Perhaps the biggest triumph will be when you can say, “I never left myself.”

You are the metronome; you set the pace of your own life.

As I lay on the floor after dance class, I listened to my breathing. I’m used to my own rhythm, for the most part. It’s familiar and I like it.

And then I heard, a bit farther away, someone else’s breath. It was in a completely different tempo than my own, and I was struck by that. The right pace for that person sounds like that…and it’s not in the same pattern at all as my own.

Huh. And who sets that pace? Oh yeah. We do.

Are you enjoying your tempo today?

 

Wherever you find your humility, that’s where you’ll find your leadership.

I have a big workshop coming up tonight; my Constellations evening demo is scheduled to have a larger-than-usual crowd.

So this morning as I checked in with myself, I noticed a part that could get pretty nervous, and a part that wants to be excited and get all jazzed up. And I’m so glad I took the time to check in, because neither will serve me as a workshop leader tonight.

Everything I facilitate is done as a service to those attending. If I ever forget that, It’s likely that I’ll become attached to the outcome, then disappointed, or I’ll be more easily triggered and more likely to have a part of me running the show, rather than my full self.

The second I forget that this work I do is *for* the people I serve, and for Spirit…that’s the second I have a problem and I’m likely to forget so many things. Where I get my power, insight, clarity, and love from, for starters. Cause what Constellations and all the other healing practices need is a whole lotta that–more than I can give on my own.

As I lay on the floor and connected with Spirit and my ancestors and guides, asking for their help and support, that’s when today’s TOTD came to me. I am a leader because that’s my calling, and my calling is straight up a part of the Divine. Not of my flesh and bone and personal energy, but through me. And thank god for that!

You will always find what you are looking for.

 
So the real question is, what are you finding? Whatever it is–in daily life, in the moment, in your relationships, in work, in the world, in other people–that’s what you were *looking* for.

Ooh, ouch, my brain!

It hurts less if you breathe into this one, and exhale. Let your eyes unfocus a little, like viewing one of those Magic Eye posters.

Ah, (sigh), yes. I am, right now, finding what I’m looking for.

Hope serves better as a breeze than as a building.

I was having a hard time during my dance today. When I checked in with myself, I realized part of me was feeling hurt because I’d gotten my hopes up about a relationship I’m currently repairing, and things weren’t meeting my expectations.

I wondered to myself, what’s the point of hope, if everyone is always being cautioned to not get their hopes up. Disappointment and unmet expectations are something I’ve always struggled with. Over the years of my life, I’ve tried to have no expectations, in order to avoid the fall from a hurtfully high place.

But then I find that life is lacking in some joy and pleasure if I don’t allow myself some optimism. And what about when I’m really feeling down? Isn’t hope then one of the emotional saviors? Don’t we have to have hope in order to keep on trying?

It’s a dilemma for me.

When I sat with this confusion and hurt feeling, today’s TOTD is what came to me. Hope serves me well when I treat it for what it is — a light, ethereal feeling, like a rainbow or a brush of wind. There, and yet not exactly solid.

I get disappointed when I start acting as if hope is a big concrete, solid structure, and I start loading in my furniture, only to discover the building vanishes beneath my feet.

Hope isn’t a promise. It’s a reminder of possibility, a whisper of encouragement rather than a guarantee. When I can take that whisper, and then center myself to the present moment and point myself in the right direction, then I can focus on the next step.
This is allowing hope to serve me well, and honoring its purpose in return.
I will try to remember…and now here’s this post if I forget.

All love stories end. And they also never end.

I was lying on the floor, listening to Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes,” and thinking about love. How eventually every love story must come to an end, whether it’s through a break-up, a divorce, or a death. I was thinking of this in less of a depressing way and more of a Buddhist way–the finite quality of life experiences, even in something as grand as love.

And then I realized that while a relationship may no longer be active in physical space or time, or even in memory, love itself never ends. The stories of love are tales of pursuit of the ultimate beloved that resides within. When Peter sings, “I am complete/ (In your eyes) / I see the doorway / to a thousand churches,” I hear that as a song about me, for me.

When I look in my own eyes and see the light and heat and all those church doorways, I am, indeed, complete. This love story never ends.

You have to make space for what is in order to have room for what comes next.

I’m looking at a desk full of papers and other crap right now. I’d love to get out my next, very overdue, newsletter right now, but I have receipts to enter and emails to answer and papers to sort through.

I also just remade my website header. It may still be up as you’re reading this, or I may have decided to take it down to keep working on it. If you’ve been tracking me on Facebook at all, you’ve seen that I’m really lit up by this “Good Girls” issue. I’m feeling so passionate about it, and there’s so much to say. But you know what’s been stalling me?
My stupid website header. It was still reflecting my previous focus, and it didn’t support Good Girl Healing as much as I wanted it to.

I had to fix that, as much as I can, even temporarily, before I can move ahead with writing and speaking and generally getting the word out. I had to deal with what is before I can even move an inch on what comes next.

Your feelings may be beyond words; this doesn’t mean they aren’t true.

I looked up into the bright gray clouds (I live in Seattle, land of perpetual gray) and saw the beginning of sunshine wanting to push through. The feeling in my heart at seeing this was beyond words.

This made me think about all the people out there struggling to define themselves, their lives, and get in touch with their emotions. And while, yeah, that’s also the work I help people do, I also see that sometimes what you feel has no connection to words. They are inadequate and unfindable. And yet, this does not and should not invalidate how you feel.

When I find myself in a state like this, struggling to define and fully encapsulate my feelings, yet failing to do so, I try instead to tie the feeling to a place or a sensation in my body. I tell my brain and my body, “yes. Feel this. This IS.”
Often, affirming the feeling to myself is all I need to take it in and remember it later.

Whether or not you believe in love, Love believes in you.

I have watched some friends go through breakups recently, and as they’ve had their hearts broken, a couple of them have maligned the concept of love.

“I just don’t believe in love anymore,” I heard someone say after such an emotional kicking. As I struggled with my own heartbreak recently, I wondered to myself whether I would start saying something similar. I wondered if a part of me would start to feel sourly toward “love.”

Today’s TOTD is what I heard/felt back from Spirit. And the truth is that regardless of any friendship or relationship, the love in my life cannot be extinguished by anyone but me. Love exists, much bigger than you or me or even all of humanity. It just IS.

I don’t know about you, but I’m glad to know that love doesn’t stop existing just because my sweet little human mind has doubts at times.