Releasing Grief

WaterFigureI’ve had my fair share of grief over the years and when you have a real conversation with just about anyone, you realize they, too, have had theirs. We live on the surface so much of the time, nodding our heads hello and nice to see you, which is to be expected when we’re all surviving with our heads just above the surface.

I’ve learned that to release grief and move beyond it, you truly have to feel it. That can be scary. It can feel like you’re probably going to die. There are usually a lot of tears involved and sometimes kicking pillows or throwing rocks into the sea followed by deep, cavernous silences that go on forever and never reach the bottom of your soul, occasionally ticking the sides making an other-worldly clanging sound.

For me, now, it involves some kind of conversation with God. A lot of me telling Him why I’m feeling so sad and a lot of Him listening. What I love about my conversations with God is that he doesn’t try to just go and fix things. He listens. A lot. I feel Him there, empathizing with me. And that’s what I need. And after I’m all done going on and on, I listen to what He has to say. About 99% of the time, He just tells me He loves me and that I’m doing great.

I wrote an essay for Blogher this past week. It’s the first time I’ve really spoken about how devastating the end of my first marriage was. When your kids are young, you don’t want to add anything to the pain they themselves are experiencing. I tried never to speak ill of their father to them or around where they could hear. It was hard. There were some really rough years where things were very unfair and it would have felt great to unload on them. But even now I’m so glad I didn’t do that.

If I could add something here to the essay, it would be to caution those going through similar circumstances to consider how your children are feeling when you speak ill of their other parent. Remember, your kids are made of half of them.

Let’s Grow Through This Together

Processed with VSCOcam with c1 presetSometimes I feel like I learn new things right before I really need them. You know what I mean? Like, had this challenging thing that’s currently happening, happened even six months ago, I wouldn’t have been ready.

But God, or whatever you consider your Divine to be, creates this space for us to gather our knowledge and our wits about us right before the Big Test comes. If we’re paying attention. If we’re *at all* trying. And I’d wager that most of us *are* trying because we’ve been around the block a time or two and know that not paying attention doesn’t get us the desired result we’re after. Trying to be awake. Trying to be aware. Trying to pay attention. Trying to be a little bit better every day. Trying to serve and be present for those we love. Trying to make the world a slightly better place.

I’m watching my son grapple with being twenty and doing all the thought processes you go through at that age, wondering what to do with your life. Wondering what kind of person you are and who you want to be. Wondering how to participate in life in a way that’s meaningful. Trying to be Present. ALL the big questions.

And as we’ve talked and worked together this past month one theme keeps coming through: You do get to create the life you want to live. There are a vast number of ways to be a Person in Life.

Of course you look first to those closest to you to see who and how they are, like your siblings and parents. Of course you do, because they are your examples and who you have had the closest contact with in your life so far. And then maybe you look at the next familial circle, including aunts and uncles. And then hopefully you keep looking further out and find people in your friend circles and even further, historical figures, to find other examples of How To Be. You don’t *have* to be the same as anyone you know. It’s a choice to follow in someone’s footsteps.

Short of being a person that harms others, there isn’t a “wrong” way to be a Person.

We get so caught up in what it means to be successful and what constitutes a real job or a life worth living. Want to know what a Real Job is? I’ll tell you. A Real Job is anything that supports the life you want to live.

If it brings you immense happiness to live in an expensive loft and have three cars and arrange your days to be super busy without any breaks and travel a lot and be a VP or a CEO then do that. That’s one way to be a Person. And if it brings you immense happiness to live a quiet life with minimal needs and much more down time and many less people counting on you for paperwork or code or whatever, then be that. Just Be That Person.

There are no Real jobs and Not-Real jobs. There’s only what you want to create your life to be, and what you then do to support the lifestyle you’ve chosen. And also? It’s ok to change your mind and choose another path at any point. It doesn’t make everything you’ve done up until that moment a mistake. We gather knowledge and experience no matter what path we go down. You don’t have to know everything before you start. A good chunk of life is Winging It.

Take the lesson, leave the baggage, and move forward. Grow to the next thing. That, my friends, if Life.

There’s no one “Right” way to be a Person. The world is vast and the people are numerous and it takes all kinds to keep the world turning. Let go of the limiting beliefs you have about yourself and who you are *supposed* to be. Look inside, see who you are, and then be the best one of those you can possibly be.

————

Looking for a mentor for your own life process? I can help. Find out more here.

Random Piecings + My Basic Green Smoothie Recipe

UtahClouds1sm

Here’s some clouds from Southern Utah. You’re welcome. That place is incredibly beautiful. I mean:

UtahClouds2

I joke with Joe that we should go live there and by “joke” I mean “semi-serious” and by “semi-serious” I mean how about in two years or so. Poor Joe. JoeSunday I think part of my joke-not-joking is that we had such an incredible time doing the retreat there a few weeks ago. The entire event was just amazing. I really felt so, oh, I don’t know the right words, it was so big what I felt. But some good words are Useful and On Task and Meaningful and Just Right. And when you feel all the parts of something come together that you’ve been planning and you see how so many people feel great about it and get what they need from it, well….it’s just kind of amazing. I added this picture of Joe because why not.

