There are some days, weeks, minutes when I feel like I have a direct connection to heaven. God herself (frankly I think they’re a they…but certainly not just a masculine energy) is pouring their precious divine wisdom right into my crown chakra where it soaks up into my entire being and I am filled with peace and love and can’t wait to share it with all of you.
Since it’s often random that such wisdom “drops in”, like when I’m driving, or doing accounting work, or trying to lose my mind in a meditation, and not at an opportune time to sit down and start typing, I will jot down a few notes I am sure will trigger the memory for me to share about later.
Sure enough, later comes, and I just can’t get back in tune with it. I will either start explaining it from a heady place or I might just get sort of resigned about it…did I imagine the whole thing? How was it so profound when I first “thought” it, yet now it sounds like I’m trying to preach something I’m not embodying… at least not anymore.
At that point I find it challenging to remain sitting in front of my computer churning it out. I’m not aligned with the message I’m wanting to share and to sit there pretending I have something interesting to say would be futile. I’m either collapsing as inferior, or trying to hit back on the gem that has me feel superior (move away from feeling inferior). Ahhhh… “there it is” I might think if it finally comes to me and I’m finally able to express some version of the wisdom. It’s an internal battle of the mind, in which only what I deem valuable (being able to contribute something helpful) pulls me out of what I deem worthless (not being able to contribute) …but all that “deeming” comes from my childhood wounding and the alternatives that my mind came up with to not feel worthless…that over time became my modis operandi (aka patterns).
One day last week I couldn’t be productive to save my life. I got several things done in the morning and was feeling pretty good, but by afternoon I couldn’t even form a coherent thought, much less accomplish anything. I was anxious, as though my whole relatively fragile world was likely going to finally fall apart if this is what I was now only going to be capable of from this day forth.
The next day was simply marvelous. Couldn’t have been more opposite. I felt as though I got two days’ worth of stuff done (which was a relief to have picked up the slack of the prior day). I was at my accounting job and plowing through things like a phoenix rising out of the ashes of the previous day. I got everything done I had planned to do, and three additional things done from my “some day, one day” list. I worked 2-1/2 hours longer than I had planned and was still full of energy when I got home.
I thought, if every day was like this, I could get a full-time accounting job (which would alleviate money concerns) AND have plenty of energy to finish my book, write my weekly posts, make videos, post on social media, make meals that were both healthy and delicious, do yoga on a regular basis AND still get adequate sleep.
BUT, the next day I woke up with little drive. I was somewhere in the middle of the prior two days. I sat at my computer most of the day and at least 8 hours I was there resulted in perhaps 2-3 hours of words worth keeping. But it was progress, and I wasn’t entirely displeased with myself, other than a lot of trips to the refrigerator for reinforcement snacks…most of which were relatively healthy.
However, I started to feel a little angst along the lines of “Girl, you better get a full-time job” offset by “Ugh, if you get a full-time job, you can forget about writing this book…because you know it’s going to get shoved to the back burner” offset by “What makes you think this book is going to help anyone ANYWAYS?... you can’t even get it done…how inspiring is that?” offset by finally sinking into a comfy living room chair and watching some weird ass TV show that didn’t even make me feel like that had been worthwhile…but I did multitask and delete at least 1000 old emails which I’ve wanted to do forever.
Geez, no wonder some days are a struggle. My mind vacillates between strategizing the way forward or trying to kill me off permanently.
It can be exhausting.
Which is why today, I started off meditating. Well, not exactly. First, I got a cup of coffee, checked my emails on my phone, texted one of my daughters, did the Wordle of the day, scanned Facebook marketplace, “ok….now, I will meditate”.
But at first my mind was going a million miles a minute, which it often does. BREATHE … Did you know that you cannot think and feel at the same time??
Years ago, this was a HUGE insight for me regarding sex and intimacy… you really cannot be intimate with another if you aren’t intimate with yourself… the alternative to intimacy is just “doing” sex… and there are various versions of that being pleasurable or not. I think this is added to because so many men objectify women based on what they have seen in pornographic materials (thus their brains are wired to respond to what they are seeing or hearing). Women can feel this so at best, they can join them there. At worst, they can feel the detachment of that, but go along to get along. Many men are “doing” sex, and women are in turn doing some version of responding to what is being done to them…but it is all driven by our minds. Yes, despite it all, we may be lucky enough to have an orgasm, especially if we learn how to change our thoughts to make orgasms more apt to happen…but so much of “typical” sex happens in the mind. During the moment of orgasm, though, you are taken out of your mind and into your feels. It may very well be the only time you are entirely authentic/present during sex.
