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Tales From Mid-Life Crisis During The Apocalypse

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Tales From Mid-Life Crisis During the Apocalypse - Must Love CrowsLeading up to this huge shift in our world, I’d been going through what is labelled, rather blandly and boringly in my opinion, a mid-life crisis.

Last spring a brand new energy began coursing through my body, and it’s been reliably screaming at me in variable decibels depending on the day:

Are you gonna do what you’re here to do or not?

It’s a very “shit or get off the pot” vibe and it has accompanied me throughout all of my experiences over the last year and remains with me today. It feels like a tough-love best friend who constantly reminds me that settling is no longer an option.

This energy has made it a lot easier to end things that are keeping me from experiencing what I want to experience.

I can stand up, take up space, and protect myself in ways I used to feel incapable of doing. I feel bold in my ability to self protect.

To be clear, I still get freaked the fuck out when doing it, but there is no other option with this energy: I HAVE to take action.

I’ve never been a wallflower, but I tried to be one for a long time – to hide.

This mid-life crisis vibe is refusing to let me dabble with playing small.

Sure, over the past 6 years or so I’ve been steadily shifting & changing – transforming. But over the last year, it’s been undeniably next level.

My understanding of who I am and what I’m meant to do has been flipped on its freakin’ head.

It began super randomly. I remember sitting in front of the TV early last year, watching an actor on some show. And I remember intimately feeling the emotions of the scene while this wave of acknowledgment came over me, infusing into every single cell in my body. It said,

If you do this, you will feel free.

Shortly after that experience, a bunch of synchronistic events occurred which resulted in getting signed to a talent agency and working on a movie. These moments came with such velocity and speed I barely had time to breathe.

OK, I had enough time, I was just SO fucking nervous my chest felt incapable of appropriate degrees of expansion for breathing to occur. But the consensus amidst all of the new experiences and the ever-present difficulty drawing in air was,

I am meant to be an actor.

Something about being on set lit me up, which was wild to realize because up until that point, life experience taught me that I was better off in the company of the most minimal of people.

Tons of people on a movie set. It’s chaotic and crazy and volatile which in my day to day life, is an environment I would steer clear of. It takes so long for me to shake stuff like that off: I’m empathic to the point of impairment at times.

Yet I remained so detached and unaffected by the chaos when it occurred on a movie set. It felt like I’d been there before – I’d done this kind of work before – and I knew how to handle it.

Whatever I felt resonated because whenever someone found out I’d never worked on a set before they were surprised. And as far as acting – at that point background performing, which is acting without words, where many actors start out to gain set experience and connections – the consensus from many people, including the director was, “You’re a natural.”

Acting with actual lines, I received the same results. After a few classes and huge degrees of fear-based hesitancy were worked through (who am I kidding? 😂 They are still being worked through!) acting came very naturally to me. I can tap into strong emotions very quickly and rather seamlessly integrate my flair for the comedic into improvisations.

Before this whole mid-life crisis inspired questioning-of-my-purpose began, I had zero inclination that acting would be my thing.

The people from my past who weren’t my biggest fans? They might have a different view of it. 😂 I mean, I was known for being dramatic. I understand why now, from a compassionate place, but for a long time it was a point of self-shame for me.

It was something that people judged me for. For the outsider with no understanding of the repercussions of trauma, or through the lens of those who see women who speak up and take up space as a negative, who I was wasn’t a celebratory thing. Just the opposite.

Sadly, for a very long time, I was the outsider.

I was the person who thought women shouldn’t take up so much space. I hadn’t done the digging into the reality of my childhood experiences, to see how they had conditioned me to abandon myself and my fellow females, and how they were inspiring my dramatic outbursts that no one seemed interested in witnessing.

I had no understanding of why I behaved the way I did, why I couldn’t just blend into the crowd. I just hated myself for it because no one seemed to like me in that form.

And I hadn’t built any foundation of self-esteem or self-love to see the power in my capacity to live from a deeply emotive state. Nor had I been able to see that the people I was drawn to were incapable of valuing the well of emotions that existed within me, or understanding how they could be channelled into powerful creative pursuits. I mean I didn’t know how, so how could I expect the people I was partying with to know?

But then came last spring when I realized that all the moments I was dramatic and over the top, either in my eyes or in the eyes of others, were for a purpose.

They were indications that I was meant to utilize my flair for the dramatic and my ability to be seen and take up space productively, through acting.

One of my driving forces in life is to share content and stories that make people think. To trigger them (this isn’t always fun to do but it comes with the territory when you speak out) to look within and ask WHY.

Why do you feel this way about that person? Why do you feel that way about yourself?

It’s in the willingness to answer those questions, and question everything we’ve normalized that transformation begins.

Asking why is one of the most powerful acts of self-love.

I’ve done a lot of work on myself to be able to get to this point. I used to be driven by a desire to lash out, do drugs, overeat and argue. I now know how to self-soothe, so all of the above isn’t as much of an issue for me.

I work hard to take ownership of my pain. I call myself out on what I need to work on instead of spreading it all over everything I touch and see. Even though I wince when I have to look the undesirable stuff in the face, especially when I have to head in the “what’s alive in you is alive in me” direction, I do the work.

It’s my job. I’m here to break the cycle of abuse I come from.

There are days when I can see that I’m being co-dependant, judgmental, or jealous. Angry. Resentful (now that’s a destructive feeling to hold near and dear. And I realize I need to process it in the company of no one, stat, so I don’t place the energy of those emotional states onto other people.

Sometimes I fail.

I always feel bad when I do. Guilty. More often than not, ashamed. I’m always trying to do better. But I remind myself consistently that it’s really about the art of the attempt – the intention to do better with this kind of work. And that takes me out of the inherited shame narratives I was taught to own.

The pathway to transformation is within and through your willingness to do better next time.

But now, after giving myself permission to embrace the performer within me, I channel ALL my experiences into my creative life. Even when I’ve been a grade-A asshole to my love, or felt survivalist narcissistic traits trying to take over a conversation or a choice: I don’t let those experiences go to waste, I utilize them so I can learn from them.

