let her cry...let her heal

She's been a work in progress.  She sat on my work board, on the floor, for weeks, looking up at me everyday with her quivering lips and her sad, pain filled eyes.  She called to me, told me her title with the lyrics from the song, "Let Her Cry," by Hootie and the Blowfish.  "Let her cry, let her tears fall down like rain.  Let her sing, if it eases all her pain.  Let her go..."  Patiently she waited as I painted her hair but wasn't feeling it and painted over all but her face.  She waited while I painted, resisted, painted and resisted some more.  She sat for a week or so as I enveloped myself in a state of semi-solitude, disconnecting from some, connection to others, and all the while avoiding the healing release of emotions she was to serve as.  Her patience paid off as finished her up over the last two days.

Sometimes it's interesting the things I "get" and the related things that I miss.  I am well aware of the healing affects of creativity.  I've experienced it firsthand.  I have drafts of classes I plan on teaching that use creativity and spirituality to heal.  I've taken a couple of classes myself that use creativity to heal.  The painting I pictured and wrote about in, The Healing Journey of a Painting..., is a prime example of my using creativity to shift my internal energy and heal my internal world.  Yet, somehow I missed a very important piece of the creativity as healing puzzle.  That being emotional release through the creative process.  I've experienced the release of frustration when painting, but still I missed it.  I've experienced the pure joy and euphoria of painting when I was having a not so great day, and missed it.  I've written poetry that helped my hurting heart, and still I missed it.  So I should have seen it but I didn't, I just wasn't ready for it yet.  We "get" things in the exact timing we are supposed to, when we are ready to truly start to "get" and understand something.  All the experiences we've had in which we think we missed something and should have seen something or made a connection, were merely seeds being planted that would one day help us to make the realizations in the moment we are ready to make them.    So seeds were planted as I missed how, when I turn solely to people for that emotional release, I disconnect from my creativity.  More seeds were planted as I missed out on the beauty that comes with channeling raw emotion into a creative project.

And when that finally clicked, the seeds grew into her.  She came from a place of sadness, loss, pain, and betrayal, in their rawest forms, just to name a few of the emotions she was birthed from.  She was born out of a need to channel all of those emotions in a healthy healing way.  And in doing so, she came forth from the page with more emotion than anything I've ever created.  Her face stared up at me and I could see her lips tremble and tears well up in her eyes.  She had, and has, a movement of emotion I've never before experienced in one of my creations.  While she looks so very sad, there is this beauty in her sadness that helps to remind me of what I have said numerous times, that even among the shattered pieces, there is beauty in the breath of this moment.  And as her heart explodes into tiny pieces, some falling away as they are no longer necessary, still others change into the beauty of butterflies.  While I would stay away from butterflies because of their blatant transformation symbolism, I felt the necessity of them.

She is me in every way, guiding me on how to heal while showing me that I am.  She is my hurt, my pain, my loss.  She is my blood stained tears.  She is my shattered heart.  She is my hope, my faith, my empowerment.  She is me doing what I do, taking events that appear to be destructive and turning them into growth and healing, emerging a truer more beautiful version of Who I Really Am.  She is my transformation.  She is me healing.  And she is a reminder of the powerful and healing affect of using creativity as a healthy and healing emotional release.

With love and light,
Tia

Loss, Shock, Wallowing, and a change in Perspective...

April 4th, 2013

It occurred to me today that, while I say that I know this situation has happened for my Highest Good, I don't yet feel it.  I still feel the loss of of it and since I feel like I lost something so I could move forward with my purpose, I fear there may be more to lose.  If the belief that it is for my Highest Good had truly taken root, I'd no longer feel it was a loss, and I would trust in it.  The belief needs to be rooted and I haven't yet given it the time it needs to grab hold within me.  As I affirm that it is for my Highest Good, even when I don't feel it, I am given the opportunity to see the gap between what I truly believe and what I affirm.  Awareness helps those affirmations and intentions to grow stronger, to spread their roots and take hold within me.

While loss is how I feel, it is not how I choose to perceive the situation.  Loss implies powerlessness and victim hood.  I am one with the Power that created me, I am standing in my own Power, and I am a survivor and a thrivor.  If I choose to cling to this idea that I've lost something then dis-empowerment moves in and fear takes hold, co-creating more situations in which I feel a loss of personal power and in which I feel victimized.  No thank you.

Empowerment and re-claiming my power are themes that have run throughout the course of my life.  Life presented me with reminders of Who I Really Was, in the form of Who I Was Not.  I chose to cling to Who I Was Not and walked away from childhood, which included numerous dis-empowering events, with the perception that I had no power.  I believed that anyone could take it from me and that it was better to just give it away.  Sometimes it is necessary to be Who You Are Not so that you can have the experience of it and decide, by inspired action, Who You Wish to Really Be.

