self care

3 Things I Let Go Of In 2018

December 27, 2018 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

2018 has been a wild ride.

One of the craziest things that happened? I found out I have a sister through an Ancestry DNA kit. If you ever do one of those suckers and get an alert of a first cousin, beware: you could be involuntarily uncovering some skeletons in the familial closet!

Career-wise, things have been on the up and up: I started my own writing consulting business. It’s been really exciting to finally have found my niche, though more along the excitement lines of “I can’t believe I get paid to do this!” as opposed to, “Excuse me? Who did you say your father was??” 😂

There have been loads of emotional moments and super challenging situations which freaked me the fuck out this year. It hasn’t been easy and I haven’t succeeded in hitting the “Act In Alignment With Higher-Self” mark I’ve aimed for on every occasion (Shout out to my humanness for keeping me on my toes.) But I’ve done my best to be kind to myself and others as I’ve meandered emotionally volatile scenarios.

I’ve become heavily acquainted with the fact that you can’t be kind to other people in real ways if you’re not being kind to yourself.

Boom. Take a moment to absorb that hard-earned golden nugget of truth, on a cellular level.

I’ve been proud of my growth, frustrated with what felt like a total lack of it at times, and surprised when everything worked out better than expected in the end, even though I was full of self-doubt and scared as hell when everything was all, “What does this mean? What do I do now? Ahhhhhh!!!!!”

It hasn’t always been a pretty scene, but that’s another thing I did this year: let go of trying to adhere to an impossible mold.

I realized I wasn’t born to be agreeable and reserved, and that I’m full-out exhausted over attempting to be someone else’s version of appropriate or pretty.

Fuuuuuck thaaaaaaat. I was born to be so much more than the rigid societal standards set for women, and 2018 was the year I owned that truth.

I’ve tried to acknowledge how profound my transformation has been as often as possible. (Insight: we need to focus more time and energy on our accomplishments rather than our perceived failures. Like, pat ourselves on the back more than once for the same thing. Seriously.)

I’ve let go of beliefs, behaviors, and in some cases people who were holding me back, and every single time I’ve courageously said goodbye to something or someone I’ve been met with an incredible new experience.

I’m talking manifesting income, new friendships, and peace of mind. ❤️

2018 taught me that Letting Go is a powerful form of self-care and self-love. So in praise of using the past to prep for the year ahead and beginning 2019 in a state of gratitude, here are 3 things I said goodbye to this year:

Misguided Hope

Hope is a beautiful thing. It motivates us to keep trying and believing in the power of being ourselves. The world needs us to do this work.

Misguided hope is different from run of the mill hope. It’s more so like unrealistic expectations that consume you with the belief that maybe someday, someone who is hurting you might change, even though you’ve got a long list of events from the past proving otherwise.

This misguided hope business is distracting and unproductive. It keeps you from doing work that will help you heal and evolve, which is what the world also needs you to do, now, more than ever.

The misguided hope I let go of in 2018 was directed towards people who were unwilling to see how their own actions were causing their own suffering and the suffering of others. They weren’t without options, just comfortable in their own discomfort. Though I cared for them deeply, I realized after a steady flow of feeling shitty in their presence that their behaviors were destructive to my well-being, and it was time to step back from hoping that the next time around, things would be different.

Letting go of the hope that one day I could have a relationship with them in the absence of aggression, judgment, and resentment, was one of the greatest gifts I gave myself in 2018. It opened up space in my life for healthy new relationships to form, with others and myself, and honed my radar so I could easily spot dysfunctional behaviors moving forward, and act accordingly, ie, not enable them.

Now my hope for those who suffer is that they will one day find peace, not for me, but for themselves. The mantra I use, which I snagged from a Pema Chodron book, goes:

May they experience peace and the cause of peace.

It’s a beautiful thing to contemplate and affirm because it’s all about extending compassion for those who are suffering from a safe distance. It’s productive hope, that the road to peace will bring them a greater understanding of their own contributions to their own suffering, so they can one day heal, not for me, but for themselves.

Friendships

There are some friendships we hold onto because of the quality of the connection, and some we hold onto because of reasons that don’t make a lot of sense. You’ve known someone a long time? Cool, doesn’t mean you should be keeping up a relationship if it’s destructive to your wellbeing.

