this dear community:
I want to share myself with you more and it starts now.
I must confess, the past week has shaken me a bit, but I feel like my roots are now being planted deeper. Forgive my garden analogy, I miss my garden and compost pile (wink, wink)
I am not going to get into politics today. I want to keep a safe love bubble around our community. And while that feels good there is also a reality that must be addressed. The elephant in the room, so to speak. I made a commitment to you (and myself) to be authentic. So, I certainly need to acknowledge that there is a connection between politics and our spiritual, mental and physical health. I can see that connection and now I cannot unsee it, as much as I’d sometimes like to.
With that said, there is no question that politics helped inspire this “shaken feeling” that I’ve experienced. Maybe you feel it too?
Last week, after I sent a blog post to you about grieving, I received an outpouring of messages. So many were positive and grateful and for the first time a couple of negative messages came in too.
The negative messages surprised me due to the writing being about “The 7 Steps On How To Grieve”.
This taught me two things.
First:
I haven’t been sharing my vulnerable self enough if this is probably the first time in 7 years that I’ve gotten nasty comments on a blog post.
I need to step it up!
Second:
My sense is that humanity as a whole has lost touch with their empathy (their ability to hold space for their own emotions and the emotions of others). There are many reasons that I feel this way about the lack of empathy I see in the “whole” (not in everyone obviously) but, that is for a different blog in the future.
The bottom line is that the reactions I received on both sides (negative and positive) have proven to me just how important the conversation around feeling our emotions really is right now.
Grieving is about feeling a range of emotions, especially when we don’t feel like it. When we don’t feel our emotions, it is my opinion that this is the very thing that creates separation, bullying, judgement and attacking of ourselves and our fellow brothers and sisters.
I’m not at all worried about a different opinion on my blog, what I was concerned with was the anger and hatred and name calling that came my way for sharing some tips on how to feel emotions.
That was concerning.
I come from a family where there have been racial divides and I’ve never talked about this publicly. I’ve taken it upon myself to take a stand against racism during my life and I continue to do so. The despearate need to take my own stance and speak up started when I was around 13.
This is me learning to ride my bike. Training wheels still on.
This is important to share with you right now because that experience of being around that energy of racism (fear) and trying to share my voice ended up leading to what I considered to be “bullying” from family and a certain level of control that I perceived I was under.
Later in my life, I ended up attracting bullying from friends and in relationships.
My experience of this, as a young girl, caused me to “quiet my voice” and to not speak my truth.
I had a very high pitched (read: squeaky) voice back then and was called “Minnie Mouse voice” on the bus.
I would try to use my voice and speak out against something I felt was wrong later in my teens, only to be shut down so fiercely again that I was scared to use my voice at all.
I began to turn into a “yes girl” and a chameleon who went along with what others were doing so I wouldn’t disrupt anyone, make people mad or cause any drama. You see, I was so afraid of not being liked that I went out of my way to be liked, therefore shutting down my voice.
I was denying my soul and what I needed to share. This is never a good option for anyone.
This lead to a string of relationships and friendships with people where I lost myself, my voice and who I was and what I stood for.
I found my voice again in my 20’s, for a little while. But then I lost it again while trying to people please, be perfect and be the “good girl” everyone liked.
When I made the choice that I wanted a divorce in 2012, my voice and channel to share myself opened and has been getting clearer and clearer since.
The choice to divorce empowered me to trust myself and my instincts and no longer deny my soul of it’s truth.
Here I am now.
I’m filled with a new found voice. An activism for love has been birthed, and this time something feels different. I feel different.
You see, I have worked relentlessly on myself and personal growth since I was 20 years old. I hired my first life coach at that time, I have committed long term to so many modalities, psychology, therapy, coaching and more. I’ve cleaned up my body with clean foods and I’ve chosen to be a student in the midst of the massive growth lessons I’ve encountered along the way.
I believe many of you are much the same.
We share this common theme of wanting to grow.
When I look back to all of those years and at the life lessons, there have been some common themes for me.
Two of which I will share with you today:
1) Using my voice and sharing my truth can create unity and tear down separation.
2) Letting go of what other people think of me and the need to be liked is the only way to live. We must share ourselves and other people don’t need to like it.
These themes are rising up in me again right now and I also believe they are rising up in a lot of us.
In the comments, let me know if you might be feeling this way too.
I help my clients build their self esteem and bring wholeness to their body/spirit holistically. There is no doubt for me that sharing your truth and not worrying about what others think of you is in alignment with that.
We are all students and teachers in this world.
Evolving beyond our limiting beliefs is everything. I mean, it’s the whole game.
On the other side of these patterns, beliefs, and fears is where our unique power to make an impact on our world lives.
In the process of me noticing my growth, I also had my old addictive triggers try to come up this week.