I see acting as an opportunity to transmute destructive feelings, both within myself and within others.

If I can give the feelings within me a chance to be witnessed and worked through via a creative performance, I can perhaps help others see and feel their feelings, and transmute them.

Connection through performance is powerful. It can incite empathy. It can inspire people to think and try to do things differently. To ask the inner questions that need to be asked.

Acting has given me an outlet for my capacity to feel.

All the years of absorbing what went unspoken and dealing with the trauma that came with my ability to do that can now be channelled into character development and scene work.

Realizing the power of this channelling of my abilities has been cathartic. It has inspired self-forgiveness.

I felt ashamed and guilty about my empathic abilities for the majority of my life. I had no clue why I couldn’t get a handle on the anxiety and depression, and the addictions I relied on to try to escape how I felt.

I felt inherently flawed which was affirmed by many people, including my parents, doctors and the media. I was lambasted with toxic medications that made me shake, and labels that made me cower in the corner.

I tried to outrun it all and it almost killed me.

Now I see the power in my experiences. They can be used to make art.

When I am rehearsing a monologue, I feel actualized. Like I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing. On point with my purpose. When I write a scene for a potential web series, I feel aligned with who I am.

It took me a long while to get there. I spent a good section of my life believing life was all about money – how I could make money. I wrestled with the toxic ancestral narrative: “You need to make money at what you do, all the time, or else there is no point in doing it.”

My mid-life catharsis, in conjunction with this apocalyptic state of the world has helped me see how the money-centric narrative needs to end.

Money first, life purpose second is not meant to live within me anymore. Or on this planet.

Since this pandemic began, I’ve been steering myself in directions I’m meant to go.

I’ve given myself permission to follow what my heart wants to do.

Every day I wake up and work on my fostering my creativity in some capacity. I make an effort to do something, no matter how small.

I research. I read a book. I rehearse a monologue. I watch a movie that inspires me or helps me formulate a character. I join a free webinar. I write. And write and write and write.

And I think a lot.

Through this viral outbreak has come an opportunity to disentangle with the stories that tell me I need to keep trying so hard at things that tell me to abandon myself.

I’ve been given an opportunity to be who I am to the fullest.

To be able to stop feeling ashamed for not doing what other people taught me I needed to do, in order to be able to accept myself has been fucking soul altering.

Mid-life crisis and this covid-19 outbreak have taught me to stop being led by something that isn’t meant to lead me.

They have taught me that resistance to change is viral.

So much change is happening as a result of this pandemic. The world will never be the same. We will never be the same.

It’s time to step into the new unknown, whether we feel ready to or not – To face the fear of it instead of letting it lead us.

Full disclosure: there is not one thing I’ve experienced over the past year I felt ready to do.

With every single experience that came up, I felt like I needed more time to process or learn, or someone to consult with before I took the leap and did it.

I received none of those things but I did it anyway. And I transformed.

So can you. We can do it together.

If you feel the pull to share how the alterations to your world – your normal – in the face of covid-19 have changed your life or your views, I’d love to hear from you.

Contact me privately or leave a comment below. 💗

So much love to you – to us all – during this time of unprecedented changes to the fibres of our lives.

xo

A

 

Letter to a Reader

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Letter to a reader - must love crows

I get emails from readers at times, asking me how I healed myself.

To be clear, I have not healed myself. Although I kinda take issue with that statement because I know first hand how clinging to the fear-based belief that I was/am hopelessly fucked up and in need of major healing kept me from doing just that.

I prefer the ideal/idea that I am already whole and complete, there’s just some dark side programming muddling up the inner waters, convincing me, at times, that I am fucked and in need of healing.

I am, and we all are in need of clarification. Clarity. Unmuddled inner waters. Generally speaking, I have a pretty solid understanding of how to do that these days. Unless I’m in the middle of a transformation which happens a lot and makes me feel like a newborn when it comes to understanding how to hack life and fear.

All that said I am still a work in progress, I just happened to have done something very difficult: healed myself of addictions that were going to end up delivering this good old avatar of mine to the morgue and me into having to do this whole life thing all over again. What we don’t deal with in this life carries over into the next and fucked if I want to repeat my early life, especially my childhood, teens, 20s or 30’s for that matter.

So yeah, people sometimes email me asking what I did to heal. It’s always an affirmation of how far I’ve come and also my ego likes it. When I used to reply I would bully myself, thinking I shared too much info. I’m a writer with a lot to say and sometimes I’d feel embarrassed and ashamed of my drive to be so thorough in my responses. This comes from a lot of past overshares with the wrong people, which still pop into my head at times, reminding me that I need to make sure the people I share with are capable of honoring what I have to offer/say. That’s actually a life hack of mine I welcome you to ruminate on – the idea that the people who don’t value what we have to say aren’t assholes, they just haven’t earned the right to know so much about us. Works for family and friends, BTW.

So I’m a writer and the words flow VERY easy for me, but I’d always assume I went overboard when I replied to readers, particularly if the person didn’t reply. Also this:

⚡️You run the risk of being perceived as crazy when you share your inner journey with strangers.⚡️

People also seem to want a quick and clean response – a clearly articulated process that makes sense to their human brains, and is easy to integrate into their current lives.

Rough pumpkins part: There is SO much involved in the healing process, and the majority of it requires us to live beyond our comfort as well as the limitations of our ancestrally conditioned ideals.

Nothing simple about any of it. Well, sometimes it IS very simple, but simple concepts aren’t always easy to integrate and execute within the landscape of the human brain which is heavily conditioned with fear-based narratives.

I realized recently that behind every one of my long-winded responses to a reader’s request for answers is a drive to help people, and there is no space for shame in the presence of that. It’s a beautiful thing – a soul led thing – and I celebrate it, while also trying to be mindful of how I articulate myself so as not to confuse the shit out of people. 😂

The moral of the story is I cannot reply to people who ask me how I healed myself in a simple way, because there’s truly been nothing simple about it.

And as I said before, I’m not healed. I am a work in progress like everyone else. I just happen to have an inner constitution that is wired to do inner work.