I had to choose to wallow in it for a day or so to remember Who I Really Am.  I had to wallow in it, let the thoughts scamper around in my head, so that I could light the spark and choose Who I Really Wish to Be.  Each moment, each choice, has it's purpose.  While someone might observe a choice someone else makes and think it wrong, they don't realize that that choice they witnessed might just be the choice that person needed to make to change, grow, heal, and/or transform.  Sometimes you think you've taken a step in the wrong direction, until you realize that you needed to take that step to even know it wasn't what best served you, and perhaps for you to see what would better serve you.  For some reason I feel like this isn't flowing today.  My point is that, while some might think that the choice to wallow, even if it doesn't feel like I'm choosing it I know I am, is unhealthy.  And I would tend to agree if a person, namely me, stayed there.  But it was the choice I needed to make to remember that that is not me, and instead to choose to grow forward.

I was in shock on Sunday, after facing the wreckage, and that shock helped me to rise above it.  But, little by little the shock wore off leaving me with a Tuesday off in which I wallowed in it.  Tuesday I cleaned my house and while I did I wallowed in the emotion of it, in the imaginary conversations of it, in the "how could you's" of it.  I got sick of it, I so desperately wanted to just let go of ALL of it.  Just let go, surrender, carry on.  I make that choice every day but some days I am aware that, while I am affirming and intending to let go, I am grasping on tightly.  At the risk of being repetitive, it's a process.  I have found that once you bring awareness to those behaviors, you start to notice them more, which helps to bring healing to them.

So what did I do when I was sick and tired of wallowing, I worked toward making new choices.  What can I do in this moment to let go?  What can I do in this moment to bring myself more peace?  What can I do in this moment to accept where I am?  What can I do in this moment to love me?  What can I do in this moment to be of service to myself and others?  What can I do in this moment to take forward steps towards co-creating my dreams?  Making those choices one time is not enough.  I have to make them over and over and over.  It starts with posing the questions over and over.  As I continue to pose the questions, the energy within me shifts and releases.  Then I have to actually make the choices when I am presented with them, which will shift the energy even more.  I have to allow the questions and intentions time to take root because some of these energy patterns are years worth of deeply rooted.  There are layers of them to peel back and as I do that, and as I set the intentions and dig and process and heal, those intentions will take root.  But it takes time.  And while I usually have an enormous amount of patience, when it comes to healing I do not always.

As I walked away from my writing and let it swirl and dance around inside of me I realized that a shift in perspective would be helpful here.  It's like when I talk about the optical illusion posters.  You strain to see what really lies within the picture and you can't see it.  But, when you relax your eyes and just look forward without trying or grasping to what you think is there, it appears to you.  It can be difficult sometimes for me to remember to do that, to trust in the unfolding of it all.  To trust that when its time, and when I am ready, if my eyes are relaxed, it will be revealed to me.  Sometimes I want so much to just see the purpose, to gain the clarity, to let it go and move on that I get caught in the desperation of it instead of the choosing of it.  Desperation has an energy of noticing that it is not here.  Please, please let me have peace.  Desperation is not choosing, it is noticing the lack of what you wish to choose.  Have faith.  Trust in the process.

"Trust in the process."  It's funny to me, maybe more interesting or some other more appropriate word, that I teach people, guide people on going through the process and I find myself sometimes trying to skip the whole thing.  We teach what we most need to learn right?  I don't try to skip it with all things, there are processes I have been through, but I also can't say how many times I've come to this impatient resisting place of just wanting to know and let it go.  Yet, it's through the process that the digging up of treasure occurs.  It's through the process that I learn what works and share it with others.  It's what gives me the experience from which I write from and guide from.  The process is important.  And having faith in the process, the unfolding of it all, is just as important.  Perhaps I have issues with trusting it.  Perhaps I know that I do.  There is uncertainty in trusting it and sometimes, the not knowing can be a scary place to be.  But if you trust the not knowing, trust the uncertainty, trust Divine guidance, deeply root the belief that everything that happens is for your Highest Good, then the miracles unfold in the most beautifully blessed ways.  I have found, in my own life, that events that have seemed painful, that appeared to tear everything apart, are the events that have brought forth the beauty within me, the treasure as it were.  Four years ago Saturday, April 6th, I was arrested.  I thought my life was ruined.  I was embarrassed, ashamed, depressed, and seriously considered ending it all.  And although it took about 6 weeks for me to start to change my life, I did.  And it became one of the best things that ever happened to me because it brought me to this beautiful, healing, transforming, growing, spiritual, clean and sober place.  And I wouldn't trade it for anything.  And while I do not yet feel that way about recent events in my life, I know that time will come; I choose for it to.