There is PLENTY more of those insights in my memoir in progress (yes, this is another shameless plug) “When You Feel Like You Always Get THE SHORT END OF THE DICK Exploring Unfulfilled Sexpectations; Finding the Love and Connection You Crave.”
But for now, back to meditating. I have had some miracles happen during meditation.
I had a rotator cuff injury from all the bullshit working on Karl’s houses (as discussed in a previous post that you can access in the archives if you subscribe with your email address…another shameless plug) that at one point at had been so painful when my arm hung down at my side, that I had to wear a sling to suspend my arm whenever I was walking around. In a meditation one time, it literally popped back into place while I was sitting completely still.
Keep in mind…I’m not even good at meditating.
Most of the time my mind does not stop racing, but I have moments of getting lost in the ethers of another dimension, (the goal) before my mind pulls me back out.
The ability to THINK seemed like the most valuable of skills for the first half of my life. As a child/teenager, I thought/strategized my way out of a potential life of poverty. I looked around me and thought “THIS is not going to be my future”. I based that on what seemed like my mother not having the opportunities, skills, motivation, or self-confidence to do anything with her life other than to primarily be a wife who depends on her husband for security. I also based that determination on seeing some of my friend’s mothers. MANY of them were seemingly alcoholics, drug addicts, sex and/or relationship/love addicts. Most of them were financially insecure and entirely dependent on the men in their lives, thus had little choice but to tolerate a variety of behaviors that were downright bullshit. I was getting the FUCK OUT OF THERE. So, my mind was always going a million miles a minute….is this the way out? Is that? What are my potential exit strategies? In most of the situations I observed, a woman having a man in her life didn’t result in peace and harmony, so initially the last thing I wanted was to get married. Since so many of those I observed were single mothers, the second last thing I wanted was a child. I couldn’t see how they could ever change their situations, also having children to tend to.
At the same time, I was living in a generation where the elder generation thought a woman’s role in life was to get married. A woman having a career and living on her own would have been the result of having not been chosen (or later rejected) …God forbid. So, I was heavily (subconsciously) influenced by the conditioning “WOMEN SHOULD BE MARRIED”. But even though there is plenty of evidence that women can thrive despite not being married we are still operating under that “programming”. Women, in general, might never truly thrive while the majority are married, or vying to be, because our energy is flowing more to being a support than it is an independent human who also has needs that are egregiously ignored by herself and others. Institutions (marriage, religion, business) haven’t had to change their ways and won’t until we choose differently. If we pulled back our energy to ourselves instead of caretaking the fuck out of men (and our children) things would change rapidly. I believe we will see more and more of this as women learn how to pull themselves into their center.
When women were able to work for less, because it was considered a second income, businesses got away with paying women less. But business owners also saw that some households had extra income that was being used for fun things like vacations, home improvements, and investments in the future and they knew we could afford for necessities to be more expensive and they raised prices and made it almost impossible for many wives to not have to work outside of the home, but what they were willing to pay didn’t change. But now that more and more of us work AND realize how much more competent we are then some men, we can say nope…sorry…I don’t work for less than X… (X being enough to live independently… or co-in-dependently with others who contribute to being able to both work and LIVE lives they love outside of work). At first businesses will say, screw it we don’t need you, but then they will see that they, in fact, do…and things will shift.
Even in business women’s roles were initially in support of the men doing the “real” work… nurses, secretaries, flight attendants, teachers, day care providers, bank tellers, princesses… but the last couple of decades show that is shifting as well. People are slowly realizing there are no roles more important than others and money is becoming less of a driving factor as people eventually realize the value in doing work that brings them joy.
Thankfully businesses are feeling the burn of inadequate workers…and some are (sort of getting there) more willing to pay for the value they receive. Women are not willing to work, work, work and not have time for replenishing. But because they are replenished, they can get more done in less time and not have to work as much…especially when they are paid their worth.
What women are tiring of is having to work a full-time job and carry the bulk of the household duties and decisions, while also tending to their husbands and families…especially when that is out of expectation and lacks acknowledgement for the full breadth of their contribution.
Ahhhh…meandering. I meander when I write, when I meditate, and frankly, when I don’t judge it as bad…I LOVE to meander. I love to ebb and flow with how I’m feeling WHEN I feel good…but if I get too big for my britches with “what” I accomplished being the reward, then I inflate and want to feel that way all the time (and judge myself as soon as I don’t). When I don’t feel good (because I’m judging the pull to meander as a nuisance when I’m willing myself to focus) then I start to judge myself into collapse.