As a follow-up to releasing misguided hope from the docket, I let go of quite a few friendships this year.

Some ceremoniously and from within, ie, without having a conversation with anyone, but rather, a conversation with myself, affirming my need to cease communications. Others took a bit more energy, like the ending of a 25-year friendship, which up until this year I hadn’t been willing to acknowledge was stifling my ability to grow.

I realized I had knighted myself as eternally obligated to keep communicating with someone in the absence of what a connection requires to exist: Trust.

Sure I’d known her a long time, but when I really dug into the dysfunctional dynamic we had I realized I couldn’t rely on her to be kind to me. It was a friendship marred by the pain and resentment of the past, and trying to get it to work was just a destructive game of enabling.

I discovered the courage to speak my truth without shame during the process of this friendship coming to a close. Though it was really upsetting when my attempts to communicate were met with aggression and manipulation, I don’t regret any of it. I am immensely proud of what I accomplished by expressing myself. It was a powerful boost to my confidence, to command and stand firm on my wellness needs in the presence of aggression and my own fears over what people might say or think about me.

Fearing Fruit

In my early 20s, the low carb diet came into play and I was all over it. I axed all forms of sugar, did my best to cut out bread (Hard because I love carbs: carbs, carbs, carbs) and added no-sugar, chemically laden desserts and a bevy of meats and cheeses to my plate on the regular. Barf and ouch to my arteries and health as a whole over those choices.

While I still toyed with bread on occasion because of my aforementioned love affair with gluten, my fear of sugar was intense and kept me far away from the fruit section of the grocery store for over 15 years.

I am no stranger to eating disorders and believed the headlines when they said sugar made you fat. My fear lasted until 2018, when I realized that fruit isn’t the problem, it’s the chemicals in the foods we eat and the viruses in our bodies that are.

Letting go of the belief that I shouldn’t eat fruit has been a huge contributor to 2018 being such a great year for me health-wise.

I eat a lot of it now, every single day, and as a newly anointed size 2 who has healed from chronic pain and severe anxiety and depression, I am proof that it doesn’t get you fat or cause illness – it heals your body.

While I still experience some anxiety and depression symptoms on occasion, I’m no longer on prescription medication for it and when symptoms heighten I return to focusing on adding more plant-based foods to my diet, specifically fruit, and things start to improve.

Fruit is amazing. Please don’t be afraid of it! To learn more about how I healed myself by eating it, check out this post.

I let go of so much more in 2018…

I could keep churning out paragraphs about what I released from my life this past year, but another thing I let go of stops me: trying to accomplish too much.

I’ve learned over and over again that productivity does not equal self-worth.

My goal in life is to feel good, and I know that a less is more mentality is more likely to get me there than a maxed out to-do list kind of lifestyle will. Been there, barely functioned doing that!

Take some time to reflect over the next few days.

There is value in reviewing the highs and lows of the year that just passed. Acknowledging your accomplishments and taking note of what you let go of is a beautiful way to start and plan for 2019.

Right now, I’m taking what I’ve learned in 2018 and using it not only to write but to create goals for the year ahead via my desire map planner. (What’s a desire map planner? Think goals with soul, rather than focusing solely on to-do lists. Click here to find out more.)

I hope you have a great 2019 and want to help you start it off on a growth-centric note. Which is why I’m sending out a brand new offering to my readers to start the new year. 🎉

It’s called Therapist Recommended Books to Help You Heal, with, you guessed it, books my therapist recommended.

These books have changed my life in major ways, and I guarantee they will change your life, too. You likely have never heard of them because they aren’t lining the shelves of bookstores. But that’s not because they aren’t incredible resources.

Find out what I mean by entering your name and email here: You’ll get the list delivered to your email January 1st.

Happy New Year to you, and thanks for reading! I hope 2019 brings some amazing experiences your way and that I get the chance to connect with you!

You are loved,

Image via Rakicevic Nenad

The Downside of being a turtle (aka retreating into your shell when life gets scary)

December 5, 2018 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

My therapist says I’m like a turtle. I don’t mind her claim. I like turtles and had a few of them as pets growing up. Plus, I know she’s not referring to my overall look, she’s talking about how I retreat into my shell when the world gets a little too scary for me.