So I work toward being gentle with myself.  Please be gentle with yourself in your healing.  The process will take whatever time it takes, and that's okay.  Patience.  Faith.  Gentleness.  Self-care.  And allowing the new affirmations, intentions, and beliefs the time they need to take root.  One beautiful blessed moment at a time.  And it might not always feel that way.  At least for me it doesn't.  And when those moments hit I remind myself that there's beauty here if I can stay open to it revealing itself to me in the time it's meant to.  I dig, I heal, I bring awareness, and sometimes I wallow because that's exactly where I need to be to change my perspective.  To take off the blindfold.  To relax my eyes and allow it time to appear to me.  And I don't do it perfectly.  This is my path.  This is my unique point of experience.  This is how I use my unique creative talents and abilities to be of service to myself and others.  Herein is where the treasure lies in us all.

Love and Light,
Tia

And later that day...

I've been walking through the wreckage of the freight train fairly well I think.  It hasn't been easy but I am healing, processing, growing forward, forgiving, and letting go to the best of my ability.  I got a little push from someone involved earlier this week and it was exactly what I needed, it landed me just outside the storm, just enough to gain some clarity.  Just enough to be able to let go a little more.  This is what I have been pained by, consumed with?

You just don't know when you are going to be faced with something.  I was at the Circle K near my house, lost in the fabulousness of myself and my birthday.  Walking forward, feeling joy and peace.  As I walked out the door of the store it seemed to happened in slow motion, pulling into the Circle K, faced with the wreckage.  Faced with the ashes.  Faced with the pain of a shot gun blast to the chest, that's what it felt like.  Like I couldn't breathe as I sat there in my truck shaking.  I didn't see that coming.  I didn't expect it in the security of my bubble, my neighborhood, my safe space but there it was.  There were a thousand different choices I could have made in that moment, and all of them were not nice.  All I could do was sit there and feel the ground under my feet, know it was there, even if I couldn't feel it.  I started to reach for the phone, for someone that could talk me through it, but I knew I had to just sit and be with myself in that moment.  I pulled out after I gained composure, the energy and sight of it telling me that I had been seen.

I journeyed on my way to Walmart doing my best to process it all.  Really?  On my birthday?  Down the street from my house?  Did you have to do that?  Yet, I also was painfully aware that the timing and circumstances of it were not at all a coincidence.  I don't believe in coincidences.  There was a purpose for all of it and I had to see it at that time, on this day.  Not that it made the pain go away.  The wound is still pretty fresh but maybe not as hot to the touch.  So the choices boiled down to: wallow in it or rise above it?  Which will it be Tia?  Obviously I decided that I was not going to allow anyone to rain on my parade today, no matter how much it hurt.  I choose to rise above it.  It sneaks into my thoughts and I send it light, love, healing, forgiveness, and I let it go.

Part of the pain lies in my perception that I have "lost" something.  If it were truly mine to have, it couldn't be lost.  Everything is working out for my Highest Good.  True, it doesn't always feel that way and letting go of this whole thing has been a process for sure.  There's no skipping the process here.  There's no skipping from gaping open wound vibrating waves of pain to getting the stitches taken out and being healed.  It does not work that way for me.  I haven't "lost" anything.  There is purpose in this event and in the pain of it.  People flow in and out of our lives, it just is.  That's not a very warm and fuzzy thought but, our attachment to people, places, things, stories, what's "mine," that is where the suffering lies.  And the event itself is merely the reflective surface of my life showing me the spaces within me that will benefit from healing.  Easier said than done, I know.  It's in the setting of that intention, repeating it over and over, healing our "stuff," finding bits of peace, and in letting go that brings us to the fulfillment of that intention.  You do the work and one day you make a choice and realize that you are now living that intention.  I look forward to that day.

For this moment I am doing the best I can, allowing myself to feel the emotion of it, releasing and letting it go, all while basking in the glory of my fabulousness and my special day and of all the plans I have for this year.  This was no accident, I gave the freight train directions, told it where I would be and when.  I am accountable for my co-creations, even when I don't understand the levels from within which they are created.  As I said earlier today, I get to tell the story however I choose, and I choose to tell a story of healing, growth and transformation.  A story of finding the way to take steps to co-create all that I have dreamed about doing.  The story of taking flight and soaring far past the stars.  The story of sharing my gifts with the world and living my purpose.  The story of being connected to my center regardless of any storm that may be brewing either within my midst or directly above me.

