Accepting who I am

Last night a friend gave a presentation to the group at Project Forward -- a personal development, goal setting course I give at the shelter where I work.

One of the things he said after talking to the group about his experience of learning to love himself was, "It's easier to learn self-acceptance than self-improvement."

Interesting thought.

I like the idea of self-acceptance more, that's for sure. Self-acceptance means accepting me where I'm at and learning to love myself, warts and all.

Self-improvement is linear. To me, it feels like a map with a clearly marked out trail, complete with sign-posts and most importantly, a destination.

Life is not a destination. It's an event. I can make it a joyous event filled with moments worthy of popping champagne corks and confetti, or I can make it a dirge, a constant travail of darkened windows along a dusty road strewn with discarded teddy-bears with sawdust hearts.

It's up to me.

In self-acceptance, I make a choice. To be who I am, as I am, not as who I want to be -- but rather as who I know myself to be in this moment, completely, joyously, lovingly.

In self-improvement I make progress towards an ill-defined goal I know I need to reach, but am often unsure what it looks like. Self-improvement begins with an idea that I'm broken, messed-up, in need of brushing up, brushing off, brushing over.

French author and essayist, Andre Gide, wrote, "Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore."

In self-acceptance, discovery comes from looking at myself, exactly the way I am. From taking my eyes off the horizon and moving into the deep and mysterious seas of self. In self-acceptance, I let go of measuring myself against the world, out there, and embrace the measure of my spirit where I'm at.

For today, I will move into accepting myself, just the way I am as I embrace the truth, I can always learn and grow and change through focusing on what works in my life and what doesn't work.

I can improve on what I do by making the events of my life a joyous celebration of all that is great in me. I can't improve 'on me', I can improve my actions, my commitment to doing all that I can to be the best me I can be. Once I accept the awesomeness of my spirit, right now, in this moment, I have the power to do anything my mind can conceive. I have the power to be magnificent. To shine brightly. To be centre stage of my very own, one and only life.

The question is: Are you focused on improvement out there, or do you accept you have all you need to be the magnificent human being you are, right within you?

I deserve a life of joy and wonder

Yesterday I had an email from a woman I met online when I first began the healing journey away from abuse. She too had an encounter with a psychopath. She too was lost and hurting, wondering what on earth had happened to her life.

Finding what was lost, claiming what we deserve is a continuous journey in love.

Healing from these encounters takes time. Yet, we have a tendency to believe we should be over it, done, finished with the hurting. As if healing from an emotional rape has a timeline and can be accomplished by following the direct line from A to Z.

There is no alphabet encoded path to healing. No step by step process that states do this and in 23 days you will be healed.

I used to hate the word, 'organic'. As in, the process is organic. I've learned to love it. Healing from abuse, any kind of abuse, is an organic process. It begins within you. It moves within you. It changes within you so that outside you can live the life you've always dreamed. The life you deserve.

One of the most difficult aspects of healing that I have encountered with many many people is embracing the belief, I deserve to heal.

So often, abuse leaves a trail of shame and self-blame. Like Hansel and Gretel looking for a way back through the forest, the abused drops grains of self-respect along the path leading to their abuser. Caught amidst the deceitful web the abuser must weave to keep the victim trapped within their embrace, the seeds marking the path back to self lie like fallow fields of grain, never to be reseeded.

To heal, I had to believe I was worthy, deserving, able to heal. I had to choose to believe I could heal.

That's hard.

The wounds inflicted by an abuser run deep. They run wide. They run wild within our psyches. Choosing to believe I could heal was the first step to healing.

Taking action that supported me in healing was the next step. That included writing, therapy, exercise, healthy eating, loving self-care. I had to take positive actions that affirmed my belief I could heal. It was up to me.

One of my mantras in healing became, "Never say never."

It is often instinctual to say, "I will never .... Heal. I will never trust another human being. I will never love again," after an encounter with an abuser.

Truth is, we have no idea what the future holds in store. All we can do is our very best today. All we can do is be true to ourselves in this moment so that the next is a continuation of our very best.

When I say, "I will never trust again," I am saying, "I choose to set myself up today so that I will not be trusting, or trustworthy in the future."

When I say, "I will never love again," I am saying, "I am terrified the past will repeat itself. I will avoid at all costs loving anyone -- and that includes myself, because love hurts and I don't want to hurt like this again."

Saying 'never' is lethal in healing. Never is the dam holding us back from claiming our right to live the life of our dreams.

There is no straight line in healing. There is only the choice to do what is loving, caring, healing -- or not. The path to well-being is winding and circuitous. Four+ years after that encounter, I still find corners of unease -- not because of him, but rather because the tapes in my head fire off messages that undermine me, disturb my peace of mind, unsettle my well-being.