I hate to be trapped in a job where I’m expected to arrive at 9 and work nonstop until I am paroled at 5…expected to be productive the entire time. In my last job I had the luxury of being able to work whenever it worked for me. There were times we had meetings that I had to attend, but for the most part I knew when deadlines were and sometimes, I worked through the night, or arrived at 4a.m. or left for a few hours and came back…all so that I could align with my desire to ebb and flow. Obviously, that can’t work for every business…but some people prefer to bust it out in an 8-hour day and have the rest of their time to themselves.
Something very interesting happened since last week’s post. I got LinkedIn job notifications from TWO of the employers I mentioned in the post. Both the CPA firm and the company I got laid off from a couple months after the stock market crashed are looking to fill positions, I know I would be awesome at. AND I’m sure they pay well. AND I could live with my dad for free and just stockpile my earnings. If only I had a lot of money saved, I would do X, Y, and Z and live happily ever after right? NO. Now I know better. But in the 15 years or so that I’ve had LinkedIn, I’ve never seen a job opening for either of those corporations. Even more interesting, only days before I had updated my LinkedIn profile (which hadn’t been updated in over a year) to reflect my status as being “Personal Goal Pursuit…Career Break” with a byline of “ASPIRING AUTHOR”. I had resisted doing so, because it had felt as though I was taking away my safety net, because if I had to, I could easily revert back into professional businesswoman, and businesses looking to hire won’t value that “meanderer” sort of status. However, I pray I never DO have to, because as I’ve said before, I literally can feel like I may as well shrivel up and die under my desk when I’m doing certain types of accounting that require me to think too much. I could do it…. but I DON’T WANNA. But because I don’t, I am especially hard on myself when I have a day that isn’t as productive as I think it should have been.
So, I feel like those job listings were a dangling carrot from the universe. Are you sure????? Are you sure you want to be a writer? Do you really want to be free of the shit that has weighed you down your whole life? Do you really want to inspire other women to have lives where they feel peaceful, supported, and free of the bullshit they have been wading through their entire lives?
YES. I’m sure. Then I was rewarded with a few energetic exclamation points from the universe.
I sold a thing for $100 that I’d had up for sale off and on for a couple years. I also sold two pillows I had purchased for all the wrong reasons. I had been trying to sell them as a set (though they weren’t identical) and one woman only wanted the velvet one. I figured what the heck and let her take the one. Before I could take a new picture and relist the other one separately, another woman inquired. I told her I only had the satin ruffled one left. Perfect, she had been willing to buy them both, but had really only wanted the latter. She told me she had a matching one and had wished she had two…and had been looking for a couple years to find one second hand since the store no longer sold them. I got 10 more inquiries after they were pending, after having had no inquiries for the prior 2 months.
Then I had the ultra-productive day and made several hundred dollars I hadn’t anticipated. Then I had the idea for a way to make some money in a way that would bring me joy and still allow me to have plenty of flexibility and time to write (more on that later if it comes to fruition). I also found an unclaimed $50 (meandering to that website) and the state of Michigan sent me a check. I did a draft of my taxes and realized rather than my concerns of owing, I was either going to get a refund or at worst, break even. I found a wood easel to hold my ridiculously bulky new white board (for my marker stick figure illustrations since I don’t have the umpf to figure out how to make fancy graphics) AND my cousin went to pick it up for me. I didn’t strategize any of those things, they all just fell into place with little effort on my part.
It all comes down to where my center is. Am I at peace? And if not, how do I get BACK there? If it’s going to be a day of getting things done, and that is flowing and feeling good, take it for what it is AND and let it all sink into the present moment rather than the measuring stick for days that come after it. Coast the wave all the way to shore and feel how good it feels rather than pacing around looking for the next wave…worried as though waves might stop coming. If I’m not at peace, rather than berate myself for what I’m not in the mood to do, and usually at these points I’m not in the mood to do anything but spiral into panic, what there really is to aim for is how to relax into the calm sea.
Getting a full-time job wouldn’t have been centered for me…it would have ultimately flipped me in the other direction of imbalance. it would have been what “I should do, because it’s what people who need more money do”. It’s not that different from getting/staying married because that’s also what people do…especially if they have kids. Well…how I can have what feels good and be secure financially? It’s not so much for me to figure out with my mind as it is for me to relax and let it happen. Enjoy what it feels like to be relaxed. Find a way to live that allows for time to relax. To not worry. To not keep everyone happy, or worse try to control everything possible so that everyone is at least “okay” so that their eventual implosion doesn’t further clutter up my path to peace that I never got very far on, straying off the path for one thing after another to feel validated as though I mattered….because, see all that I do (aka earning my keep)???