Sometimes heaven is not dealing with people. It’s airplane mode when I’m not on a plane, and noise canceling headphones all day long. It’s a strategic disengagement with the alerts and noise so I can concentrate on what’s important, which for me is keeping my head clear so I can be in an optimal state to create, help my clients help others, and make decisions in alignment with my higher self.

Getting my turtle on isn’t the same as disengaging in the name of progress. Turtling (I am hella nervous to google that in case it’s some weird sex thing and I get a ton of porn pop-ups) is a willful retraction from the world driven by fear. It’s fuelled by an aspect of my personality, established in an effort to keep me safe that says, “The world and the people in it might hurt you, so you need to retreat.”

Being a turtle can be dangerous because it keeps us from contributing beautiful bits of ourselves to the world (and the world NEEDS us to be us.)

My immediate goal is to stop being a turtle. I am majorly motivated to change right now. I’m in the midst of doing my damnedest to no longer allow my choices to be dictated by fear, particularly as the countdown to Christmas begins, which I wrote about in this post.

We can’t cut ties with fear. It will ALWAYS be there, prodding us to do or not do things, which means the most productive thing we can do is create a dialogue with it if we’ve never had one, or transform the current dialogue, so we can stop allowing it to convince us to stop participating in life.

Maybe you can relate to me and my turtle issues. If you can, you might find the following plan of non-attack useful the next time fear tells you to retreat into your shell:

 1 – Say hey. I’ve always denied fear’s existence, like it wasn’t OK to say, Whattup? What do you want? I’d get wasted instead of facing my feelings, and be inundated with fear for days.

Yeah, that wasn’t fun. I’m really grateful those days are over because they were B.R.U.T.A.L. But that doesn’t mean I currently live without fear. I still experience it, chattering away at me every day of my life, telling me to do stuff that won’t help me, and not do stuff that will.

After years of trying to outrun it, I now make a conscious effort to engage with fear in a non-aggressive way. I do my best to be patient as it shares its woes because I know from experience the more aggressive and dismissive I am, the more it’s going to pressure me to act on its super shitty advice. No thanks, fear, but I’ll hear you out, out of respect for your power.

 2 – Acknowledge its power. Speaking of power, guess what has the ability to constrict your breathing, give you explosive diarrhea, convince you to pass on incredible opportunities, and emotionally regress to your 10-year-old self? Fear.

Fear is powerful. Respect, witness, and acknowledge it. You do that by noticing when it starts coursing through your body instead of trying to outrun it by getting ragey, overspending, or chugging wine and posting regrettable Facebook pictures/updates (Yeesh, right? Been there, done that. 😳)

There is a tool we all possess that can help us. We tend to minimize it because it seems too good to be true and therefore, we assume it doesn’t work. Yet it has the power to help us process strong emotions instead of allowing them to consume us and dictate our choices.

It’s your breath! Breathing, like a gluten, soy, and corn-free cookie that tastes good, is no fucking joke. And It’s nuts not to use it because it’s free and doesn’t leave you filled with regret. So utilize your breath! (Check out this post from my resource page that offers some breathing methods I use.)

 3 – See it as separate. We blend with fear, almost as much as some people attempt to blend away their nose holes via contouring. (If you want a laugh, check out this YouTube video about contouring by Sailor J. Unless you’re easily offended.)

We don’t see fear as separate from us, but rather, as who and all that we are. We proclaim it to be our master: “Here you go, Fear: the key to my life, even though you have a shitty track record.”

Here’s the deal: Fear isn’t you, it’s an aspect of who you are.

And who you are is human, which means you are one of many other humans on the planet who are equally as skilled at letting fear blend and bully away their power. Therefore, you are not alone in your struggle.

I’m creating a new wellness offering for my readers with book recommendations my therapist gave me. I’ll be sending it out when it’s done (by January 1st! 🎉) because there’s a book in it that does an amazing job of helping you unblend with fear. It’s a life-altering practice and I rely on it heavily in my life. Enter your first name and email here and I’ll be sure to send it to you.

Update: I just gave myself the blinks googling “turtling” and looks like I’m out of the woods because there’s nothing dirty popping up in my search results. Phew.

