There is a Time

There is a time and place for all that you need.  Do not worry if that time is not now for you can create with your mind what you will later experience when all is ready.  For now you may need to live in the unanswered questions and the visions of your deepest desires.  Enjoy the pleasure of your dreams as you wait.  Waiting is not passive, it is preparation.  Prepare your mind by learning what you need to learn.  Prepare your heart by walking through your fears into the realization that all is well.  Prepare by acting on your guidance, internal and external, to arrive where you are ready to receive.  Allow yourself to recognize, walk into, and embrace what has been waiting there to delight you.  Soak in the gift of being showered with the love that has manifest in a surprising and perfect way.

Have You Buried Your Dead?

The losses overwhelm me.  I grieve and yet find no release.  I feel myself walking up a hill, my boots heavy on the concrete path beneath me.  The string of coffins drags behind me, tied in a row by chains around my waist.  My days are long, the nights are longer.

Desperately I search for peace, to know once again the quiet of my mind and lightness of heart.  Have you buried your dead, the Desert Fathers said? The question stings like an arrow, piercing the veil of my blindness.  Suddenly I see what must be done.

I set my mind to the tasks undone.  The headstone must be set in place.  The memories left behind must be sorted and decisions made.  What will I take?  What will I leave?  What now belongs to whom?  I reach out to those who also know the loss and discover I can lift their spirit as they lift mine.

The dead are still dead and buried in the ground.  Yet they are also alive as I know them in new ways within me.  Sometimes I still cry, but a smile too finds my face as I think of them now.  My step is quicker, my heart is free to love them in new relationship.  Gratitude shares space with sorrow, as the sun shares space with the moon.

Keep Your Broken Heart Open

I don’t understand, she said.  I had a great trip being by myself experiencing the beauty of the gorgeous national park around me.  I was not lonely and I felt very much in tune with nature and I felt happy.  And then as I was driving home I was overcome by a deep sadness and I found myself weeping.  It is a familiar sadness that comes and goes.

I know some of the sadness is still about him, the man who broke up with me several months ago.  I am still grieving that loss, even though I can see now he wasn’t really a good partner for me in many ways.  Since then I have grown in my ability to accept myself, feel good about my life, and have much more clarity of what kind of a partner I want to be with.  And yet, this sadness. Read more

Taming my Angry Inner Child

I do okay until He shows up.  He is my angry, street fighter 14-year-old self.  He shows up in a rage, demanding to be heard, insisting he is right, and demanding control. He wants to hurt and punish you for how you have caused me to feel.

When I started to be able to identify that 14-year old in me and name him as an entity that is separate from my current self, then I could begin to deal with him.  He is me from the past and is about the past hurts and insults and shame that I endured.  He gets triggered by things in the present but it feels like my past.  What do I do with him when he shows up? Read more

Wait, Pray, Listen

Dear Wounded One,

Stop working so hard to please her, hoping to receive the nurturing and validation you desperately desire.  Stop seeking it elsewhere when she won’t give you what you want.  Take ownership of that desire and realize it must be fulfilled from within.  You must learn to love and heal yourself.  When you own that and turn your focus within, you find you are not alone after all.  You are, in fact, part of the human community, connected to all.   You begin to see that Love is all around you and Love shows up in small acts of kindness from strangers, in affirming smiles, and the beauty of nature. Read more

I Have been Angry at You

I have been angry at you for being who you are.  I have been sad for myself for what you are not.  This is not fair to you or to myself.  I need to shift into acceptance.  To accept you for who you are and what you are and stop trying to make you meet my needs.  To accept responsibility for my own life and my happiness, rather than expecting you to be those things.

I married you with the fantasy that you would be everything I want and need and that you would dedicate your life to my happiness.  You were supposed to be my happiness dealer, the well of my satisfaction, just waiting for me to draw my joy from you.  You were supposed to make everything okay.  Read more