Those tapes were there before I met him. Some things haven't changed! What has changed however is my awareness of them and my ability to navigate rough waters, to walk through rocky terrain, to be determined and convinced of my right to live my most beautiful life today.

I can't unwind the tapes from the past. I can limit their playing continuously in my head today by living free of the belief I don't deserve to heal, I don't deserve a life of joy.

Truth is. I absolutely do deserve a life of joy and wonder. We all do.

It's up to me to live it up and be magnificent! This is my one and only life.

The question is: Do you believe in you? Do you believe you deserve a life of joy and wonder? Or, do you keep yourself stuck in the belief bad things happen to you because you deserve them?

The riddle

I love riddles. Always have. When I was a little girl, my father used to give me all these riddles to figure out. I could spend hours trying to find the answers. In the end, especially with the harder math ones, he'd tell me the answer and I'd have to figure out how I didn't figure that one out!

Yesterday on the radio, I heard a riddle I hadn't heard since I was a young girl.

Three men go to a hotel and book a room together. The room costs $30, so they each pay $10. After they've gone upstairs the desk clerk realizes the room only cost $25. He gives the bellhop $5 and tells him to return the money to the men. The bellhop figures he can't split $5 evenly, so he pockets $2 and gives them each $1 back. That means they each paid $9 for the room. Which means they paid, $27 total. But, if you add the bellhops $2, it means there's only $29 -- Where did the extra $1 go?

Ultimately, the answer is, it's not a math question -- it's a case of misdirection. The riddle asks us to follow the money trail. It mixes money paid with money received and money returned -- not the reality of the original monies paid.

When I was in relationship with Conrad, I lived a riddle. I followed his misdirection. I focused on what he was saying 'would happen', not what was actually happening. He continually asked me to ignore the facts, and focus on his lies. And I did. Not because I'm stupid. I'm not. My attention was diverted into the lies, into believing his truth was what he was speaking, not what he was doing.

I love riddles, I love trying to figure them out -- and that entire relationship was a riddle to me. He connected into my curiosity (amongst other things) and I got duped into thinking I needed to figure out what was happening, instead of following what was happening to the inevitable truth -- I needed to run as fast as I could away from him!

It is a common trait amongst those of devious intent. Like a husker shifting the cards rapidly before your eyes, you try to follow the action of his hands and never see the trick unfolding. Mislead into believing the truth is waiting for you under the card you've been following, you lose sight of what is happening to the cards around you. You focus on them, and not on yourself and lose sight of your world around you.

I still like riddles. I just don't get caught up in the need of having to figure them out so badly that I lose focus on who I am and where I'm at in my life today.

Knowing the truth about who I am, what I want in my life, and my responsibility to live my life with integrity, grace and honesty, I must always stay true to my values, moral, principles -- not the truth someone else tells me or wants me to believe is my reality.

My truth is this is my one and only life. It's up to me to live it, breathe it, experience it -- no holds barred. It's up to me to be the best me I can be so that I can fearlessly live the life of my dreams.

Life is filled with riddles. But, the riddles do not make my life because my life isn't a riddle waiting to be discerned. Life is what I make it. It's up to me to make this my best day yet so that I can live the life of my dreams. No one else can tell me my dreams. No one else can make my dreams come true.

The question is: Are you living the life of your dreams, or are you following someone else's misdirection in the hope it will lead you to the truth of what your dreams really are?

Haunted

They were three women. Native. A family. Grandmother, daughter/mother, granddaughter. The daughter/granddaughter looked to be in her mid twenties. The mother huddled with her daughter behind the wheel chair where the grandmother sat wrapped in a worn blanket. Between them, they passed a bottle of alcohol. Deep blond. Golden liquid.

I was a woman walking down the street. Walking from a meeting I'd attended downtown towards the shelter where I work. Warily I watched them as I moved closer. I couldn't cross the street. They were in direct line with the shelter, at a point where the roadway curves upwards onto the fly-over out of downtown. I didn't want to cross the street anyway. I knew I had nothing physical to fear from them. It was my thoughts I feared the most.

I felt sadness permeate my pores as I saw the bottle move from one grimy hand to another. Daughter to mother, mother to grandmother. They laughed and chortled. The mother held the bottle out towards her mother, the grandmother. The grandmother looked furtively around. For a brief moment she watched me walking towards them. She laughed. She turned back to her daughter. She grabbed eagerly for the bottle, knocking her granddaughter's hand away as she tried to tuck the blanket back down into the side of her grandmother's wheelchair. Both hands gripping the bottle, the grandmother tilted her head back, took a long swallow. She smiled toothlessly. Smacked her lips. Quickly tucked the bottle beneath the dirty blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

I kept walking by. I didn't know where to look. I looked ahead. They ignored me.