My goal is to lay off being a turtle and stay more engaged with my feelings, even the ones I don’t enjoy, like fear.

I’m not saying I’m going to do it perfectly, but with the insights I shared with you today reminding me that I can do this, I think I’m in a good position to make some progress when it comes to redirecting my penchant for getting my turtle on.

I hope what I’ve shared might help you in some way. It’s not always easy to share my struggles, but the support I get from readers like you makes it worth the effort. ❤️

Feel free to share your thoughts with me in the comments. You are loved.

The 40 Day Abundance Plan

September 20, 2018 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

I’ve decided to embark on a 40-day journey to refurbish my beliefs about money.

Why? Because I’ve spent much of my life in a dysfunctional relationship with money. Maybe you can relate. I’ve danced between overspending, never spending, worrying, being careless, and generally just feeling unsettled on a regular basis about the whole idea of money.

I’ve had wonderful blips of clarity and peace about my finances and experienced first hand how quickly I can manifest income when I’ve got my mind and soul in the optimal loop of thought.

But I’ve always ended up in super unhealthy work environments in the process, and then quickly become reacquainted with the ugh-inducing, low vibing realm of, “How will I ever make the money I want to make, doing what I love?”

I’ve seen what the pursuit of money, and money alone, can do to people. I know what it feels like to have your heart broken over and over again by realizing a loved one cares more about money than you. I’ve struggled with accepting the truth living within me in the vicinity of such people, a truth that affirms kindness, love, compassion, and generosity of spirit are more important than the pursuit of a physical, tangible item.

Because of all of the above and then some, I’ve got a suitcase I carry with me that is overpacked with dysfunctional money beliefs, and confusion over how to feel about it. It not only hurts my back (google money issues and back problems) but my heart, and I’d like to permanently unpack it.

I know it’s possible. I’ve witnessed many creatives I admire and respect to the moon and back get out the other end of money issues without sacrificing their wellbeing. Rather, they’ve ended up in an enhanced state of wellness, not only within themselves but in their bank accounts.

So I’m committing to making a shift happen in my subconscious through my 40-day abundance plan. Here’s what it looks like:

Writing out a statement on the first day, affirming what I know the be true about abundance, and what I choose to believe about it moving forward.
Reading a pro-abundance statement every morning.
Meditating about what I’ve read for 15-20 minutes every morning.
Writing down the thoughts that come to me after meditation.
Rinse and repeat x 40 days.

I started the plan this morning and full disclosure, it was super uncomfortable. However, I was grateful for the discomfort because I know from experience that its existence is a sign something is becoming dislodged in my psyche. And I’m VERY excited to see how my feelings transform over the next 40 days.

Side note: I’m not just winging it. I’ve adapted my plan according to what I read in “The Abundance Book” by John Randolph Price. And here’s a note from me about the book if you decide to google it or purchase it:

There are many references to God in it. If the idea of God freaks your freak, and you immediately get your hackles up, thinking about hyper-religious sects that do a lot of awful stuff in the name of their religious views that they proclaim God determined they must live by, take a breath. Then lower your shoulders, release your fists, and remember this:

God is a complex term for humans to process. There’s a lot of emotion tied to it depending on our experiences with religion. However, a productive way to process the term God when considering abundance, coming from a former judgemental-of-anyone-who-referenced-God human being who didn’t understand or appreciate the idea of us all bowing down to a white dude and denying the power of the female, is to see God as a synonym for universal energy, not as a physical human being.

Money is energy. It’s an extension of our inner world, of our beliefs. So if there is a lack in your outer world, there is a lack within you as well.

I know a bit about this subject. I’ve been researching it and pondering it for years. But my sub-conscious is all, “I’m comfortable being uncomfortable and worrying all the time. I’m not interested in your new ways, even if they are entirely logical and could potentially make life way more enjoyable and beautiful.”

Hence the 40-day plan, to pilfer out the limiting beliefs living in my psyche that are keeping me from the life I’m on the cusp of experiencing. It’s going to take a bit of work to clear out my sub-conscious but I’m hella optimistic that 40 days will do it.

I believe this truth, by John Randolph Price, infinitely: The good of the whole does begin with each individual.

It serves not only me but the world if I’m free of limiting beliefs. So here we go on the 40-day journey.