I am tenacious AF and have to schedule time outs from the work I do because of the fire within me that tells me to keep going.

If I don’t pause I get run down and sick.

That said, I am a good resource for people who want to do the work required to heal themselves, or unburden themselves of toxic conditioning because I treat healing like it’s my full-time job.

I’m always learning something new about the complexities of the human experience, and I am forever in search of holistic wellness – of inner cohesiveness and balance.

With all that said the following response to a reader caught my eye in my email today. After giving it a read I realized it might be helpful to other people. It might spur someone in a direction that will serve their healing journey in some capacity.

Also: it’s healthy for me to share this because it’s one of the replies I bullied myself for previously, ie the reader didn’t reply to it.

In re-reading it months later I see the value in what I offered in my response. I wrote it from my heart and I honour my efforts and my drive to help others by sharing it with you today.

💗💗💗

Letter to a reader

Thanks for reaching out. 🙂 I would normally take some time to reply to this but I feel like I want to share a little bit right now. Err, maybe it will end up being a lot. We’ll see. 😂 Also, this is a little woo so be warned. Take what resonates, leave the rest. 🖤

Starting off by saying that right now there are a ton of people experiencing intense feelings and emotions, which I associate as being the result of major shifts in the collective, IE stuff that we as humans need to process and sort through and figure out is poking it’s head out, asking to be processed by us all. 2020 is all about unveiling what needs tending to and seeing it – feeling it. This means traumatic experiences from the past that may be resonating, attempting to be seen and witnessed in what we perceive as right now. In order to allow it all to be processed (and go smoother) we need to lean into the feelings that come up without trying to change them. Think, “Oh hey – I see you,” rather than, “How do I stop this.”

It’s really about energy. This energy comes up we don’t like the flavour of. How do we make it go away? We witness it and then it transforms. And when we witness it and it transforms we prove to ourselves we are capable of self-healing.

A nurturing mother quality works best with this. I often ask myself when I default to thinking that I’m being ridiculous and that the feelings coming up within me serves no purpose, have no place within me, and need to go away asap, “What would a mother do? If I was the mother of myself, how would I react to these feelings? And how would I respond to myself as I struggle with these intense feelings of anxiousness and depression?”

Divine Feminine techniques are required over the masculine, at least as far as the masculine is played out in our society. READ: push away, down, ignore, compress, and dismiss doesn’t work. It’s time for those techniques (they aren’t even techniques bc they don’t work) to be put to rest.

In saying all that I realize I am beginning to answer your question about what I did to relieve symptoms in full at this point. What can I say, I go with the flow.  😂  Answer = I had to start to see my feelings as messengers instead of doing what everyone taught me to do with them: try to outrun them.

And wow did I try to outrun them. I was an addict in the truest sense, constantly attempting to escape the reality of how I felt inside. I had ideas of why I felt the way I felt, but until I started to get to know my true feelings – to feel them – I only had surface explanations. My dad abused me. My mom stonewalled me at times. Hmmm. Logical mind explanation, and true – my parents’ inability to love me the way I needed them to did have an effect on me. But these surface explanations aren’t the end all be all with this kind of healing. I can’t focus all my effort on blaming them, I have to be able to witness the way those experiences affected me – the feelings and beliefs born of my experiences. And top of the list = I had to learn how to be there for myself in all the ways my caregivers never were for me. Reparenting is key.

Plant-based? Heck yes. Mind the toxins in the foods we eat? Yep yep yep. But we must honour ourselves in every capacity. There are all these thoughts and beliefs floating within us that don’t honour us. And actions born of them. Humans get it twisted – a lot.  We were taught unproductive ways, and we need to unlearn them. 

I got caught up in thinking the food and supplements would make it all better. But there were these feelings within me related to self-worth and so much darn shame – I was taught to deny myself happiness and love and kindness. And so as much as I can honour the crap outta myself with organic celery water I still have to be able to honour the feelings within me that need their time at the mic. The ones that are trying to tell me I’m still in pain about the cruel thing an ex-boyfriend did – any moments when I didn’t know how to give myself the time or space to mourn the traumatic stuff that happened back then. Also, my right to acknowledge what is and isn’t traumatic. People have a lot of opinions about trauma. Opinions don’t help us heal from it. 

Sometimes I have to take time to notice and say: “Oh wow – ok – you feel jealous of that person who has parents that love them. That’s why your throat feels tight and your stomach is in knots right now. This is reminding you of a moment when your parents violated you.” Just one example but the more we learn to sit with ourselves as we are, in the absence of trying to force a change on something that has the right to exist, we peel back the layers on our own healing.

Broken record perhaps but I had to learn to allow myself to feel my feelings. And to see the power in them. To see that there was a purpose to them, and honour that purpose by learning to be with my feelings. The opposite of everything I’d ever been taught by my caregivers and society. It wasn’t easy and it’s still not easy. I feel lambasted with messaging and energies that tell me to deny and ignore what my feelings have to say all the time.

I am a full-body physical empath. I don’t enjoy it all that much. I feel inundated with intense feelings a lot. And I try to escape the stuff I absorb at times. 😂 moment: Do you know how many pairs of earrings I bought this week while I had the flu, which attacked my spine so badly I couldn’t move for two days? 😂 I need to make light of it because shame runs deep within me. I crave laughter. But suffice to say that as much as I don’t do drugs anymore or drink or smoke, darn it if I don’t find the lure of an online purchase inescapable when I feel vulnerable. Especially in a society that teaches us to escape, and that to feel anything beyond the spectrum of “good” is in fact, bad.

Broken record for sure now = I believe our feelings exist for a reason, even if we oftentimes don’t understand why. I know from experience that every time we allow ourselves to feel how we feel without fighting with our right to do so, or letting our strong feelings make choices for us we heal. This can be very challenging, especially if PTSD is involved. But it’s all those moments where we try to allow what is to exist, that layer on top of one another and culminate in profound healing.