I am more than a survivor, I am a thrivor.  And I choose to rise above it.

With love and light,
Tia

On Turning 40

Recent events have left me feeling a bit disconnected from my purpose, from my Soul.  I know that I can never truly be disconnected from my Soul, but I can cause myself to feel that way.  And my purpose?  Well, it's intimately woven into the fabric of my Soul so I'm not sure if I can disconnect from it but I can avoid it.  That's not my intention, but sometimes our intentions do not match our actions.

I have been excited about turning 40 this year.  The symbolism of my 40th birthday was lost on me until today, resurrection, rising up out of circumstances, allowing the parts of you that no longer serve you die, exactly where I am at.  Some people thought I was being sarcastic, "Are you really excited or..."  Yes!  I really am!  I have been through my fair share of shit, deep puddles of it that I sometimes threw myself into.  We all have, I don't think anyone makes it through life unscathed.  I have healed so much over the past almost 4 years, and I have pulled out treasures I never dreamed existed.  And I wouldn't have found that treasure had I walked a different path.  I have no regrets about the past 40 years, although I am deeply apologetic for any pain or harm I have caused other people.  Each step, whether in pain, joy, love, loss, or self-torture was necessary for my arrival at this place that I love and am excited about growing into.  Each step has prepared me for my purpose, each step has helped to cultivate aspects within me that will be necessary to grow forward, and I choose to be grateful for each step.  While I don't necessarily feel the full gratitude for everything yet, for each step, I am open to growing into it.

I choose to see how fortunate I am to have gotten clean and sober and to be spending my 40th birthday in sobriety.  I've had friends go back out there and it can be painful to watch.  Yet in that I choose to send them love and to be inspired to continue on my healing path.  I am fortunate that, for me, it was never just about being clean and sober, it was about internal healing. I've seen people who just stay clean and sober, some don't heal, some heal a little and stop and, while they don't pick up, they don't grow forward either.  This is not a judgement, everyone has their own path.  It's about recognizing how truly blessed I am to have made the choice to heal.

My Mom called to wish me a Happy Birthday today and we had a good talk.  Sometimes I can't help but go in to "coaching" and "guiding" mode.  It is so much a part of who I am to help guide and heal, that it just comes out, and this conversation was no different.  I didn't realize how much I needed to it, to be in touch with that part of myself again that I have felt disconnected from.  To feel that passionate energy rise within me, to hear it in my voice.  I've missed that so much.  I hung up, saying to myself I have SO much to share, SO much to say, SO much to offer the world.

That's part of the reason why I am so excited about this next half (or so) of my life.  I have healed SO much of my "story" and I continue to do so as there are still layers I am touching on that I didn't know existed.  As I've said, I have pulled up SO much treasure that's been sitting there collecting dirt and grime throughout the past 40 years, waiting for me to discover and shine healing light on it.  I am coming to this next phase of my life with so much treasure to share, and still so much left to be discovered.  I have gained so much insight and wisdom and I get to take that and live, truly immersed, in the next phase of my life with it.  But I don't wish to keep it all for myself, I wish to share it with the world.  I choose to leave the most beautiful, bright, inspired, healing imprint on the Souls of this world and the only way for me to do that is to share my treasures, even as I am in the process of unearthing them.  Even when they don't look like treasure as they are raw and covered in mud and muck.

I choose to continue to shine that healing light upon myself, and on the world.  When I was talking to my Mom today I told her that I had been watching "Ghost Whisperer" episodes and that I had seen an episode in which there was a memorial and people were saying things about the woman who had passed.  I told her how I was thinking, "what do I want people to say about me" when I pass?  "Tia had so much potential but she never did anything with it."  No!  That is NOT what I want to be said.  If I continue to stay in a place of disconnection, fear, and avoiding my purpose, that is what will be said.  Instead I'd like it to be, "She weathered her storms and pulled through.  She walked through the seemingly destructive fires and turned them in to flames of transformation, healing, and growth.  She was a beautiful bright healing light on this world.  She shared her process of uncovering treasure, she helped people uncover and re-discover who they really are.  She spread her wings and she soared past the stars."  I could go on and on because this vision that I have encompasses so many things, so many dreams, so much I choose to share, and I plan on doing them all.

Yes, there is some fear in doing all of that, in putting myself out there, in trusting in my purpose.  There are energy patterns to uproot, process, and heal along the way.  There is much work to be done.  As I wrote in my journal this morning I felt the infinite energy of possibilities.  I wrote, "Let's just go for it!  I don't have anything to lose."  I choose to feel the fear and DO IT ANYWAY!  I choose to blaze my own trail and shine the healing light of it on the world.