Three women lost on the street. Three generations of abuse. Of loss of pride. Loss of dignity. Three generations with little hope for a better tomorrow.

I carried on.

I wanted to stop and tell them to stop. I wanted to take the bottle away -- not because it is illegal to drink on the street. Not because the sight of their drinking in public made me angry. I wanted to take the bottle away because I know it's killing them. Destroying whatever hope they have of a better tomorrow. Eating away at their internal organs. Tearing apart their minds. Ripping apart their family circle.

Those three women have haunted me since I witnessed that tableau early last week. I want to go downtown and find them. Talk to them. Plead with them. Coerce them into looking at their lives.

And I can't.

I haven't earned the right and, they cannot hear me.

They are lost.

It is perhaps the hardest part of working at a shelter. Every day I see human beings lost, desperately hiding their pain and fear beneath the drugs and alcohol they abuse in order to forget their pasts. In order to forget themselves.

I cannot take away their pain. I cannot erase their pasts. All I can do is accept them exactly the way they are, without judgement. Without condemnation. And work to keep them safe until they find their courage to face the demons that haunt them. It's what we do every day at the shelter where I work. We keep hope alive for the mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, nieces and cousins who have been lost to the street and cannot find their way back home.

Do I agree with what they're doing? No. But that is irrelevant. What they are doing is nothing compared to what happened to drag them to this place where all they crave, all they believe will help them, is a bottle tucked beneath a blanket, surreptitiously passed around the family circle.

It is tragic. It is sad to watch three women stand exposed on the street, their pain visible to the naked eye.

Helpless. Frustrated. Frightened. Abused. They guzzle greedily from the bottle in a desperate attempt to mask their symptoms beneath the golden elixir flowing into their bodies washing away the dreams they once had of a life far different than this.

No one chooses to live with such indignity. To live with such sorrow. By the time the degradation takes hold, they are too lost to see what might have been had they not taken that first sip, that first toke. By the time the bottle becomes their best friend, they've lost the ability to recognize it has become their enemy.

I can't change their lives. I can change my perceptions of what they are doing. I can change my point of view about them. I can be less righteous and more forgiving.

The question is: Can you?

I am a reflection of what I attract

Love is a many splendoured thing. Or so the song goes.

Like cells attract the cells they need to create. The cell doesn't know what it's creating nor can it name the cells its attracting. It's limited, focused intelligence tells it what to do -- not why. Like embryo cells. The purpose for certain cells is to create a heart. Others lungs. They do their work and life is born.

In love, we often don't know why we are attracted to someone. We just know the feelings are there. Sometimes, one person feels the attraction more than the other. Sometimes, hopefully most of the time, two people feel the same attraction and a relationship is created.

Long ago, I had an attraction to a man that was not healthy. The relationship became a reflection of the state of both our unhealthy psychologies. On the surface, I appeared to have a healthy goal of desiring connection with another special human being. On an unhealthy level, deep within me, was the need to be treated with disrespect so that I could feel validated in my sense of unworthiness.

That unhealthy need had been germinating in my life from long ago as a child when I translated what was happening to me into being about me, because of me. When I made abuse mine. Through therapy, writing, self-reflection, I had been working at my unhealthy needs so that I could enjoy true relationship based on my goal to live with peace and joy and surrender in my life. But, the power of his unhealthy personality, triggered my core unhealthy belief into taking action -- and I became lost in the belief I was in love with him when what I was really trying to do was fulfill the goal of my unhealthy psychology.

One of the most difficult aspects of coming out of a relationship that is abusive is to let go of the belief "I love him". Stepping away from the belief that I loved him, allowed me the grace to move into loving myself enough to acknowledge that what I had with him was not about love, it was about fulfilling my unhealthy need to prove I was unworthy.

Today, I know the truth. I am worthy of a life filled with joy. I am worthy of loving myself for all I'm worth and, I believe I attract into my life those who reflect my joy and my love of life. I am a creative soul. Like the heart cell attracting the cells it needs to live its purpose, I attract joy in ever-expanding circles of love.

Love is a many splendoured thing. When I revel in its splendour, life becomes a spectacular journey filled with limitless opportunities to express my creative soul where I am a reflection of the loveliness surrounding.

The question is: What do you attract into your life? Is it a reflection of your goal to create a life filled with love and peace and joy and wonder? Or, is your life reflecting back your inner disquiet?

Taking care of the details

My Internet connection was down for a day. I didn't do anything about it at first -- Don't ask me why but I was sorta hopin' it would reboot all by itself.

Guess what?

It didn't.