We might not see the culmination of our efforts for some time. But every little bit we contribute creates a foundation for the freedom we crave to come to light, even if we can’t quantify or see the value or progress in whatever is occurring below the surface of our efforts.

xo

A

Out From Hiding

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Out From Hiding - Must Love Crows

To say the last, I dunno, 6 years, have been transformative would be an understatement. I really do feel like a different person. And not just when I look back on who I was 6 years ago. I’m talking last week.

Every few days I am aware that I am not the same person I was days before. It’s wild. And amazing. And challenging. And scary at times. But overall it’s freeing.

I’m learning to unhide myself.

Much of the inner work I do is not something I want the whole world to know about or have access to. But there is a driving force within me, pushing me to share it, so I can destigmatize who I am, within myself, and convince others to do the same within themselves. It’s also compelling me to make amends with the existence of pushback from unhinged commentators that know not what the source of their desire to throw their two cents into the ring is all about. A lot of the time the aggressives aren’t consciously aware that they are being aggressive. It’s primal rage. They don’t realize that it’s not me they are mad at.

The days are here, when we are beginning to see the undercarriages of people’s choices and behaviours.

The spin-doctoring of inherently motivated destructive actions is being called out for what it is – manipulation. And people are beginning to feel less afraid to be out in the spotlight because of it. They fear less of being attacked and understand not just the want but the need to be out in the world, sharing themselves and their messages, even if they don’t quite have it figured out why.

We are all beginning to feel the need to show up as ourselves.

If we’re not yet doing that, we feel the call in the whispers of aching to do something different – something that makes us feel alive in ways we may have never felt before, or once felt as children, before life wiped out the belief that this is what life could be about.

I am feeling the call to come out of hiding.

Slowly, I’m dipping my toes into the world as a more fully realized version of myself, with love and respect for the inherent abilities I am meant to put to use. There is an ever-present knowing within me, that reminds me it’s not up for debate – I have to share the deeper parts of me with more than just myself. I have to allow myself to be out in the open fully as I am.

That person isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea.

That person may get some backlash. That person may be the recipient of some evil eyes. And she might attract people who want to keep her from her power. In fact, she has had a role in that already, attracting people who help her remain in the shadows – who subconsciously or consciously want her to play small. They may not know why they want to help her do that, but their actions show their desires.

OK, enough of the third person. lol! She is me. 🔥 I’ve had a lot of intense experiences lately that have shown me what I may have to face if I continue on this trajectory. The people who don’t or won’t want me to live big. The people who won’t want me to share the stories I’ve been fostering the courage to be able to share, about how I became the woman I am today.

There may be some people who see my power and want to squash it.

This is often an unconscious desire. And there may be times when I will find myself attracted to such people, and have to call myself out for it. That said, there will 100% be plenty of times when I will have to witness the conditioning that compels me to desire people who would prefer me to stay small. To not use my voice, to not perform and not make a scene. It will be really hard. But the hardest thing ever is to stay tiny when I’m meant to be big; to minimize my power when I’m meant to utilize it to the maximum.

I grew up minimizing the gifts I have out of necessity – out of survival.

It took a lot of energy and work to learn how to do that, to live by someone else’s belief system. I wasn’t meant to believe those things about myself, I wasn’t meant to feel the degree of self-hatred I felt.

I can detach from that conditioning – I’ve proven that I can through some particularly difficult transitions, both emotionally and physically.

I’ve shown myself I can do things differently, that I am capable of breaking powerful ancestral patterns. I’ve also proven that I am capable of attracting people into my life – drawing people into my life – who assist me in keeping those patterns alive. And then I’ve proven that I can realize that, do what I need to do to stop it, and witness the exciting results of that powerful act of self-love.

What am I trying to say with all of this? I’m not 100% sure. 😂 This post is about allowing my voice to be heard. It’s to counter energy that attempted to minimize me, and my right to use my space to speak. It’s to let my inner child know that I see it, and I’m going to start living differently, doing things differently, for her. Something inside wants me to say, I’m here, and I’m not what and who you might perceive me to be. I am many things and I am capable of so much more than anyone might understand.

I am an intuitive. I am an actor. I am a poet. I am a writer. I am a consultant. Yes, I am all of those things. But above all of those earthly driven labels that exist so that we may feel a sense of security and belonging, I am powerful. I am a spirit who is here to do the work – to learn and grow, in ways that, to some, and even to myself at times, might not feel or look like work.

And I’m here to set limitations. To create boundaries where none existed. I’m here to say, yes, I have learned from many people and many experiences, but being nice doesn’t entitle you to a get out of jail free card. I’m here to say that if someone violates you they don’t deserve access to your life or your energy.

I’m here to learn how to trust my intuition and help other people learn to do the same.

I’m here to show what is possible, by showing that a woman who was abused and addicted and full of self-hatred can become a woman who helps other people free themselves from the energies and forces that traumatized her. And share all the magic that comes when you set yourself free.

I was recently referred to as passive-aggressive. Someone read one of my posts and suggested that was the underlying theme of it. To me, the post in question was a beautiful post. It was from the heart. I wrote it in under half an hour – a forever sign that something else is helping me write and that it needs to be written to help me heal, and maybe others.

This is the work I’m here to do – say no by not saying anything.

To set limitations for those who choose to see my art – the work I do to heal and contribute to healing in the world – as something warped or ugly or unnecessary. These are the same forces that taught me to hate myself and minimize my worth. These forces that demand we be something other than who we are, to appease their discomfort, and not follow the direction of our hearts are the forces I am here to assist in ending. So what if they come packaged in a form other than the sociopathic male I first experienced them in – a person can be kind and ALSO be manipulative.

They can also not know they are being manipulative. We come from trauma. We all have our experiences with it and it shapes us. Our job in life is to do the work of realizing that it has affected us and how, and de-condition ourselves. It’s why we are here. Saying we have issues isn’t doing the work. It’s the starting point. And saying you have problems doesn’t get you free from the harm you have caused another by living from your trauma space. Doing the work does.

We can have compassion for someone who has experienced trauma because we all have, but that doesn’t mean we brush their actions off as acceptable.