LOL…you can see the explanation of the above graphic in my YouTube video (linked below), as well as that of the equally fancy graphic at the beginning of this post.
I never want to relax if I’m at either end of the spectrum. I either don’t have time or I don’t have the energy. I either want to capitalize on my energy and hope to catch another wave…or I want to just stick my head in the sand. I have to force myself kicking and screaming to relax.
There have been many times I literally forced myself to go to a yin yoga class, or take a hot bath, or even harder yet (to justify spending money on a massage when I’m obviously too inconsistent to earn enough money for such luxuries) to book a massage. I started booking massages, weeks in advance, so I knew relief was scheduled in my calendar. I try to do the same thing with yoga…writing down what days I plan on going so I can plan around them. What would be one step better would be to pre-register in the class since classes have to be cancelled at least 24 hours in advance to not lose the prepayment (and I’m money/loss motivated). Even though it’s on my calendar, I don’t sign up until I’m ready to walk out the door and that’s a little too easy to justify not attending. I am getting better at scheduling “relaxation” and treating it like it is thee priority of my day, otherwise I can tend to get in situations where it’s too late to turn back, and quasi-comfort takes its place with binge watching a show, excessive scrolling on my phone or eating junk food.
Back to Meditation. I don’t know for precisely how long or what happened to make it so, but I hadn’t been able to sit cross legged in decades. My left hip seemed out of alignment and as a result, my left knee was 12” higher off the floor than my right knee was. Ugh, I would just eyeroll at any fellow yogis in class who literally have their feet tucked perfectly into their groin, legs perfectly crossed like pretzels, when I couldn’t even get my left knee to get anywhere near being parallel with the floor. So usually when I meditate, I sit up in a chair (though I spend plenty of meditations laying down too). One time, I was sitting in a chair meditating when I felt an effervescent (i.e. Alka-Seltzer fizzing in a glass of water) pop in my left hip. I KNEW, in that moment, I was going to be able to sit cross legged. As soon as the meditation was over, I got on the floor and sure enough, my left leg could now lay flat to the floor when I sat crisscross apple sauce. I have had a LOT of (various modalities of) body work done on me to discover/work out was causing this issue and had never made any progress at all, and boom, one meditation, for which I was probably only in “the zone” for 2 seconds of 45 minutes and its fixed?!
I’ve had several other things happen as well. I can’t even begin to imagine what will happen if my mind ever shuts the fuck up, but meanwhile, it’s worth the effort even if your thoughts won’t cease for long either.
I think these little things are rewards for showing I am making efforts to be peaceful. That we see the benefits, and would like the results. Dangling carrots from the mystic. We aren’t alone, we never were, and our souls and spirit guides are begging us to connect with them. They dole out little breadcrumbs for even our smallest efforts that are far more nourishing than the breadcrumbs I literally begged for from various men of my past… scrambling through multiple hoops for as though my life depended on it.
Dr. Joe says he meditates every single morning for however long it takes him to change his state.
So often we let things outside of us change our state, or worse expect others to change our state, while we sit silently judging them for not making more of an effort to do so. We wait for holidays to change our state. Or vacations. But the rest of the time we are just sort of grumbly going through the motions, victims of our circumstances.
I once watched the movie “Life is Beautiful” which is both horribly sad, and incredibly inspirational, as a man who is a victim of the Holocaust together with his wife and son, spins everything that is happening into something positive, so his son won’t be afraid.
We have 100% capability to control our thoughts (shift our state), we just haven’t practiced doing so. It’s much easier to collapse into victimhood or puff up into strategizing. Sometimes we puke our emotions all over whoever is in our path, as though its somehow their fault we can’t control ourselves, or stuff our emotions inside as we monitor the unpredictable emotions of people around us, keeping ourselves small so we don’t get ousted (while if we were aligned with our soul guidance, we would be doing the ousting).
So, while I STILL vacillate to and from the extremes, boundaries I’ve put in place for myself to regain a deep sense of peace (from which a deep revealing of the path forward can flow into me) help me to keep the dives into either direction (deflating or inflating) far less than they were for a great deal of my life. I don’t need to be perfect…or present myself as though I am…to be able to help women who ever experience even part of what I experience.