Had to call my provider and they remotely rebooted it for me. Took all of five minutes and voila! Cyberland on my desktop once again.

What is it with taking care of the little things?

Now, there were two things going on here. One was, the fear of being on the telephone for hours wishing and hoping some robotic voice on another planet would respond whom I could understand and who could understand my problem enough to fix it. The second was, I dislike the idea of being so addicted to something I can't live without it.

I admit it. I'm a cyber-junkie. I check my emails throughout the day. Check into my 'favourites' off and on during the day. I will use email over the phone any day. And, I feel naked without an online connect feeding me a plethora of extraneous information throughout the day. I'm unclothed without my knowledge source.

As if everything I read online is the whole and complete truth.

What is true is not having Internet access changes my process. Which means, this morning I'm late.

As soon as I did get access back I had to do some housekeeping duties I've been putting off. On Sunday night, I went to pay my bills online (does anyone write cheques anymore?) and found my bank was doing maintenance and my bank account not accessible. I put it off. Yesterday morning I went to do it, and my access was not working. So..... this morning I did what I was supposed to have done -- x2.

Yup.

I inadvertently paid a couple of bills twice because I wasn't paying attention to what my computer was saying back. Like -- CONFIRM -- is this what you want to pay? Yes. The amount was right. But I didn't read the payee information.... and voila! I've now double paid a couple of bills and had to go in and pay the ones I'd thought I'd paid in the first place.

One good thing is -- I won't have to pay heating and electricity for two months! The not so good thing is, I've got less money than I intended!

See, paying attention to the little things is not my forte. And, because I don't pay attention, I make mistakes. In my mistakes I create good and bad -- and I add stress to my everyday living that doesn't need to be there.

My commitment is to take care of the little things that can add up to big stressors when I avoid them.

Avoidance strengthens fear.

I know I have an irrational fear of authority -- this is self-awareness I've had for quite some time. Paying bills = authority. In my fear and self-defeating games, I constantly undermine myself. I avoid dealing with authority -- it's sort of a convoluted thought process that says, if I avoid this, I'll feel better (for a short while) and everything will just take care of itself.

Sort of like my Internet access. I didn't phone in the hopes it would fix itself.

Misguided thinking on my part. A whole bunch of denial. And unnecessary anxiety.

My goal is to limit my anxiety by turning up for me in all areas of my life -- and that includes taking care of the small things.

The question is: What about you? Are you avoiding doing the things that need to be taken care of in the hopes they'll take care of themselves? Are you willing to get truthful about your behaviours that are undermining your peace of mind?

The sun within me

Recently, astronomers and NASA scientists confirmed that somewhere out there in a far corner of the galaxy they have found what they believe to be a solar system twin to ours. Originally thought to contain four planets orbiting around a sun, they recently announced they found a fifth planet orbiting what is actually a close pair of neighbouring stars collectively known as 55 Cancri that lie in the constellation of Cancer 41 light years away.

Yup. The possibilities of space are limitless.

Which made me wonder about the space around me and within me. How limitless are its possibilities?

The heavens above are filled with stars and planets, known and unknown. It took astronomers 12 years to find this solar system after 18 years of continuous observations at Lick Observatory. To date, they've discovered 260 planets in our solar system. These planets and stars have been there all along, (well, at least long enough to count) we just didn't have the technology to see them.

I've been on this earth 50+ years, and a lot of that time has not been spent in continuous observation of me. In fact, much of it was spent doing stuff 'out there', and avoiding looking at the world within me. Yet, I've always had the technology to see within me -- using it has been another issue!

What if I took my power and started focusing it on the universe inside me? What if I use the technology of my mind and start opening up to the learning within my heart? What if I quit looking for light out there, and let my light shine from the inside out?

Imagine the possibilities!

I believe within me exists a world of discovery. Taking the journey inward uncovers the mystery and the power of being me. It exposes me to the great reservoir of joy I possess that sustains me every moment of my life, regardless of the turmoil and trials of the world around me, regardless of where I'm looking. Tapping into my reservoir of joy, allowing it to flow into deep sustaining pools of well-being, exposes me to my innate ability to embrace the wonder and awe of my being. It frees me up so that I can venture far into the galaxy exploring the limitless possibilities of being the star at centre stage of my very own life.

Within each of us exists a vast unexplored universe of untapped treasure. Nothing keeps us from experiencing the joy of being who we are, except our minds, the self-defeating games we use to distract ourselves from our greatness, and the tapes we play about who we are and why we are that keep us from exploring the wonder and joy of being the magnificent human beings we are designed to be.

The question is: Where on earth are you looking for the joy that abounds within your being? Where do you keep your sites set on the stars in some far corner of the galaxy and miss the wonder and awe within you?