Why? Because it’s so damn scary to grow and the old me used to find solace in numbing the tough emotions with sweets, wine, work, perfectionism and avoidance.
It felt so good to notice the triggers but to not give in to those things.
I was able to rise above it all, but let me be really honest, it was challenging for me to do and it didn’t come easy.
I feel emotions deeply. There is a part of me that is empathic; I’m in touch with your emotions, my emotions and the emotions of the world as a whole. I bet there is a part of you that might be too, even if you don’t know it yet.
I mourn and cry for our world and for many of you regularly. This was so hard to share because, again, I used to worry what you thought of me.
I would worry people would think that my emotions made me weak or less of a leader and teacher.
The truth is that I’m pretty sure I’ve cried a little every single day for the past 10 days or so. This isn’t typical, but when I’m writing this, the world is crying too.
I am doing great work over here through those tears.
The tears are not a weakness (I used to think that) but instead a connection to pain that deserves to be spoken to, acknowledged and stepped through.
Our vulnerability is what can make us incredible leaders.
I’m no longer worried about the possible opinion of me on why I’m “emotional”.
I am worried about the world as a whole. Especially when we have people who cannot hold space for another person’s grief or people who cannot control themselves from lashing out when someone shares their truth.
And when there is such an obvious separation between people, it is so clear to me that separation is happening within people on an individual basis.
So many people feel disconnected from their body and spirit.
It’s an epidemic.
It doesn’t make people broken, it makes them wounded and too often our brothers and sisters are dealing with the wound with a bunch of “bandages” versus getting to the root cause.
I know because I’ve done this too.
I used to worry about writing blogs that people wouldn’t understand. I would wonder if I was speaking too “coach like” or too “spiritual” or too “over people’s heads…”
Now I know that the people who are meant to receive this information will.
There is something that I’m really good at and it’s putting on an outer shell of armor. I wish I wasn’t so good at this… you know, always striving to get more “naked”. Suprise, suprise.
The contrast is this tough as nails leader extrovert vs. a brave and courageous, deeply feeling introvert.
I carry the weight on my shoulders like it’s my job to help fix it all (I received the “gift” of a migraine for this illogical thinking yesterday and a reminder that I need to reach out to more people I trust).
Lesson to us all – we don’t need to carry it all ourselves.
I have a new awareness that I must lead more from vulnerability and voice the truth I see.
Recently, I had a phone call with a woman who is very dear to me, her name is Sohanna. She and I have a mutual appreciation and love for each other. We learn from each other and she is also someone I have hired to mentor me. Sohanna is this beautiful, elder wise woman. She is part medicine queen, that feels ancient in knowledge and she lives with such purity, honesty, range and depth. She felt like family to me the first time we spoke.
When we spoke on the phone the other day, I showed up with vulnerability. I was thinking that she may have that perfect solution or direction for me and my pain.
Instead, the unexpected occurred, she cried with me. She shared deeply of her own pain and listened and held space for mine. She shared many stories of others, that were so powerful.
She let me see her soul. Her raw, vulnerable, courageous and beautiful soul.
When she did this, she invited me to see my own soul too.
I saw so clearly that I have been avoiding looking at my own self.
I have avoided being alone with myself.
I’ve been distracted with everything going on “out there” and without even realizing it, I was starting to fall back into the idea that the answers were “out there” too.
The answers, of course, live inside of us.
My intention and prayer is that through my share with you today, it may serve as a reflection back for you to take some time and look within yourself.
Remember you are worthy of your own love.
Ask yourself the question today…
“how do I prepare to do my most important jobs in this world right now?”
Maybe that job is cleansing your body or cleaning your cupboards or caring for children or seeking out community or taking action on something important to you. How do you prepare?
You can thank Sohanna for that question, she gave that one to me.
Finally, I want you all to know how grateful I am for this community and space. I appreciate you all so much.
I feel like I have changed a lot in the last week and year and I don’t want to hide that from you.
I’m opening to the new version of me.
I plan to lead the healthy warriors in our community with a powerful vulnerability toward action.
What creates change is:
- Self awareness of your own limiting beliefs and mindsets.
- Curiosity (versus judgement)
- Service (versus complacence)
- Listening (instead of talking)
So I want to learn from you. I am attaching a survey (it’s brief – unlike this blog post. hahaha).
The “Love Activist” inside of me wants to know what you are doing to make an impact or be of service?
Do you have ideas that you can share with me on what I can be doing to make more of a difference? Are there places you support perhaps some non-profits you want to share?
Are there things you want to see me talk more about that are really important to you?
Click here to fill out the survey, I’d love to hear from you.
Hey if you don’t want to fill out the survey, simply make a comment below!
Much love,
Renee