Also, it is not uncommon for practically neurotic level over-thinkers (like myself when left to my own mind) to have addictions. They are quasi comforts. Things we “think” (and it’s no joke…we really do believe it) we need to stay balanced and not freak out over anything and everything. For a lot of my life, it has been food. But cigarettes were especially compelling for many years. I smoked from the ages of 13-23…quit when I was up to a pack of day, because thankfully I hated to spend money on it, but also because my grandma (who I used to exaggeratedly cough and wave my hands around when she smoked in my childhood) was dying of lung cancer and she asked me to in a very weak, raspy voice and that stuck with me…for almost 20 years. But then, the stress of an empty marriage, a failed business (with a looming debt), raising children (one with special needs that I felt like I was flailing in knowing what to do for), while also hating my body with no energy to exercise and no willpower to eat less or better… just got to be too much.
About 17 years ago, I smoked a cigar with a friend of mine while we were escaping from life one night…sipping margaritas while staring out over a lake on a beautiful starry night. Even though they tasted disgusting, I started to buy skinny little Tiparillo’s to smoke with my now ex-husband on our back patio when the kids went to sleep. I thought they were just nasty enough to not make a habit, but also, they still brought back some of the comfort smoking through the angst of my youth had brought me. It was also a thing to connect with him on since he enjoyed smoking cigars and was happy for an excuse to be able to. If I was going to take the time from always going, going, going, for a mini break to smoke, heck I might as well have a glass of wine too. He especially liked when I had a drink, because I became far less tuned into with what wasn’t working in my life.
In no time at all, I was like “if I’m going to smoke, I might as well smoke what I enjoy” and I started buying cigarettes. Thankfully, I never got back up to a pack of day, but for whatever quasi relief it provided, it also added to my list of things to berate myself for.
I then proceeded to smoke for about 7 years or so. I quit many times during those 7 years, but just kept going back to it. I know it was primarily because I gave myself little time for true relaxation. Smoking felt like the only time I stopped for a moment. Interestingly, smoking involves breathing …deeply inhaling in and exhaling out (toxic) smoke…which does shift your mind momentarily from thinking and switches it to feeling the hormones that pump in from doing so. I felt like cigarettes were my only friend at times. They had gotten me through downsizing and getting free of the failed business debt, divorce and another move a year after that, buying my own house and starting my own business, and eventually unloading both of those last two things in search of a life less hectic.
It was while I rented a condo for a year after selling my house, contemplating what I really wanted to experience in life, that I asked God to help me quit. I said I need something to happen that scares the crap out of me, but not something so bad that my life is permanently impaired. Shortly thereafter, on my 3rd day of quitting for about the 19th time, I got a call from the friend I had smoked that initial cigar with. Her daughter was in the hospital recovering from Leukemia. I was going to visit them in the hospital and then she and I were going back to the house where she was staying. Anytime we ever got together we inevitably bought margaritas and cigarettes and found a chill place to indulge. Even though I didn’t need to leave my house to head over there for a few hours, I figured if I’m going to smoke later, I may as well smoke now, so I went to a local store to get the organic cigarettes we preferred to smoke. They didn’t sell them everywhere and I didn’t want to be scrambling to find them late at night in a town I wasn’t familiar with. Of course, as soon as I had the pack in my hand, I walked out of the store, ripped the cellophane off, and pulled one out to light.
Immediately on inhaling I was lightheaded. I’ve gone through this process a gazillion times, and never had I felt quite like that. I was nauseous. Like I might vomit right there. Ugh. That would be embarrassing. It has to be the cigarette since I was fine a minute ago, I thought, as I shakily smashed out the cigarette in the ashtray and started to walk to the stability of my car. I just wanted to sit down before I fell down. My legs were so heavy I could barely lift them to take a step. What the fuck is happening? I could hear my blood moving in my veins. My heart was pounding…oddly slow...but loud also loud as fuck BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, in my head. Am I having a stroke? I couldn’t imagine my daughters having to grow up without me in their corner. I got in the car and closed the door. I was soooo hot. Never did I think for a minute of telling anyone what was happening. I just wanted to get home. Just get me home. As I drove the 5 minutes back to my condo, the symptoms subsided. The girls were not there. I parked and got myself inside. I felt fine. But there was no question in my mind, I had been shown what was inevitably going to happen if I chose to continue. I was sure I would never smoke another cigarette again. I quit without one single withdrawal symptom. My mind had made the decision to be DONE. Several years later, I was at a concert and a friend (who had also quit) asked me to bum a cigarette from someone for her. A girl I asked handed me two. I lit up with my friend. One teeny tiny puff and I felt a huge NO. I got zero pleasure from it, was totally repulsed, and got rid of it with no yearning remaining.
