Which is supposedly, the very best place to start. I have wanted to share my story in the hope that something I offer would be helpful to someone else – but I also didn’t want to have to lay my soul bare and feel exposed. I was really uncomfortable about this idea of having to share everything. But I couldn’t quite keep my desire to help others sleeping, so I’ve decided to start sharing, bit by bit. Hopefully this will still be helpful and not too opaque and disconnected. It can be hard to understand a message if you’re missing pieces of the story… but suffice it to say that my upbringing was hard, in some ways, tragic. Ultimately there were bright spots and big breaks and good luck. Looking back over the journey, from a place of want and need to a place of love and contentment I realized that there was a clear process and path that worked for me. I don’t know if this process will resonate with others but I am offering it for your consideration. “Take what works, leave the rest!” as the saying goes but know that all is shared with love. Simply put, my path used these four main steps: listen, love, learn and lead.
“Stay close to anything that makes you glad to be alive” – Hafiz. The start of my process was learning to listen to myself. Listening to what I said to myself (was it kind or unkind?), listening to how I felt (was I happy, uneasy, sad, content), listening to what mattered to me (what did I want to do, how did I want to live, what things were very important to me) and listening to what I believed about myself and life (was it true, were those my beliefs or someone else’s?).
Next was learning to love myself. I was familiar with the biblical definition of love as being patient and kind – but I rarely was that with myself. My eating disorder became a clear indicator of my self-loathing and my attempt to remove myself from being. I knew it wasn’t healthy but until I could begin to love myself I could not change that behavior. I found that as I loved myself more, I was able to love others more and my relationships improved. As I loved myself more I could accept my faults and by accepting my faults, I had the courage to work on them. As I loved myself more I began to give myself permission to invest in myself and do things that made me happy (like learning to play the guitar or travel). I understood that there was only one me and that not only could I bring my full expression of myself to the world, the world wanted me to do so. This gave me confidence and courage to grow. I began to self-actualize. Loreal’s tag line of “you’re worth it” may have encouraged millions to buy makeup but for once I finally felt that I was worth it enough to do the work necessary to make my life better.
“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it’s the quiet voice at the end of the day whispering ‘I will try again tomorrow‘” – Mary Anne Radmacher. Once I was feeling confident and lovable, the next phase for me was challenging myself to learn new techniques, patterns, and ways of being. Finding and practicing new ways to interact with others (my spouse, my kids, my co-workers) was a focus. Recognizing my own emotions, owning them and knowing how to address them was a challenge. Having the courage to look into the behaviors and habits that weren’t helpful and finding better ways of coping was difficult. I think it can be hard to face your own shit (failures and bad habits) and then still feel energized to create new ways of being. This is when being able to listen to what I needed and loving myself enough to give that to myself helped me to keep going and break through to a better me. There were times I was so distressed by my seeming inability to break a bad habit or change destructive behavior that I was truly disheartened. I had feelings of being too broken to fix. Without the solid foundation of listening to myself and loving myself, I think I would have shrunk from the challenge or given up. It just would have been too painful to stare into the glaring light of my inadequacies and own them enough to change them without the kindness of self-love.
“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted” – Aesop. Somehow for me, the final step of sharing and connecting to others came naturally. I do believe that when you have your own needs met (as in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) you have an abundance from which you can freely give. I use the word “lead” for this because I view this part of my life in two ways: I am leading with my heart, because I am able to do so now. And sometimes, when I was feeling lost and overwhelmed, I needed someone to lead the way for me, either by example or advice or encouragement. Now I believe that there will be times when I can lead the way for others even if it is only in the smallest of ways. In my book, any gesture of kindness and love counts here: a smile, a gentle word, grace and forgiveness when someone else is in the wrong. But this could also be more visible and “bigger” ways: helping a struggling sibling, volunteering with the homeless, donating to a worthy cause, being on the board of a charity or simply providing encouragement to others who are on their own journey.
For now, this site is arranged into the four different areas of my journey: LISTEN, LOVE, LEARN, LEAD. I’ll be posting more in those areas… things I learned about, people who supported me, experiences or resources that helped me move forward on my healing journey. Namaste my friends…
The habits listed here are a way to start as you grow and challenge yourself. For me the learning phase was (and is) a truly a difficult phase of healing. I find myself cycling back to “Listen” and “Love” to bolster my energy so that I can face things that are challenging!
Your Astonishing Light 