It’s still on them to heal. It’s on them to sort out if they’re being manipulative or narcissistic. Or co-dependant.

Narcissism and codependency are intricately linked.

I grew up with a parent who was a sociopath. The byproduct of that was narcissistic behaviours I learned from him and severe co-dependency. I did some shitty things – some destructive things – over the years, living from that trauma state. And then I did the work to realize what was happening and began deconditioning myself.

I still do the work. I filter through my actions to make sure I’m not harming other people, or myself.

It’s the work of self-compassion. The work of self-compassion also entails realizing that someone being upset because you cut them off for violating you is not for you to try to heal or fix; their tears and insults and foot stamping are not reasons to allow them to be in your life if they have violated you.

Trauma attracts trauma. When we realize this we open up the door to a new way of living. When we allow ourselves to be with the discomfort of not wanting people to be upset with us, we can begin to see where it comes from. It can propel us to open a book on co-dependency and see how we have contributed to our current uncomfortable situation, in the absence of self-bullying.

I can be a loving and kind and supportive human being AND still have work to do. Other people can be loving and kind human beings and not be supportive or ready to do the work of realizing they are narcissists. The hardest work is to look within ourselves and see how our pain is leading us, tricking us, keeping us from our power. In my case, it taught me to allow people into my life who contributed to my fear of my power.

Some healing questions I’m asking myself these days:

Who would I be if I allowed myself to step into my power?

Who will I become if I become a great actor? What will my life look like?

Who will I be if I publish my poetry, write a book, go on a book tour?

Who will I be if I provide intuitive counselling sessions? Who will I be if I create a safe space to share what I’ve learned with people who want to do the work too?

Who will I be if I use my inherent talents and abilities to create a foundation for my family, one that allows us the freedom to travel and learn and grow and live without financial constraints?

I have no fucking idea. But I’m ready to find out.

xo

A

In The Mourning and Unknown

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In The Mourning and Unknown - must love crows

In the same swift design that I can erratically make a decision that counters my true desires, I can use the same energy to propel me towards a choice that constructs something powerful and productive.

Within the sorrow of realizing that someone wasn’t who I thought they were can come a profound and proud moment, where I can see all experiences provide opportunities to relate, learn and transform.

At times I feel boxed in by what the experiences my life has to offer me. Maybe you can relate/I’m sure you can.

The person who behaves in kind and generous ways can also behave unethically. Upon realizing this I may default to feeling unsafe around them. I may feel tricked or duped, or worry about the extent to which they are capable of manipulation, and how that might impact me. Also, what kind of work I need to do to clean things up.

At the same time, I have to honour my contribution to my experience.

When I feel the fire rise up within me upon witnessing the existence of destructive behaviours, I must also witness the rosy veil I placed over the person or experience. I must acknowledge that the person involved may have no clue about what they did.

Even if it is unethical, it could be that they are OK with it – that they’ve normalized the behaviour. If they have, they would have difficulty seeing the repercussions of their choices.

I can feel empathy for what someone doesn’t know or see.

They are me and I am them. I know what it’s like to live from that place – to not be aware of what the soul needs us to be aware of.

But I need to honour what I honour in life, and what I want to be in support of.

Some of those things are respect for creative copyright. Honesty. Not stealing other people’s content and selling it as one’s own. Owning our choices and behaviours. Acknowledging when we may have acted dishonourably and calling ourselves out for it. And setting the intention to do things differently next time.

The dance of life is to find balance. ♎︎

To seek harmony between our need to transform and our need to feel safe; our desire to honour what we learned with the need for endings.

We can ask questions to help us. Do we want to foster passive-aggressiveness by giving the people who offer it our energy? Do we want to fuel unethical business practices by choosing nostalgia over distancing ourselves from those who normalize it?

Are we willing to see all the moments when we may have done the same thing? And are we willing to see that our denial of such acts is fueling them? Because an unwillingness to accept the truth is fuelling something.

A powerful question: What are we willing to support? Are we willing to see how every action we make is a vote for something?

I think about a post a creative small business owner/acquaintance of mine once shared, about everything you buy in life being a vote for something.

I think of it often, not only when I consider where I will buy an item I need or want, but when I choose to endorse people. Lately, I’ve been thinking about it a lot more as I face the need to consider where and who I’m directing my energy towards – who I’m supporting through my choices, and in what ways.

Life is about change. Transformation. To balance the need to allow transformation to occur with a desire to feel safe and secure. ♎︎

At times it can feel like we are stretching ourselves in the most awkward of positions as we wrestle with the need for transformation. We want to keep something the same because it feels familiar – it’s what we know.

Then the moments come when we realize we cannot tie ourselves to what was anymore. Acts are unveiled that make it an impossibility to not make changes. We may realize we are voting for something we don’t want in power by continuing to give it our energy. Given that realization, we may realize that something we once thoroughly enjoyed is not what we thought it was, and it’s no longer an option to entertain it in the same capacity we once did.

Denial may be futile, yet we still dance with it, stretching ourselves in bizarre positions as we seek peace in the matter of letting go.

We think of all the moments that were wonderful and ask, “why do I want to let those go?” We are letting go of nothing. All that was is in the now. And all that will be is here too. If that is true for us, then to not allow change to happen – to not allow our feet or hearts or minds to lift from the past and be with us in the present –  is harmful.

It is saying no to the future. And we all have things we want to happen in the future, so we must let go, in order to say yes to the unknown.

We may feel restricted by the memories.

We don’t want to mourn the loss of them, and what they mean – the effect they have had upon the foundation of our lives.

We fear the mourning. We are desperate to avoid how it feels.

Letting go may allow sadness to live within us, which we are taught to suppress and deny. We want to run from all the feelings that infer that we must let go.

We may also begin to feel confused as we question if we are sabotaging ourselves or dishonouring the past by ending the relationship which created the memories we feel connected to.

It is in the mourning that we transform.

It is in the feeling of the sadness and the alignment with gratitude for all that we experienced and learned that creates an essential foundation for us to exist upon and live from.

Love for what was and love for our capacity to become what we are meant to become must co-exist.