I’ve had similar experiences with food…but am not quite there yet. To some extent, we need food, so it’s harder to regulate, though I’ve discovered we need far less food than most of us consume. What we think we need is much more a matter of mind than it is a true need. However, choose your battles. If you try to remove anything without an internal support system in its place, you will suffer more than necessary (and catapult yourself into deflating). It’s far better to put the good in until you are so in love with feeling good that the things that take away from them are easier to discard. There was a point in my past where I wouldn’t let anything get in the way of me going to yoga class…and what had to fall by the wayside was things I had been inauthentically committed to…where I had been operating out of obligation more than what felt good to me.
I still chew nicotine gum. After a few years of not smoking (and not having used nicotine products to help me quit) my boss offered me a nicotine lozenge when I was super stressed out during the start of covid lockdowns while trying to figure out how everyone was going to have what the needed to work from home. She had bought them because she heard they helped with stomach aches, but they hadn’t worked for her, and they had sat unused in her desk drawer. My mind decided the nicotine was comforting (no doubt connecting to a discarded pleasure neuropathway in my brain), and over the course of a few weeks, I eventually consumed the other 18 lozenges in the box, having broken them in half to make them last longer. Then I bought a new box. Then I realized the gum was even more satisfying (and cheaper). Eventually, I will quit, but for now I allow myself to indulge in the idea that it helps make me happy. In my opinion, it’s better than the daily scone (or 2) I used to use to motivate myself with.
It’s not uncommon to think “if only I would win the lottery” life would be grand. But the truth is we would still be broken versions of ourselves indulging in what we feel we have done without for so long, as though those things were the missing links to peace and happiness, while also engaging in our emotion blocking patterns.
That must be why so many lottery winners go bankrupt, but on top of still being who they were before winning the lottery, they now must also live with the fact that they blew it, again, collapsing possibly in a way they can never recover from. I do occasionally buy a lottery ticket dreaming of starting a healing community where women can experience what I’m talking about without having to risk their current situations to find out if there is any truth to what I’m saying.
There are so many things to be grateful for, if we just take a moment to truly relax and reflect, without the constant barrage of obligations (and need for validation) pulling us in too many directions.
We can feel a joy we may never have experienced, because the many things in our lives we could be grateful for haven’t floated up in our consciousness because they aren’t nearly as grand as our highest hopes of the caliber of things, we think need to happen to truly set us free.
If you don’t have these things in your life (and I didn’t for most of my life) they are a much lower bar to strive for then winning the lottery as being the only thing you can imagine bringing the freedom you crave.
I love this list I got from being part of author, Vex King’s Substack:
I had an “aha” moment where I sunk a little deeper into why I think “productive” is the better route. No surprise, it had its roots in childhood trauma.
I judge productive as good and unproductive as bad. Going somewhere vs. going nowhere. I think it is because I used to see my mom do barely anything but sit on the couch and read books or watch TV. Not that she acted stuck, but there were a lot of things she said she wanted to do, that she never did. I used to think she wouldn’t be stuck here if she just did something to increase her odds. We only had one TV in our house when I was growing up, and my dad was often watching it, so it was the last thing I wanted to do. I did, however, read a LOT of books when I was growing up, where I could be away from his intolerant outbursts, alone in my room. In one regard, the stories I read filled me with hope. In another, they made me feel hopeless. If only I had a life like the women in the book…but they persevered…and their lives changed for the better. I was particularly addicted to books by Danielle Steele. Every woman in her books had challenging childhoods, but rose to be incredibly successful against all odds, and despite not needing one (because they were always independently wealthy and satisfied with their fulfilling lives), found the perfect man who adored her by the end…every…single…time. But the point is…they were productive. They were successful. They hadn’t needed a man.
Mostly what differs from person to person, is how far they normally stay strayed from the “would be” center. Usually, one leans more one way than the other….good vibes only…or everyone can just fuck off. As you strive to become more centered, you will still get knocked off at times. How fast you can return to your center is how fast you will return to a peaceful place. Over time, we will return to center quicker and quicker, because we grow to know how to get back there. Eventually, we will rarely stray off center, because we know the value of staying there, and we just won’t let it happen. It feels so good to stay there, we can quickly see through people, places and things that want to pull on our energy and knock us off center.