To peace and abundance, in our inner and outer worlds. See you in 40 days.

PS: Feel free to leave a comment of support. I would be grateful!

Advice For Difficult Seasonal Transitions (From A Chronically Seasonally Depressed Human)

September 3, 2018 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

Seasonal transitions have always proven to be tough for me.

I love the sun. I thrive when it’s warm outside. When the temperature drops, and it’s no longer weather appropriate to be bare-legged in a lounge chair with my computer, notebook, or latest non-fiction obsession, I enter into a period of mourning.

I don’t anticipate quite the difficulty as I’ve had over the past few years, but I’m still a bit weary. I’m not sure what will come about when the skies get grayer, and Vancouver Island starts to live up to its reputation as a rainforest.

I’ve recently upped my belief in the fact that everything is going to be OK, and that I will be OK, no matter what happens in my life. So that’s comforting when I start to feel uncomfortable with all the changes weather wise.

But that doesn’t mean the transition to fall isn’t capable of rocking me to the emotional core.

Something inside has a tendency to fight what is this time of year. It’s prone to clenching and refusing the universal need for the leaves to fall, the temperatures to cool, and the diminishing amounts of sun to be available to baste my body.

Something within doesn’t want to accept the changes.

I experience a lot of uncomfortable physical symptoms in the fall, too. Digestive issues (Will spare the details and you’re welcome for that); super dry skin; heavy depression; intense anxiety: all of them come on strong and are hesitant to let up on demand.

Remembering that everything is temporary when experiencing all the discomfort is, well, comforting. Sitting with how I feel isn’t. Letting things get emotionally messy is messy, and I don’t like messes.

But the alternative, of looking to the not so recent past and feeling bummed out over how fast the summer went, and wishing and hoping for more time in the sun, always proves to be a tempting, albeit terrible, idea.

Until I’m ready to see what was with lightness and look at summer with gratitude instead of fear over its passing, I need to leave it where it lay. I need to get to acceptance of what is first; Acceptance of right now. And I always get there, but not until I go through what feels like a spiritually led mourning period.

I believe this: That there is more to the struggle I feel during the seasonal change into Fall than just the passing of summer; That the feelings are too heavy and deep to be from missing my favorite river or lakeside spot alone.

Regardless of the origin of my feelings, my goal this year is to get outside the realm of discomfort over what is with greater speed. I don’t want to set up shop with depression and anxiety. My plan to make sure that doesn’t happen?

Do things differently than I’ve always done them during the seasonal transition.

If you’ve read much of what I write about on the blog, or in the twice-a-month-ish emails I send out, you’ll know that doing things differently is what I’m all about these days. Because doing things differently is the key to emotional growth.

Which is why recently I’ve been scanning through the last couple years, to the times when seasonal depression and anxiety started taking up square footage in my body like a great dane in a studio apartment. Not with a critical, self-shaming eye, but a clinical one. And I’ve asked myself:

What did you do when you struggled with difficult seasonal transitions in years past?

Here’s what I came up with:

I stopped posting and connecting with people on social media. I couldn’t think of anything positive to write about or share, ’cause I felt so down, so I just stopped posting altogether. I was gone long enough that friends started messaging me, asking if I was OK. So I isolated myself from my community and it definitely didn’t help me out.

I ate shitty food. Gluten much? How about Gluten too much. Plus dairy, pork, canola oil, corn, refined sugar, and salt: You name it, I ate it when I was feeling depressed. I’m a huge follower of the medical medium and have seen incredible results from following his suggested eating plans via his books, which you can read about in this post. So I know from repeated food-related emotional and physical upheaval throughout the year that September is not a good month to be trifling (Damn, I love a good trifle) with all the stuff on my “Don’t Eat This Stuff” list.

I was less active. Recovering from drug and alcohol addiction and the depression and trauma that fueled them taught me that when I’m experiencing heavy doses of depression I need to move my body. Which is tough because when I feel depressed I don’t want to be active. Case in point the last few years, when I dialed back my work out routine substantially in the fall, ’cause I had zero motivation. Needless to say, not doing anything made me feel worse.