There is living in the unknown – the transition from what was to what will be – and then there is comfort.

One leads you where you desire. One doesn’t.

It’s uncomfortable in the unknown and in the mourning. These are not places we desire to be. But they are part of the journey. They are part of us. And necessary. We must allow them to exist within and through us. We must learn to love them and honour them. This is the path.

It’s not for nothing. It’s all for some-thing – a thing we will one day experience if we dare to allow ourselves to transition from what we knew, to what we will one day be able to witness in the flesh.

xo

A

The End of Narcissism

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The end of narcissism - Must Love Crows

The theme of the collective right now is destructing narcissism.

I suppose you could say “deconstructing” narcissism, but the funny bit about that is narcissists don’t want to deconstruct any part of themselves, they think they are fine just as they are. In their minds, it’s anyone who has an issue with their behaviours that has the problem.

Coming in hot, shitting on the narcissists. Not every narcissist is the same. Some are willing to look inside and do the work to detach from the behaviours that cause other people harm. Others aren’t.

And truth: we all have the capacity to develop and assert various narcissistic traits, which is why it’s so important to look within ourselves and our relationships to see if there is some narcissism-related dysfunction going on.

It’s time to break apart everything that contributes to the destruction of our planet, our health and our happiness, and narcissism is one of those things. 

This may be easier said than done. One thing I know for sure though:

Change happens when we begin questioning the way things have always been done.

I am not an expert on narcissism. I’d say I’m at the intermediate stage of understanding it, particularly as it affects children who then grow into adults with severely dysfunctional belief systems and next to no self-esteem.

One of my parents was a sociopathic narcissist.

To say it affected me would be an understatement. It’s taken a lot of work to create a foundation of self-compassion and love within myself – something I was never able to develop in childhood because I didn’t have the tools or the safe space to do so.

Not feeling safe, and feeling like I had to protect myself from my parent was traumatic. I was unable to create a foundation of inner kindness because I was always afraid. I couldn’t trust anyone, and my fear of people accompanied unwavering desperation to feel loved, accepted and safe.

When we are desperate to feel loved we may do destructive and dangerous things to access it. I’m lucky to be alive given the behaviours I relied upon.

Start educating yourself on narcissism.

As a way to empower yourself and to help the people who are in pain and don’t know why or how to heal. Because if someone is hurting there is a good chance narcissism was involved in some capacity.

Don’t solely rely on google to learn about it. Get a book by someone legit who specializes in narcissism so you can understand it and be able to spot it in the people in your life and anyone you come into contact with.

If you can spot narcissism and stop enabling it, you help destroy it.

Narcissistic behaviours are the catalyst for so much of the abuse and pain in the world. And narcissists feed off the energy we give them. If we know how to stop feeding them, they can’t keep existing in the same capacity they have always existed.

And look – we can spend a lot of time blaming narcissists. That’s easy to do. We can complain and shit talk them. Or we can see that the power is within us to stop contributing to them.

Productive is learning how to spot and stop fueling the perpetual drive of the narcissist to consume other people’s energies for their own gain.

When we say no to someone who is trying to manipulate us we make a powerful statement.

It might not seem like we’re doing anything great, particularly when they start freaking out over the boundaries we set. But we are. It’s just easy to convince ourselves of a lack of progress because we get so caught up in our desire to see immediate results in everything we do. We lose hope early on because our patience game is weak.

Patience is a muscle we need to work out more.

Honour the change that is happening behind the scenes. Honour the time it takes for change to become visible to your human eye. Because every contribution made to change layers on top of the others, and together they become the change you want to witness.

For the manipulative narcissist, being told no enough times is a powerful message.

It provides an opportunity for them to take a comb to their behaviour, and witness their need to heal the parts of themselves that drives them to harm others.

To clarify, it’s an opportunity – an option – and not one that many narcissists are keen to take.

But when we learn how to spot and set boundaries we’re still contributing to an opportunity for them to heal and evolve, even if their arguing in the name of the outcome they want doesn’t seem like anything great is occurring.

It’s kind to say no to someone who tries to manipulate you.

My personal experience with narcissism is that if you’re leading and making decisions with your heart and someone tries to argue with your right to do so, you’re dealing with a narcissist. It’s also a red flag for you to investigate any prior interactions with the person to see if there were any signs of narcissism.

I was going to say “you’re probably dealing with…” but I legit believe that’s the sign.

Anyone who takes issue with heart-led choices has narcissism leading them.

There are all these different varieties of it – it can look many different ways – which a book written by a person who researches and studies narcissism can help you learn.

Collectively we are all being called to do this work.

A key example of this collectively felt requirement: I purchased Rethinking Narcissism at the book store in January 2020 and the checkout clerk said she couldn’t believe how many people were buying books on the topic lately.

This is the sign that it’s time to do the work. Together.

If we’re not enabling abusive behaviours we’re not contributing to them.

Manipulative narcissism is at the core of many issues the planet is facing. So learn and empower, so we can all heal. When you educate yourself you’re inadvertently contributing to the establishment of global foundational healing.

xo

A

PS: I think I crushed it record-wise, for how many times a person used the word narcissism in a post.

2020 Vibes – Insights Into The Year Ahead

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2020 Vibes - Insights Into The Year Ahead - Must Love Crows

This year I’m doing things a little differently with my new year’s post.

I’m not focusing too much on what happened in 2019 (Trust me –  I’ve done enough ruminating on that 😜)…

I’m focusing on sharing insights on how to work with the flow of the year ahead. 

I’ve written the following post and also recorded some audio (⬆︎⬆︎⬆︎) which is me, riffing on upcoming themes and sharing some intel on how to work with what comes your way.

The blog post and the audio have different info so feel free to hit them both up. 🖤

There’s some intel based on astrological research and common themes circulating the collective in conjunction with my intuitive insights, and some suggestions on how to meander 2020 and all the Whoa it’s going to offer us in a more productive way.

Check out the audio above or give the following post a read.