So, as I turn 40 today I am inspired.  I am excited.  I am immersed in the field of magic and possibilities.  "Some day" will not ever come.  The only time we have is now.  I choose to use my unique creative talents and abilities to be of service to myself and others and shine my light into the world.  My Soul pulls at me to do so, communicates with me in the most amazing ways.  This is why I am here.  I may not understand some of the sacrifices and choices made along the way but they do help me to understand just how important my purpose is to my Soul, to me, to others.

Remember, you can tell the story of your life, this moment, your future moments, in whatever way you choose.  Not coincidentally, I've had two conversations with people about that, just today.  If you could tell the story of the rest of your life any way you wanted, if you could strip away all the limits just for a moment, what is the story you would tell?  I have the whole rest of my life to do it any way I want, so do they, so do we all, regardless of what age we are.  What is your Soul pulling at you to do? Have you spent most of your life taking responsibility for others?  Have you spent the majority of your life mothering children?  Have you been lost in the dark thick forest of self-destruction, bringing yourself to healing and transformation?  Where are YOU in your life?  What have you done that YOU wanted to do, that makes YOUR spirit sing, that fills YOU with a sense of passion, purpose and fulfillment?  You do not have to wait for a big birthday to start including yourself in your life.  You do not have to wait until "some day," when the kids are grown, when the bills are paid....the list goes on and on.  The only thing that limits me is the limiting beliefs I have about myself, life, my experiences.  BELIEVE IN POSSIBILITIES.  YOU have purpose, and YOU deserve to live life to the fullest.  I have this conversation with people and they say, "but I can't do that because..."  The truth is you can't do that because you believe in that limit.  And that's all.

I choose to make the best use of whatever time I have left.  I have gifts to offer.  I am blessed with the ability to help people heal in so many ways and it brings me the most amazing sense of fulfillment and purpose.  I choose that.  Why would I tell the Universe any other story other than one of success?  Yes, it takes effort to do that.  You do have to go through the process, as much as I sometimes try to skip it.  But if you hold that vision in your mind, in your energy field, if you bring awareness and the light of healing to the energy patterns that are blocking you by looking at the reflective surface of your life, if you process, heal and let go, if you keep growing forward as best you can in each moment...ANYTHING is possible.  Believe in magic.  Believe in possibilities.  Believe that YOU own the co-creative power to bring it all to you.  Why would you want to tell it any other way?

With love and light,
Tia

 

Inside the Storm: Part 2

To read "Inside the Storm: Part 1" go here.

Written February 28th, 2013

There was a time in my life when I gave up.  On EVERYTHING.  Not the grace of surrender type of giving up, but the hands thrown  in the air in defeat, the "I can't do this anymore so I'm not even going to try," type giving up.  Due to my thoughts and beliefs, as well as my actions, my life was spiraling downward at a very rapid rate.  I was going down in flames.  My solution at the time was to take a high dive, head first, into the numbness of drugs and alcohol.

I fell in love with my drug of choice, finding solace in it's euphoria.  And when the drugs wore off and the pain came back, even stronger, I was too far in denial to realize that it wasn't helping at all.  It kept coming back, stronger and stronger, and I kept chasing it, delving deeper into the reprieve of my self-constructed cloak of denial.  I kept giving up more trading it for another fix of numbness, but it kept coming back, the pain, stalking me in every moment of my life.

It becomes an endless cycle, one it's easy to get lost in.  I wrote journal entry after journal entry filled with pain, misery, hopelessness.  I wanted my life to be better but I didn't believe it was possible for it to be better for me.  I felt stuck in the thick thorny bushes of defeat.  I didn't wave a white flag, I didn't send out an SOS, I just laid down in a hole, slowly killing myself and praying for the earth to open up and swallow me whole.

It's been 3 years 9 months and some days since I was that girl.  And while at times it feels like a lifetime ago, I keep part of it in the fore front of my mind so that I remember what it was like to feel that way.  I choose to keep the story around and use it as a tool to help others, for I am not my story.  I am not some tragic sad tale.  I am a hero on an adventurous journey back to wholeness.  I am a success story.  Yet still, I am not the story.

I shared that recently an event has taken place in my life, co-created by yours truly (as hard as that is to realize), that has shaken me to my core.  To say it has been rough would be an understatement.  But today is a good day as I choose to see the joy in my life and left myself open to it.  On my lunch break at work today I checked my e-mail.  Somehow I am subscribed to this newsletter (I don't know how I became subscribed) that has inspired me on more than one occasion.  Today was no different.  It spoke of finding yourself going through something challenging and of not giving up.  I love how the Universe, my Soul, and my Creator communicate with me.  There was a link to a YouTube video from the movie "Facing the Giants," which I haven't seen.  While I do not subscribe to the belief system that it is about, I know to take what resonates with me and leave the rest.  I clicked on the link and watched the clip and chills circulated throughout my body and tears came to my eyes.  It touched the very Soul of me.  And I needed it.