Everything we need really, truly, is inside of us. How can it not be? Everyone, regardless of their situation, is capable of connecting with their soul…our direct connection to creator…but we usually don’t get out of our own way (preconceived notions of what we think we have to do…and often not feeling capable of doing it) to receive the guidance.
Your most healed self is your most authentic self…your upright self. The veering to the left or right is not authenticity…it is compulsion. The compulsion to act the way you think you “should” or “shouldn’t act, and the reciprocating crash that comes when you are off balance from pouring everything you have into meeting all the “shoulds” and your now empty side causes you to crash in the opposite direction.
Instead, you can alchemize what feels like unfairness into extreme self-nurturing.
The things we do are not choices…they are the way our brain is wired and the way to create new neuropathways and let those old ones die off is to do something different than what we normally do.
To get out of imbalance we may have to lean way into the other side to balance into the center. If you are an over doer, you need to slow down…stop even. If you are an under doer, you need to speed up…get moving toward that which you dread dealing with…asking for help if necessary. What is difficult for you is easy for another and the opposite is true, as well.
I’ve recently started to practice Bikram yoga again, but in a milder one-hour version that I used to judge as a “cop out” when I was at “the top of my game” practicing the 90-minute version multiple times a week. The shorter class is, absolutely, “perfect” for what I now deem valuable in my life. Rather than copping out, I’m meeting myself where I’m at. I want to stretch myself further, yet I don’t want to collapse, barely out of the gate. The first time I attended a class, I couldn’t walk for 3 days afterward because I tried to be all in to where I was at 10 years ago. I feel less push (which used to be a combo of the external drive to compete with people I saw around me and an internal drive of “not good enough” wreaking havoc in my mind) to perform the poses perfectly. Now I opt to stay in the most beginning stages of a pose, until I can maintain it the entire time without falling out of form, trusting my body will tell me when I’m ready to go further, rather than my mind encouraging me to do so. I don’t even notice anyone around me because I am practicing with myself. Instead of getting annoyed at myself when I can’t stay in a pose, I am gentle and nurturing to myself. I say “good for you, even being here at all”.
Writing has been similar in that while my book proposal has been submitted to the publisher, I realize there is a slim chance it will be selected for publishing at this time. It is primarily because I don’t have a proven track record as someone people will glean wisdom from. I’m not a sure bet for them to invest their resources into, because there is little evidence, they will get a return on investment if no one buys the book. Mostly, that is because I’ve kept my wisdom to myself for years, because I hadn’t “made” it where I thought I should have in life as proof I was wise. So, really, how wise could I be? Yet at my lowest times, the wisdom would trickle in and have me get back up repeatedly. Slow and steady wins the race if you recall the turtle and the hare. Life is a marathon and not a sprint. Sigh. Ok, already. I get it. Am I here for the long haul? Yes, I am. And, by the way, I’m up to 66 subscribers here, thank you very much!!
I loosely knew this would be the case with writing a book, but in the beginning I thought I would write this incredible book and it would be gobbled up around the world and then I could come out of the closet as a “wise one”. But this past autumn, I participated in an amazing writer’s workshop that had me realize I needed to come out of the closet while I was writing the book.
Doing so has taken me to a new level of vulnerability in writing the book, as I’ve uncovered emotions, I had suppressed eons ago, all of which played a huge role in the relationships I’m writing about.
Experiencing the emotions has unlocked areas of my life I hadn’t realized were as instrumental as they were, in the ways I had tried to compensate for my unworthiness and how the directions I went in to do so evolved over time.
I’ve often been the “go along to get along” type and some of things I have “gone along” with opposed my deeper beliefs and kept me stuffing down the emotions resulting from doing so.
This could only happen because I kept my beliefs at bay. I compromised my authenticity in exchange for fitting in. For not having to feel the discomfort of being ostracized. I became complacent. I was a chameleon. A master of fitting in when I wanted to. On the one hand this felt good, to be accepted as (quasi) equal at least on the surface. On the other it felt terrible, to hide the whole of who I am and what I believe to feel that acceptance. I knew at some (huge) level I had sold out on myself. Initially I had thought I wanted all the things I went after, but once I knew they weren’t what I thought they would be, I began the often-arduous path of shedding them. Yet, at my darkest times, I attempted to return to some semblance of them out of fear, afraid to let go completely. I felt vulnerable, almost naked, without the exterior accouchements, society at large, looks for in a person, to identify the worthy ones. Hence the breaking of a pattern by announcing myself on LinkedIn.