I ran from my feelings by buying stuff. The last few years I’ve done a fair bit of running. Not around the block – I’m talking running from how I felt via emotional purchases. Tons of cash spent at the vitamin store for supplements in order to fix how I felt; make-up counter visits in hopes a new product would make me feel (and look) better; a surplus of books, some of which haven’t even been cracked yet: none of it helped. It just kept me busy while siphoning my savings account. Yuck.

I didn’t take time to be grateful. I was so consumed with fear over how uncomfortable I felt that I couldn’t see how it could ever get better. I stopped practicing being grateful and it made things way worse.

After all that investigating, it became clear that I needed a plan this year. Even though I feel like a different person – stronger, more empowered, and grateful than in years past – I still need to be ready, in case the same symptoms come about again.

So I made a plan for the transition to Fall and it goes like this:

Remain open to my community. I’m going to share what the transition teaches me on social media and on the blog. I’ll be mindful of the delivery, ie, keep my heart open, and ensure I share empowering yet honest content. And I’m going to make plans with friends, for the near and faraway future, instead of hanging solo all the time. Adding fun stuff to the calendar always feels good, no matter how far away it is (TGFJ = Thank God For Jen, who likes to plan ahead like I do.)

Write it out. I’m going to use how I feel as content inspiration for my blog, my book, and my workbook. This is a good chance to get introspective about what I’m feeling.

Not let depression make choices for me. Depression isn’t something I need to be listening to for health advice, so I’m not going to listen when it makes the super shitty suggestion that I numb my brain with entertainment shows, lay in bed all day, shop away my feelings, or eat bags of cheddar popcorn. Nuh-uh. Nuhhhh-uhhhhh.

Up my healthy eating game. The proof is in the dairy-free pudding (I’ve never tried making that but it feels like it’s google worthy): Shitty food equals a shitty frame of mind, body, and soul. I’m going to cut out the crap when I feel like crap and keep my house stocked with healthy foods so it’s easier to dismiss depression’s suggestion that I start eating cake at every meal.

Move my body. This is one of those cases where I have to get tough love-ish with myself: Even if I don’t feel like doing anything when I’m feeling down and out, I need to do it anyway. I’m not saying I need to sign up for CrossFit (though if that’s your thing, go get ’em, babe.) I’m saying move my body a bit, ie, walk around the block, or do one beginner yoga class per week – something that gets the blood flowing. Nothing good comes of stagnation, mentally or physically. I know this VERY well. Lighter equals, well, lighter. And I’m not talking about my waistline. Everything feels a little less heavy when you make time to move your bod.

Sit with my feelings. I’m going to notice when I feel like running by eating or shopping and sit with my how I feel instead. I’m going to go all Buddha on that “Hey – you should do this thing that will make you feel worse!” suggestion that I KNOW will be coming my way on the regular. Will it feel great to sit with how I feel? Not likely. But it’s temporary, and the sooner I am courageous enough to do so, the sooner my discomfort will pass. (I wrote more about this idea, of sitting with your discomfort, in this post.

Meditate more often. One of my Instagram friends, @remindmeditation, recently said: “Meditation isn’t hard. Learning organic chemistry is hard. Winning an Ironman is hard. Giving birth is tough AF. Meditation is easy. You can meditate.”

And Jaylee is right: You can meditate. We can all meditate. And while I don’t think meditating for long periods of time is easy, I DO think we sabotage ourselves by saying it’s too hard to even attempt. I do it to myself sometimes, particularly when I’m feeling depressed, and that’s an everyday meditator admitting that.

A way around the “I don’t want to, even though I know it’ll help me” is by lowering the bar. Making 1-5 minutes of meditation the goal is much less daunting than trying to force 20 minutes when you’re just not that into it. And it makes it more likely that you’ll actually do it. So less self-sabotage + more doing what feels doable = self-care, self-love, self-empowerment. The math checks out. I checked it.

Seasonal transitions can be tough. What makes them even tougher?

When you don’t have a plan to deal with the issues that might come with the changing of seasons.

Experience has taught me that waiting until things get hard is not a good plan. Having a plan is a good plan.

You might need to look at what didn’t work for you in the past, like I did, to sort out what helps provide relief, empowerment, and motivation when times get difficult.

One thing you can do right now? Share something you plan to do this year, to help you mentally transition into fall in the comments below.