It was about giving it your best and not giving up, even when it hurts, even when it burns, to find that place inside of you and to keep moving forward.  Over the past week there have been moments when I didn't know if I could do it, it hurt too much.  I felt defeated.  Not the type of defeated I felt in the past when I dove into drugs, but a sense of defeat in which I didn't know if I could take another step.  I literally found myself on the floor, and, of course, while I was down there, I said numerous desperate prayers of surrender. And, as much as it hurt, I kept pulling myself up and telling myself, "I can do this.  I can do this."  It felt like everything hurt, each breath I took, each movement I made as I sat back down and got back up.  But I continued to get up, "I can do this."  I pulled myself up, wiped my tears to do my make-up, and went to work, which met me with more tears.  I was given the option to go home early if I couldn't deal with work.  This is a side of me that people haven't seen because I haven't had to walk through anything to this extent in sobriety.  I almost did take that offer to go home.  Instead I stayed.  And as I stayed I became determined to make it through the work night and be okay, and I did, and I was.

You see, the pattern has been to retreat and hide when things are really painful.  And I don't mean regular every day pain, I mean deep hurtful pain.  You know the kind, when it hurts to breathe.  In the past, in my active addiction, when met with such pain I actually left work and went home to hide and dive into the numbness of drugs.  This time my Soul sent me a moment as a reminder and gave me an out when I was told I could go home.  It was a reminder of Who I Really Was but the choice in who to be in that moment was mine.  I'm fortunate that today, drugs don't cross my mind, but hiding does. I made one small different choice and shifted the energy of things.

Does that mean that I woke up the next day to sunshine and butterflies?  No.  Granted, I did feel better but found myself stuck in misery the following day.  I tried to choose joy but chose miserableness instead.  The "I don't f-ing care about anything right now" kind of misery.  I sat myself down in a puddle of slop and smeared it all over myself.  The hose was right there.  I could have gotten up at any moment and rinsed myself off but I chose to sit there, rubbing it all over myself.

Now, why, when I have all of these tools, would I choose that?  What is in a person comes up and out of a person and sometimes that is the best feeling place one has access to.  And I was getting it out because I was talking about it and vacillating between misery, doubt and moments of clarity.  I was one big, contradiction, knowing how to process it yet doubting it at the same time.  I very strange and interesting place to be.

Last night, as I was pondering it all, I reminded myself that I have to be the one to heal this.  Me, my Soul, my Creator, and the Universe - my Dream Team of sorts, because there isn't one person or thing outside of myself that can do it for me.  As I keep saying, "the only way out, is through the door marked 'in.'"  Every organ system in my body is in need of healing right now from this shock to my life and my system.  External signs are reflected from the INSIDE.  It's an inside job all the way around.  Even this video outside of myself that I was inspired by was brought to me by INNER forces.

Am I going to give up?  ABSOLUTELY NOT.  It's not an option.  Yes it hurts.  Yes it burns.  Yes, at moments I am unsure of a lot of things and the sure again in the next moment.  But, like I said, I've given up before, and while I am grateful that it brought me to this place, giving up is not an option anymore.  I get to define this event and this moment for myself.  My thoughts and fears and beliefs co-created this and my thoughts and faith, as well as changing my beliefs, can co-create something different.  I can choose to take the blindfold off and see things clearly and by being OPEN to the I can use this as an opportunity for growth and to be of service to myself and others.  I can choose to heal.  And I can choose to put one foot in front of the other, even when my legs are weary.

Will I remember all of this in each and every moment, especially when a giant wave of pain comes crashing down on e?  I hope that I do.  But even if I don't, that's okay.  You see, the storm always clears.  Clarity always comes.  The sun always comes out, eventually.  Because I choose for it to.  Even when I can't make sense of any of it and I doubt all of it, somehow I manage to cling to the fact that everything always works out for my Highest Good, whether I can see that from this vantage point or not.  When I stop seeking the answers, when I flow with the process, when I take the blindfold off and let my eyes remain open to a bigger visual field, internally and externally, the answers come.  In their own time, in their own way.  One baby step at a time.

It's not like me to let people know I am sharing from such a vulnerable place but in my mission to be of service to myself and others, I know there is treasure in here.  May the light that I shine on my own internal world help you bring the light of healing to yours.

