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“I love when people that have been through hell walk out of the flames carrying buckets of water for those still consumed by the fire.” ~Stephanie Sparkles
I have a tattoo on my back of Charles Bukowski’s quote “What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.” It spoke to me as I had been walking, often crawling, through a fire for much of my life.
At times, I took different paths, skipping through fields of flowers, but eventually I would find my way back to what I knew, which gave me a strange sense of comfort—the fire whose roots had begun in childhood, with my abusive mother.
I used to be consumed by this fire. I have another tattoo on my foot that reads “Breathe.” For years I lived with a very dysregulated nervous system, constantly alerting me to the threats of the flames forming around me, and breath was something that eluded me.
How could I breathe when at any moment she could walk up the stairs and find something to lash out at me over?
How could I breathe when no one wanted to hear how I felt, and my emotions were something I did not understand, nor know how to handle?
How could I breathe when everything was so frightening?
How could I breathe when no one ever showed me how?
Those entrusted to my care were in their own fires that they had never learned to come out of. So of course, as I grew, I felt unsafe and uneasy. And I learned to ignore my breath, ignore that others were able to feel it move through their body, and learned to see only flames everywhere.
I grew up in a traditional home as a child of immigrants who had come to the USA for work and to give their children a better life. I went to Catholic school, where I threw myself into academics as a way to be seen, and excelled. My parents were excellent cooks and displayed their love for us through the kitchen table. I had all of my physical and academic needs met.
I spent my early childhood playing with my brother, who I latched onto as a support system. My mother’s inability to soothe us as babies and toddlers created very sensitive, shy children, deeply afraid of the world around us and deeply connected to each other.
Unfortunately, my brother and I began to distance during our preteen years. We had created different survival strategies to navigate my parents, and he began to view me as the problem, as my mother was teaching him. I then began to view myself through the same lens.
I was ridiculed, abandoned emotionally, shamed, and made to believe the dysfunction of the family lay entirely on me. There was a period of physical abuse as well, but during these situations, I at least felt seen.
I was gaslit to question everything I believed to be true and found myself in imposed isolation in my childhood and teen years, later self-imposed. The world felt too frightening to face. As I grew older, I rebelled against the isolation by looking to others to help soothe me, especially romantic relationships.
If they didn’t soothe me as I wanted, I grew angry and hurt, isolating myself more and more, or lashing out internally or externally.
I looked to ease the suffering inside with external gratifications, shopping, traveling, and sex. Unfortunately, nothing could soothe the pain I was feeling.
In my early twenties I went to a therapist and could do nothing but cry. After a few months of not being able to communicate, she insisted I take benzodiazepines or we would be unable to continue working together.
My symptoms worsened both emotionally and physically, and I now needed “saving” from both. The helplessness I learned early on continued, as did my need to have others make me feel safe. Both my body and brain became impossible to withstand, and proved to me that I was a victim of life and no one cared about me.
I found relationships to validate this idea, with addicts, narcissists, and codependents who all eventually grew tired of my need to be loved and soothed out of my pain.
I was attracting the familiar in these people, who could not show me the love and safety I needed. In other words, I was attaching myself to others to regulate, but they too were stuck in a cycle of dysregulation.
I found various ways to hurt myself, overspending, starving myself, overexercising, and on more than one occasion taking too many medications to calm myself down, and finding myself in an emergency room. The familiar was living in my nervous system and demanded to be entertained.
After decades of chronic health issues due to emotional and physical trauma, they finally hit a peak when I was forty-seven and no longer able to work, the one area of my life I’d had some control of. I had to learn to breathe or be completely extinguished by the flames. During this time, I began to learn how to put out the fires.
I worked hard on retraining my nervous system out of the fight-or-flight state it had entered when I was not soothed as a baby, and rewiring thoughts and behavior patterns created as an extension of that state. In this process, I found the authentic part of myself, the inner child, which brought a deep peace, the peace of integration.
An integral part of my healing came from practices of forgiveness and compassion. As I rewired old patterns living in my nervous system, I learned about how the brain works, how trauma is stored there, and how our realities are shaped by early experiences.
Each day in my practices I discovered new associations, when new thoughts and behaviors had started, and had to look at these strategies and their results with self-compassion and forgiveness.
At first, this was difficult, as it was new to my brain, but as I practiced it became easier, and I started feeling self-compassion and self-love for the first time.