You’ll have to excuse this stream of consciousnesses and pick through for the good parts due to the fact that I’ve got uncharacteristic pressure and pain in my ear regions and it makes for less than sharp conversation at times.

In my quest for Health & Wellness I make course corrections and try on new things. These New Things might be drastic or small. The course corrections might be just a tad one way or the other or a major right turn. But through it all I seem to have one question in my heart and that is this: Am I where I’m supposed to be, doing what I’m supposed to be doing and with whom I’m supposed to be doing it with? (I’m ever so sorry I ended that with a preposition but it couldn’t be helped.)

Processed with VSCOcam with m5 presetOne thing I feel I should be doing are the H&W Retreats and the whoms are my sister and our daughters. It’s beautiful when we’re all together and educating and helping people feel more and more well. It’s truly like magic and if I could do it every day the rest of my life I would.

In order to really be “in tune” to someone’s frequency and be in a place to help them the most, I don’t want to muck up my brain and body with chemicals because it can short-circuit our connection. To that end I’ve cut out alcohol and almost all caffeine. I’m down to one cup of decaf a day and I’ll tell you what, the nightly beers were much easier to give up than my morning coffee. I’m feeling a much larger reward than anything negative with this change, though, because I’m not experiencing my afternoon “dip” that I’ve had for so, so long and I’m sleeping better. So, there’s that.

Being more “in tune” means I can pick up on subtler messages that someone’s body/energy is giving off when we talk. There’s so much happening in between the lines and woven throughout the conversation happening with words. I consider it a privilege to be able to tune into those things and it makes it so much easier when I’m not riding a high from caffeine, when I’ve had a good night’s sleep and when I can fully feel my own stuff and not mistake it for someone else’s stuff.

The pressure in my ears has come along with a rash on my neck that is Candida trying to drive me crazy dying off. Because I’m no longer drinking sugar every night (beer and wine) and that was my last main source of sugar, my host body is no longer as conducive to Candida and the yeast is mad. Really, really mad. The rash is itchy and red and looks terrible but I just keep rubbing coconut oil on my feet and encouraging it to get out, get out and keep on going. I upped my water and increased support of my liver. I upped my supplements and fermented foods. I send loving thoughts to my ears and my neck for doing such a great job with this process and then I drink another glass of herbal tea because that’s what I’ve got right now and it’s not that bad.

I wasn’t expecting Candida to burst out of my neck or stack up in my ears and it’s a constant reminder these days to keep an eye on what I’m eating, keep the sugar-foods low, add in more green smoothies and other things Candida doesn’t like.

Here’s my basic Green Smoothie recipe. It makes one really large glass of smoothie plus just enough extra that you’re irritated and don’t know what to do with it so you just stick it in the fridge and forget about the 1″ of old green smoothie and then it goes bad so you dump it and do it all over again. Just kidding. I totally don’t do that. I ask Joe to drink it and sometimes he even does.

1 Kale leaf, stripped off rib
1/2 avocado
1/2 cup probiotic yogurt
1/4 cup coconut milk
2 TBL soaked or sprouted sunflower seeds
Handful of frozen blueberries
Half a frozen banana
2 tsp Spirulina
Enough filtered water to make the right consistency

The banana and blueberries contain all the sugar I can handle right now but if you need some more sweetener, go ahead and add a little raw honey, raw maple syrup or un-sulfered molasses. (There’s a recipe kind of like this in my book.) Sometimes I add sprouted lentils.

I don’t have a great ending for this post (EAR PRESSURE) but I’ll leave you with a thought I keep having. What if we were all doing exactly what we were supposed to be doing, where we were supposed to be doing it, and with the people we were supposed to be doing it with? And what if we did that all the time? I think it would be incredible.

One more of the clouds in Southern Utah because I can’t even.

IMG_0213

Birthday Blue Orchids

Turning 43 has just helped reinforce what I felt when I turned 42 – I’m so happy in my 40s. I love it here! My brain works well, my physical body has never been healthier and I no longer worry so much about what other people think about me. That has been a long time coming.

IMG_5572

For my birthday this year, my daughter, her fiance, my son and my husband all put on a game night in my building’s rec center. Some of my friends and extended family showed up and we hung out and played games. It was completely low-key and perfect. I may have made about 10-gallons of Mac-and-Cheese for everyone.

IMG_5565

Alex picked these blue orchids for some of the table decorations. I can’t stop staring at them. There is something very silky and sultry and full of passion about them.

They are totally and uniquely themselves. They embrace their variations of vibrant color and show it off with pride. And in the recesses, way in the centers, you can see the deep, still wisdom that lies there.

I suppose that’s what I’m going to be aspiring to this year.

And Then There’s These Two…

Devon and Lacey in Gone With the Wind. Or Engagement Photos. Same diff. I love this photo of them. The sky was crazy that day and the air was all kinds of pretty colors. I blew the saturation up and outta there and the contrast is insane. Just the way I like it.