With love and light,
Tia

Inside the Storm: Part 1"

This was written on February 26th, 2013

I don't have "it" all figured out.  Not by any stretch of anyone's imagination.  I won't ever have "it" all figured out, and I am okay with that.  Having said that, there are certain truths that I have come to base my life on over the last 3 years 9 months and a few days, but whose counting?  I am currently trekking through something that has pain swirling around within me, sometimes crashing in waves down upon me, ad honestly, it hurts.

Right now I am raw, one big gaping open wound.  This situation, that I have co-created on some level, in my life has shaken me to my core and shattered all that I believe into millions of tiny little pieces.  I sit among them, I sift through them, some of them still too hot to touch, and I burn myself.  While this situation was not my foundation, it had been built with these truths that I have come to believe, that I have come to rebuild my life upon in sobriety.

Over the past few years I have torn my foundation down to its roots so that I could rebuild it.  I've uprooted myself as life has shown me the cracks in my foundation, places where I was growing in soil that wasn't mine to grow in.  I have been rebuilding, especially over the past 4 months, sure to plant my roots from within my center, for that is where my strength lies.

But this even has shaken me to my core and caused me to wonder and doubt my building blocks.  I believe everything has a purpose, so I seek out the purpose because, if I can't find it, then everything I believe in is wrong.  As I write this I realize that within this statement lies part of the problem.  "I seek out the purpose."  I've written so much about shifting one's perspective, and, it was a recent surrender of my perspective on everything in my life, and an openness to seeing things from a different perspective, that brought me to this place.  Part of it anyway.  How much of my life have I spent "seeking?"  Not always, granted, I am often open to seeing the gifts, blessings, and opportunities in a situation, and in just being open to them, they come.  But here I am "seeking" purpose, instead of being open to it and letting it show itself.

"Seeking."  It's interesting because I had a reading a week and a half ago and seeking was something we briefly talked about.  I didn't really have any questions but I did want to talk about my gifts.  The first thing she said was that she saw a beautiful white light hovering above me, waiting for me to invite it in.  Later we spoke about my smoking cigarettes and I told her that I have searched and I had dug deep to try and figure out what I am looking for in my smoking habit.  I told her that I know I am searching for and seeking something, I just don't know what it is.  She said it's the white light, that's what I'm searching for.  She said that the white light isn't about "seeking," it's about inviting it in and letting it flow through me.  I didn't get the connection until I started writing this.

So much of my life was spent looking outside of myself for something.  To quote Mastin Kipp over at The Daily Love, "Addiction is searching for the Divine in all the wrong places."  That was my life.  Searching for something to make it better, to stuff it, cover it up, numb it out, make it go away.  I have learned that I am not out there, I am in here <3.  That's one of my statements and I painted a beautiful girl on a t-shirt and put that phrase on there.  I know I am in here <3 and that the only way out is through the door marked "in."  Yet there is part of me, even in all the peace I have found over the last few years, that is still seeking something in the outside world, something I know doesn't exist because it's IN me.

The past week has been nothing short of an emotional storm, and yesterday was the worst of it, causing me to doubt everything, including what is real and what is not real.  It has also caused me to pull out every healthy tool that I have, every healthy tool that I advise people to use, everything I use to coach and help people with.  Is it helping?  Yes, it actually is.  Doe that mean the pain is less?  No.  Yesterday the waves kept crashing and it literally brought me to my knees and none of all that I thought I knew was helping.  Yet, I have seen an old belief pattern surface in the need to torture myself with thoughts that only perpetuate the pain.

You Can Heal Your Life, by Louise Hay, has been a blessing over the past couple of months as I have used the affirmations and she has helped me to figure out how to word a new one, "I am willing to release the need to torture myself."  That is the affirmation of the moment.  Reminding myself, as self-love has been a prevalent word in my mind as 2012 ended and 2013 began, that I love myself, has also been helpful.

Pain comes up because of how we perceive a situation and what we believe about it.  I remember wen I read Eckart Tolle's words about how emotions are IN you, they are NOT you.  It was such a profound concept to me at the time because, before that, I operated from the belief, "my emotions are me."  I so closely identified with the emotions that they were who I was, and I was them.  When I read his words something sparked in me and I knew they were truth.  But I'll be honest, the other day I told someone that while I share that thought about how pain is IN me, it is NOT me, it wasn't helping me.  Yet, I realize now that sometimes it seems to not be helping because, while I am saying that statement, I am also identifying with the pain as me to such an extent that I have trouble separating where the pain ends and where I begin.  It's all in me, my thoughts and beliefs about things, even the tools I use and suggest.