Or do both. Whatever works for you. 💛

Insights Into The Year Ahead

1 – Help people heal themselves

When I say help people heal themselves I don’t mean getting all up in people’s faces and business, trying to pour help onto them. It’s super-duper important that we wait until we have been asked, or – this one is a bit trickier to meander – wait for an opening where we can offer assistance to someone who may appear to be in need.

We help others heal by making sure we’re paying attention to how we feel.

Sound weird? Read on.

Let’s say you’re feeling on edge. 2020 will provide you days like that.

What’s important this year is to be your own caregiver and witness how you feel when you feel on edge.

To be gentle – gentler than you have ever been with yourself.

Witnessing how you feel is a powerful act. When you S E E your feelings and your struggle to accept them – when you allow what is to exist – you heal. And that impacts the people around you.

This kind of self-nurturing/self-mothering work acts as a counter to fiery impulses to paint the town or other people crimson with your reactionary driven vibes.

THERE ARE NO LIFE HACKS TO THIS AND IT CAN BE TOUGH BUT…

2020 is the year that we take ownership of our feelings and transform the ways we’ve always reacted to them.

It’s not easy. It takes a lot of hours to become great at something. But every ounce of time and effort we put in contributes to the desired outcome.

In this case, the desired outcome is healing what needs to be healed within Y O U.

We all need to heal to some degree, and a lot of healing happens on the subconscious level – outside of our awareness or capacity to see it happening.

Just because we don’t understand that internal shifts are happening while we do this inner work doesn’t mean healing isn’t going on.

There’s so much healing that goes on below the surface. We don’t have the type of control we desire over it.

We may not get to decide when and how things shift within us, but we are still responsible for putting in the work to make it happen.

We aren’t always able to be voyeurs of the healing that’s happening, ie it’s not always clear what’s going on. But still…

We facilitate the healing we can’t quantify or name by acting like mothers to ourselves when we are struggling.

Instead of shame or blame, we can take a gentler approach to our struggles. We can offer ourselves the patience and love required to heal and accept the unknown (’cause we often try to fight with the reality of changes’ existence. More on this in the next section. 💚)

Note: You really want to shy away from trying to go all mother Teresa on the people you assume require your help in 2020, particularly when they haven’t asked for it.

Often this is born of a desire to not do the work we need to do within ourselves. It’s a procrastination method.

In 2020, be wary of desires to take over – to try to dump what you know onto others who haven’t asked for your input.

There will be a lot of people processing heavy shit this year, and it won’t be helpful if other people are poking their opinions and beliefs into the mix. People need space to process.

Do your best to stay in your lane this year.

A page of my life in 2019 = This was a huge theme for me towards the end of the year. I experienced a lot of people assuming I didn’t know stuff – of them trying to help me with things I didn’t need assistance with. Annoying but also helpful because it was a catalyst for me to be wary of my capacity to do the same to others, and dig into comprehending the difference between caregiving and caretaking. You take from others when you try to help people who haven’t said, “Yes, please help me with this.” You give to them when you honour all that they know in the absence of awareness of the knowledge they possess inside of them.

There may be some circumstances when it is productive to offer assistance. Certain openings may come up that create the optimal environment for you to peek your head in and say, “Hey, do you need some help? ‘Cause I know a little about what you’re going through.”

But there is also power (and the need) to understand that you don’t always need to follow the lead of the inner impulse to offer your two cents.

Q to ask yourself throughout 2020 = Is my input needed, requested, or helpful in this situation?

As hard as it is to watch people struggle (or act like assholes) the struggle can often catalyze change.

When something sucks to experience, it creates an opening – an opportunity – to do things differently.

People don’t always see or take that opportunity when it’s in their face and that’s difficult to witness. But it’s still not up to us to swoop in and try to fix someone or something without being asked.

There are moments when we can follow the inner call to be of service to someone who is struggling. And we do need to listen to those.

We just need to make sure it’s not our ego wanting to just jump in and make things the way we feel they need to be because…

Our conditioning has a powerful impact on our capacity to understand the source of our motivations to get involved in other people’s shit.

A great way to flush out whether your eagerness to get involved or provide unrequested input is a conditioned-based desire or a true, heart-led desire to be of service is to do an inner inquiry. Ask yourself:

Why do I feel called to try to fix something or someone? Is it to avoid the work I need to do on myself? Or is it a pure intention, a soul-led desire to assist?

When we witness people without wanting to change them, we help them heal.

Digging into understanding other people’s Why’s – why they do or don’t do certain things – helps us to detangle ourselves from our conditioning, too. This is especially important in the presence of intense feelings of aggressive judgement.

When you want to lash out at people who lash out, it’s time to pause and inquire.

If we can understand on a cellular level that someone isn’t the sum of our judgments of them, but a person who is facing an emotional undoing and clinging to a desire to not want to change, we help them heal.

Sometimes their intense emotions might make it easy for them to lash out in our presence. That’s never fun to experience.

But anytime we don’t respond to aggression with more aggression we help people heal.

WE ALSO HEAL OURSELVES.

When we’re locked and loaded to anger, resentment, contempt* and judgment we don’t have space within for healing to happen. Rather, we stagnate ourselves.

There’s just too much of the heavy stuff everywhere. There’s no room within us to add anything new, let alone space for what we truly desire to enter the mix.

We need to make room within ourselves for the experiences and feelings we desire to enter the scene.  You can’t enter a home that is already at full capacity.

Set the intention this year to create a home within yourself – a landscape that is capable of welcoming new experiences.

Seek out the stuff and things that are taking up a lot of space within you, yet aren’t serving you. Notice their presence and how they affect you. Make sure you see them.

Note: I recommend investigating IFS – Internal Family Systems. It’s a powerful process. There are a lot of books about it. Hit me up for recommendations.

* A note on contempt: This is a theme that needs to get flushed out this year. It’s a powerful relationship destructor. We need relationships with others and ourselves to be productive  – to get where we’re destined to go. To learn more about contempt check out this post in my resource section.

2 – Use your fire strategically

There will be a lot of transitions this year. A lot of change. And with all the change comes resistance.

We can’t avoid the changes that are coming.