You never know who you could be helping by doing so, so please take a moment to share your thoughts. And after that grab a copy of my One Minute Meditation Guide, which is a great tool to add to your Fall Wellness toolkit.

Now, I’m going to give Fall, cause it’s truly here on Vancouver Island, a warm welcome, even though it’s not exactly warm, and offer a reminder to you:

Be kind to yourself during seasonal transitions. It’s so very human, to struggle during times of change.

The 3 Phases of Courage

August 16, 2018 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

Everyone has things they don’t like doing. My least favourite thing to do? Put flea medication on my cat, Jack.

Jack has a special place in my heart. No joke, he helped save my life. When I was struggling with sobriety, he showed up at my door, looking for love.

Love Heals. The love I felt for him was one of the catalysts that helped me figure out how to love myself. So the cliché about rescuing animals is absolutely true in this case: I saved him just as much as he saved me.

Over the past few weeks, my little fur dude’s activity of choice has been scratching himself. If my suspicions were correct – that he had fleas – it would mean I’d have to apply flea medication, which, not surprisingly, was on his list of least favourite activities as well.

The coldness on his neck from the alcohol in the meds freaks him the fuck out, which breaks my heart because the little man already has PTSD (his previous owner died tragically.) That said I’m keen on locating some hard proof before I start the process.

Unfortunately for both of us, I found one crawling on his face the other day. I was bummed, to say the least. What we had to do (it takes two to apply it) came with the added bonus of being shamed and ostracized.

And no, I’m not talking about the Facebook comments section: this is what Jack the cat does to us humans when we apply the stuff.

We applied it anyway. The other option was him being uncomfortable and our home getting ransacked with fleas. Not happening.

True to form, he freaked out. He tried to outrun the feeling on his neck down the driveway, up the driveway, into the backyard, and into the neighbour’s yard.

Shortly after his run began, however, he stopped to sit in a pile of dirt. I watched from the window (’cause he needed his space) as he sat down and closed his eyes, looking like a tiny, furry little buddha. There he stayed for over an hour.

Somewhere amidst my intermittent window watching and dishwashing, something profound came to me:

Was he uncomfortable? Yes.

Did he realize that there was no way to outrun his discomfort? Yes.

Did he continue to try to outrun his discomfort? No.

To a cat, it’s logical to stop running. They don’t have a bunch of human conditioning, clogging up their minds.

But for a human, it takes courage to stop.

In the mind of a human, what Jack did was courageous. He could have kept trying to outrun the feeling, and ignored me and the hubby for days. But he knew that he’d just end up suffering more.

So he let himself sit in that dirt pile for a bit, and watching him do so got me thinking:

We need to get used to sitting in the dirt pile with our feelings, too.

Feeling shitty is temporary. So is feeling happy. Where we get ourselves into trouble is when we diagnose feeling terrible as permanent and shut ourselves off from the chance to feel better, by refusing to let ourselves feel how we feel for any length of time.

I remember when I used to immediately red flag any feeling that didn’t feel good. I’d either head straight to the doctor, thinking I needed to up my antidepressant dosage, or else I’d make myself feel even worse by maxing out my credit card on clothes I didn’t need and racking up a bar tab I couldn’t afford.

I would diagnose myself as seriously screwed up, all for being human and having an off day.

It’s not bad to feel unhappy, and it takes courage to stop trying to outrun our unhappiness.

In my case, investigating and sitting with my unhappiness has taught me how to be courageous.

I’ve come to know 3 phases of Courage:

The first phase – Noticing that you’ve normalized behavior that is unhealthy, like running from how you feel.

Just witnessing that you’re doing this, and how it might not be working for you, is Courageous.

The second phase – Doing things differently the next time you notice you’re ready to extend that same behaviour.

Courage is changing things up: If you’ve always done it one way, try another.

The third phase – Continuing to try to do things differently, in spite of failing to do so.

Courage is committing to doing things differently the next time around.

Acts of Courage, in whatever form or degree they come in, are powerful.

Any time you choose to do things differently than you’ve always done them, it’s a win, not only for you but for the people and the world around you, too.

No act of courage goes unnoticed by the world.

Despite the lack of a pat on the back or a “Way to go, babe!” there are heaps of people being positively affected by your efforts to be well.

You are setting an amazing example simply by trying to do things differently.