I am walking my talk, sorting it all out, stumbling, forgetting, remembering and sometimes being a bit hysterical as I allow pain to take me over to such an extent that I can't see straight.  And I suppose, what better way to know if and how these tools I use work then to exercise them during an event that has me in pieces.  Although, honestly, that thought is not always comforting.

I continue to walk forward, and in some moments I only intend it as I stand still in the storm of it all.  And while I've been writing this, something occurs to me.  To leave all that we know, to step into who we are becoming, perhaps sometimes it all has to be torn down.  During that reading she confirmed something I had been feeling, I am on the cusp of it all, stepping into my gifts, having my dreams.  She told me, when I said I just want it all to happen right now, that it IS happening, and I feel the truth of that.  But that was before this even took place.  And I have been in the in-between place of not quite who I was and not quite who I am for some time now.  Perhaps the only way for me to truly step into the beauty I am becoming is to have everything I think to be true, shattered into pieces so that I can sift through it all and choose.  I'm not sure.

All I know for certain is that I will be okay.  I will rebuild.  And I might have another stormy day in which nothing is real, including me and the ground beneath my feet.  And maybe part of it is what I have only half-heartedly believed, only because it hasn't taken the full trip from my head to my heart yet, which is that only love is real.  Everything else is an illusion.  Everything else changes.  Only love, the true form of the Soul and the Creator that is all things, the spiritual eternal concept of love, is real.  Perhaps the thought came up in hysteria so that I could ponder it in clarity, or semi-clarity at least.

I don't do it perfectly.  I believe all that I teach and I am still deciding if I believe it all as I sort through everything, and I walk it to the best of my ability.  That's an important statement, "to the best of my ability."  As Don Miguel Ruiz talks about in The Four Agreements, your best is going to be different from moment to moment.  I walk it the best I know how, in each moment.  The principles I have been living and growing by and transforming into are easy to practice when things are flowing smoothly.  It's only when I take myself out of alignment with all of that, tat they really get put to the test.  When it is the absolute darkest for me, do I use these tools?  I do.  The best I know how.  And I'll shine the light on the reflective surface of my life as best I can right now and I'll do my best to remember that, if I shine the light and open myself up and if I don't "seek," what I need to see will reveal itself.

This is me right now.  Real.  Raw.  Wounded.  Still intent on healing.  Hurt.  Pained.  Unsure.  Yet I know the Power that created me is with me and when that belief truly takes root and makes the trip from my head to my heart, then I will no longer be afraid.  I think the jist of that comes from A Course in Miracles.

One present clean and sober moment at a time.

With love and light,
Tia

The Courage to be Vulnerable...

It's not that I don't share from a vulnerable place, because I do.  That's where I dig up the treasures that I share with others.  It is in walking my path, feeling my pain, looking at the reflective surface of my life and digging deep into myself that I am able to share the wisdom and insight that I do.  But this place I am in right now is perhaps one of the most painful I have experienced in many years.  I have written blog posts from inside this storm in my journal, too afraid to share from the rawness of where I was when I wrote them.

There are blogs I read that inspire me, that have given me, bit by bit, courage to finally share my vulnerability.  I admit it, I am afraid.  But lately, one person in particular has inspired courage in me and her name is Effy Wild.  I am not going to share her story because it is not mine to share, but I will say that her courage in sharing her vulnerability and rawness, her being so open with where she is at, has inspired me to find the courage to do the same.  For that I am grateful.

Stephanie Gagos at http://findingyourvoiceoftruth.com/ and Mastin Kipp at The Daily Love have also inspired me over the past month or so as they've shared the importance of being in the line of work of coaching and helping people heal, and sharing your vulnerability.  I get that.  To help people heal I have to let people know that I have walked through my own pain and my own challenges.  It has not ever been my intention to give the impression that it is without effort that I navigate life the way that I do.  It does take effort.  It is a process.  Sometimes I forget that.  When it is big, I sometimes forget that I cannot skip from getting a cut to getting the stitches out and moving on.  I have to go through the process.

It is with the intent to help others heal that I share.  It is with the intent to be raw and real and as transparent as I can be in this present moment that I share.  And most importantly, it is the intent to heal my own wounds and transform, and use those to be of service to myself and others that I offer up what I do.  It is with these intentions that I will share some of my thoughts from Inside the Storm.  It's been almost 5 weeks and the storm has somewhat subsided, but waves still crash down on occasion and I do my best to feel it and go in to the center of it to see what is in me that will benefit from healing.  And while, as I said, it is not without effort, the effort will be worth it when I emerge healed and transformed into a more beautiful, truer version of myself.

With light and love,
Tia