All we can do is set the intention to uncover the courage within to trust that these new experiences are for our greater good – both the ones that feel good and the ones that feel bad.

A lot of things need to die.

They may be broken but we keep using them because it’s familiar to us. We may feel comfortable using something that’s broken, and even feel safe amidst the long-term struggle, of trying to make something broken work for us, not against us.

In 2020, what’s broken is going to need to be parted with.

Car analogy = Say your car is on the fritz and it finally breaks down on the highway. Instead of calling a tow truck and sorting out how to get home, you bang your fists on the window for hours, believing the car will come back to life if you beat it enough – that you’ll magically end up driving away at some point by doing the same thing, over and over again, even though it’s not helping you one iota.

You don’t want to do this kind of unproductive stuff in 2020.

Change is coming. Stuff you’re used to will change, evolve, grow. Die. Versions of who you once were are ready to die.

IE you’re going to evolve, whether you want to or not. It can be difficult or less difficult depending on your willingness to realize that you can’t stop this train.

Evolution baby. It’s here. And no fist banging is going to stop it.

If you’ve gone most of your life fighting with change this year is going to be tough. If you’ve extensively and redundantly resisted change then this year is going to be hella challenging.

2020 is the year of doing the inner work required to get you in alignment with the work you’re here to do. ∞ ∞ ∞

If you’ve got a lot of fire within you it’s probably helped you act or not act throughout your life. You can use your fire to dig your heels in and be stubborn AF. You can use your fire to foster an extensively reactionary way of interacting with others.

You can also use your fire as a strategy to help align you with what you truly want to experience in life.

Right now is the time to start interrogating HOW you use your fire, and question if it’s helping.

I use the word interrogate to highlight the need to take this seriously. Not to self-shame or bully yourself about how you’ve been doing things, but to get serious about taking a comb to how you react to your experiences and your feelings.

Question if how you’ve been doing things is helping you achieve what you truly desire, and/or what you could do differently to align yourself with feeling how you want to feel.

Easy to crap on the fiery aspects of our personalities; Productive to use the fire to your advantage.

In 2020, direct your fire toward strategies that serve you. 

How are you going to process strong emotions when they come up? What will you do when you feel out of your skin uncomfortable with certain feelings? STRATEGIZE.

If you don’t have a fiery personality to help you establish and use a strategy, seek out people who have the fire you need.

The energy of who you surround yourself with affects you. So get strategic with who you surround yourself with.

Absorb their energy. Use their energy to help fire you up. Tap into their gifts and abilities. Work with them and learn through them. And use what you learn to help work through what needs to be worked through.

NOTE: If you want more direction or guidance on how to work with what you’ve got in the year ahead check out this page.

3 – A time for celebration

Within the intense periods of 2020, there exists room to celebrate.

The changes we struggle to accept, and the fear that bubbles up when we feel uncomfortable about how we feel: these are all signs of the capacity for amazing things to arise from the wake of change.

Over the years I’ve uncovered a powerful capacity to witness what is beyond my current experience or feelings – what my fear and discomfort are capable of unveiling.

I know the power of inner work – of sitting with how I feel and allowing myself to feel my feelings. It’s a catalyst for amazing experiences to unfold.

This is not easy work.

The fallacy of our society and our humanness, which trips us up A LOT is that somehow this inner work is supposed to be easy. That it needs to be easy.

Some things are easy. And some things are just easier for some people.

This kind of inner work isn’t easy for ANYONE.

It’s the hardest work you can do, to witness the feelings you are taught to deny, push down, or ignore.

But the outcome of the witnessing is magic.⚡️⚡️⚡️

As you inevitably experience some challenges throughout 2020, remember what these challenging times are capable of producing.

You might not be able to see what’s coming, but something is being created within and through the heaviness of strong emotions and disruptions to the ease and flow you crave.

You might not always be able to see the sky, but it’s always there. And within the murky waters is clear water that is fueling you towards your soul-driven desires, whether you see it or not.

What you truly want is at the other end of all the change 2020 is bringing.

It’s braided within it and throughout it, waiting to be unveiled, IF you allow what needs to happen for it to come to the surface to happen.

I’m not saying this year ahead is going to be awful, and I’m not saying it’s going to be easy either.

2020 is going to be different.

It’s going to be filled with never-ending opportunities to evolve which will go a lot smoother IF you allow the currents of change to take you, instead of clinging to a reed (a refusal to accept change) which is destined to break.

∞ Breathe deeply and float with the currents of 2020 ∞

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Give yourself lots of breaks from the inner work you do in 2020.

Balance out the intensity with lightness.

Watch a lot of funny movies. Read some beautiful books. Travel when you can (travelling can mean walking around the block).

Allow for moments to mentally disengage with all that draws from you.

Align yourself with energies that serve you. That means making sure your Instagram and FB feeds are filled with energy that empowers you.

Every action we make in life is a vote for what we want to experience. Unfollow all accounts that contribute to you feeling small, not good enough – not empowered.

Side note: you don’t have to explain yourself or your actions made in the name of your own wellness to anyone. Not replying is a message. (Not sure who needs to read that but I sure do.)

Also: Shut your phone off. A lot

When I see my phone I see its power to siphon from all the work I’m doing to heal myself. Social media is a rabbit hole of getting caught up in what other people are doing when we need to focus on doing what it takes to achieve what we desire. Especially in 2020.

That said, phones are amazing, right?? 🙏🏻🤗😜 I love my iPhone and all my tech stuff. It’s what allows me to do what I do with flow and ease.

BUT THERE ARE DAYS WHEN ALL OF THAT TECH STUFF NEEDS TO BE TURNED OFF. Or at least put on airplane mode, save for your kids or immediate family.

And here comes my word for the year ahead again…

STRATEGIZE!

What’s working? What’s helping you achieve what you desire? What’s not? Flush it out. Consistently – with tenacity.

That’s it for my thoughts on 2020.

Thank you for reading! And if you listened to the audio above  – thank you!  It’s the first of many. 🖤

Feel free to reach out with Qs about anything I shared, or book a reading.

Lots of love,

A

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