Don’t stop setting examples. Don’t stop being courageous, in whatever phase you can manage to at the moment.

Thanks for reading. You are loved,

Lessons From This Week, Volume 1

June 27, 2018 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

I’m in the midst of writing a book and it’s proving to be quite the undertaking. Not that I thought it would be easy. Hell no. I just didn’t realize how overwhelmed I would feel when I started to write it. 😬

The process is providing a powerful lesson in staying present.

All the in-the-future tasks required to make this book a reality have been doing some serious loitering as I search for the right words to fill the pages. Suffice it to say, my mind has been wandering a lot.

What does this teach me? That I need to focus on staying in the moment.

Some days I’m better at it than others. At times my inability to focus feels like a curse. I experience moments, sometimes days, and even weeks when my brain is firing off so many thoughts I don’t even feel safe being behind the wheel of the car.

Meditation helps. It realigns me with my purpose. So does eating the right foods (Glucose from fruit = great for ADD type symptoms.)

And so does logic. I know the power in considering options for the future, like, “What’s the cover going to look like?” and “Who should I hire to edit this thing?” but logic affirms that busying myself with tasks beyond writing the actual book isn’t a top priority right now.

I also know what drives the barrage of thoughts that pull me from the task of writing: my sub-conscious, trying to keep me safe from making an ass of myself.

I do feel a bit freaked out about the whole writing a book process. But I also feel serenely secure in the realization that this is what I’m meant to do.

Of course, I’d like to live in the serenely secure zone more often. Fearing failure sucks the joy out of things, a process we all experience to a certain degree or another.

There’s a subconsciously driven aspect to all of us that makes a job of trying to convince us to not do what will catapult us into a realm of ourselves we’ve never known.

Here are the big questions that freak our freakin’ freak, whether we realize it or not:

Who would we be if we did the work we needed to do to accomplish our goals?

What would happen to us?

No one knows, and that scares the shit out of us. That fear entices us to busy ourselves with things that won’t help us do what we need to do to accomplish what we want to accomplish.

Mark Nepo is a poet and the author of a beautiful book, called The Book of Awakening (check out this post from my resource section to learn more about it.)

He speaks about pain in a way that resonates deeply with me, and it relates just as well to fear: Our life contains pain, not the other way around. That is, our pain does not contain us; our life contains pain.

I look at fear the same way: It’s something that comes about in our lives on occasion but it’s not meant to be the dictator of our everyday existence.

Fear has a proven talent for messing with our ability to be calm, generous, and connected to each other.

It takes from us; it depletes us. Therefore, it’s not qualified to be the director, star, or producer of our lives.

And besides, there are plenty of other feelings to feel other than fear. From what I know about myself, and from what I witness in the actions and words of the people close to me, we give fear way too fucking much of our time and energy.

Consider who we can be without it: In the absence of fear, I am calm, generous, and accepting of others. I am no longer at war with the world or myself.

Without fear I can say, “I can handle it,” and I do. I pick up my pen or laptop without difficulty and focus on writing a book, the contents of which might be able to help others.

So the lesson this week is to stop giving fear so much damn attention. To stop letting it contain us.

We do that by focusing on what we’re doing right now, in the moment. If thoughts about yesterday, tomorrow, or next month come up, we reroute our focus back to right now. And then we do it over, and over, and over again.

It’s not glamorous; It’s not profound or exciting. It’s not the easy way out, or the quick fix to happiness we relentlessly search for, yet never find.

It takes work and commitment but there’s nothing quite as lovely as being unburdened by the drain of relentless thinking by focusing on the present moment.

The peace of mind, body, and soul that comes when you focus on what you’re doing, even if it’s something you perceive to be simple, like making a plate of food for yourself or your loved ones, is undeniable.

You deserve to feel that, and so do I.

Which is why I’m making a commitment to stepping into now, with both 2 feet when it comes to writing this book and living my life moving forward.

I’m going to use the observation of the now to keep fear from directing my life. I know it won’t be easy, and that some days I might fail miserably.

But I’m going to keep working on being present, rerouting my wandering mind, and no longer letting fear contain me. And I hope you’ll consider doing the same. ❤

Fun Fact: This post was originally one of my bi-weekly newsletters.

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