I’m now co-creating with my higher self. Doing my part of bringing heaven to earth…and the more this happens amongst more and more people…the more hell on earth will get squeezed out…as people refuse to engage in things that are out of balance with their inner compass…which of course, is connected to God.
It’s interesting to me that employers are having such a hard time getting “good” employees, but they don’t realize they are only willing to pay an amount that has them have a mixed bag of employees. If they paid what one’s life force energy was worth, they would attract better employees and those employees wouldn’t tolerate employees not doing their fair share. In the past, they have lucked out and gotten “good” employees for way below their value, because we just worked whatever jobs we fell into, but especially since the interruption due to covid, many people realized how just not worth it their jobs were. That they weren’t willing to leave what they had finally gotten to experience while on break from reality, to go out for some shoddy job that wasn’t helping them get their needs met.
If women were paid their worth, they wouldn’t have to work so much to make ends meet. If second incomes weren’t necessary, women could stay home with their children. If things outside of ourselves weren’t valued as the holy grail we wouldn’t be discontent staying at home and doing without or feel undervalued by our children for not being able to provide those things to them….the quasi happiness things that they need because we aren’t available for deeper connection because we are trying to compensate (be the opposite of our mothers) for the trauma of disconnection we felt in childhood. I know this paragraph is a jumbled mess…but I’m just going to leave it…because the energy of what I’m trying to express is inside of it, even if it doesn’t quite make sense.
I imagine a world where women could tolerate living with other woman in situations that allowed them all to strive. But it would be difficult as we currently can be (competitive or disempowered / inflated or deflated) as women, just talking shit about each other to pump ourselves up or using each other as dumping grounds for complaining about what we won’t (can’t) take steps to change. Our relationships with our friends can fuel us but can also drain us. But if we could live together and utilize relationships from a truly supportive (equally giving and taking) place, which is only possible as we reach toward healing, we could make some huge strides and break many societal patterns that keep us small and dependent. I don’t want to always pick up for someone’s slack. I also don’t want to have to feel guilty when I need some downtime …but that is on me to get to the bottom of. To be someone who is interdependent …able to be a good housemate.
When my daughters were younger, I used to hope that they would become adults that someone else would ever want to live with (so they wouldn’t have to live with me forever). I had mixed emotions of wanting to provide great lives for them, but also sometimes feeling like it was all just too much. But they were never going to learn to be those adults while they lived with me. Ideally, unmarried women whose children turned 18/19-ish would help their children move into situations where they had to live with their peers and discover what it was like to not be catered to, helping support them financially if you could until they get their bearings, with a limited time frame to do so. The women would live together in whoever had the home that was most financially feasible for everyone to thrive. Like what college students do, without the ridiculously overpriced campus rents. EVERYONE would contribute to the expenses and the upkeep and keeping common spaces conscious. Your private room would be your sacred space. Some adults have never learned to clean up after themselves, and don’t even notice because their wounds have them not need to live in or even notice the difference of having a conscious environment. I go through phases where everything has its place and phases where nothing is in its place, but the more centered I become, the more I benefit from a space that feels good.
I want women to heal. I want women to be on equal ground with men and with each other. To have a fighting chance to find their authentic selves and experience pure joy. I think back to the reasons my mother had minimal choices/hope in her life. But the choices…and world…is energetically expanding now especially as to what is possible for women.
I’ve made a couple more videos on my AskArdenDodd YouTube channel this week.
There is something to be grateful for in not having enough time to do it all, because there is little time to self-critique.
I get these amazing messages, often upon waking up, and I try to share them verbally (rather than just waiting to write about them) in the manner I understand them, but they never quite come out how I mean for them to.
I don’t bother trying to re-do them because it just gets worse, because then I’m hyper conscious of the fact I’m trying to make more sense than I did the first try and it’s downhill from there.
So, I just hit “upload” and there ya go!
I figure, in time, my heart, brain and mouth will be all in alignment and the messages will become clearer and clearer.
In the meantime, I appreciate you (in advance) for listening (and liking, subscribing to the channel, andsharing) as I calibrate to my center so the info can flow through me without my blocking it as I lean one way or the other! The links to the latest are below or you can go right to my YouTube channel @AskArdenDodd
Additionally, as always, I thank you for reading and apologize for any typos and grammatical errors I might have missed in the essence of time. If you see an obvious blunder, by all means, let me know so I can correct it in at least the archived version!
Me on my favorite kind of hike …one that involves getting to just such a spot, where I can sit and relax on a huge bolder or by a tree (or a big ass piece of driftwood) with some water nearby!