As I worked with my own toxic personality in these practices, I experienced deep grief for the past and what I was not able to enjoy as a result. Anger was holding on, and I knew it was time to let go. So, I began a practice of curious empathy for the woman who had started my fires, my mother. Awareness of my own dysfunction, self-compassion, and now self-forgiveness allowed me to do the same for others, including her.
In this case, curious empathy meant becoming aware of her patterns and where they came from by connecting to my own experiences and empathy.
I had observed her throughout my life to learn about what I was experiencing and how to navigate her, as well as others in the world. I also read tons of self-help books about personality disorders and toxic people, but cognitive knowledge wasn’t enough to understand my mother.
I watched, listened, and heard stories from my father about my mother’s childhood. I drew upon my own strategies and where they originated. I opened myself up to curiously knowing her, at first from a distance (during this time of healing), and then I incrementally exposed my healing nervous system to her with empathy.
When I felt balanced and regulated enough, I rejoined our relationship, but with strict boundaries—for both of us. And I found a somewhat different human in front of me, one who had softened in her old age but still retained old behaviors when “triggered.”
I began to identify her triggers and remained strong when she reacted. I now knew no other way; my nervous system and heart had been retrained into compassion.
I came to understand that she had created toxic survival strategies because of an inability to communicate and soothe emotions and needs in an effective way. She had been stuck in a fight-or-flight state that prevented her from seeing the world as it was, and seeing the motivations of others clearly.
And I had learned (and now unlearned) similar methods of interacting with the world.
I often pictured her as a child or a teen and connected with this version of her through my own inner child. In the moment, I was able to change the hurt and anger I felt to compassion for the way she was trying to get what she needed. This was followed by an inner forgiveness and releasing of the negative emotions.
I made it clearly known what I would accept, and often joked with her about the way she was acting. She responded with smiling or laughter.
It became clear that she reacted when she felt vulnerable, and I understood that throughout her childhood, vulnerability was not acceptable, and she was shamed in it.
In identifying her methods of showing love, I felt loved and seen, and it was easier to react to her with forgiveness and compassion. It became natural to me to speak as the “parent” (adult) when her old armor of defense came up.
In daily forgiveness and compassion practices, I find enormous love for the woman still stuck in a fight-or-flight state created in her childhood. There are times I pull away to reinforce that her behavior is unacceptable, but these times are not as prevalent as before.
As I changed my behavior toward her, she began to change hers toward me. As I regulated my nervous system into safety, it seemed to soothe hers, and she inched closer to the idea of vulnerability with me. As I let go and replaced the anger with compassion, she felt safe. It is with this safety that she is able to chip away a tiny piece of her armor in our interactions.
I cannot ever change her, and she will pass with the trauma state she is in as her identity. But, for my own well-being, I chose forgiveness and compassion, to bring her a small drop of water each time I see her. Remaining in the fire with her, by being angry, was not an option any longer.
I found my way out of a fire that had nearly taken my life and hope to continue sharing my experience of healing. These days I find myself skipping through fields of flowers on a regular basis, and feel it is a blessing to share it with those who have not yet gotten there—and those who may never.
**I am not suggesting that anyone should keep people in their lives that they feel are “toxic.” We all need to do what we feel is best for us based on our own unique experience.
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About Maria StefanieMaria spent years looking for relief from the suffering she experienced due to the toxic "stories" she received as a child. These stories, and the medications prescribed to ease them, led to dis-ease physically and mentally. Eventually she reconnected with her authentic self and broke through to a lighter side of life. She works each day to be a better version of herself and learn different modalities to help others. You can find more of her story here.Web | More Posts
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Carl von Clausewitz
"The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy."
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“Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.” ~Howard Zinn
Have you ever experienced an unexpected act of kindness that completely changed your day?
I have, and I sincerely hope you have too.
Please pause for a moment and try to remember the last time that happened. How were you feeling before? What happened? And how did the act of kindness impact you?
If I look back on my own life, I can find countless moments where the suddenness, the unexpectedness of an act of kindness, shook me awake.
It might sound strange, but this seems to have been especially so when it came from a stranger.
That’s not to say that the kindness of those close to us isn’t important, because it is. The kindness of our friends, family, and colleagues can keep us going when life throws challenges in our way, and their joy in our happiness makes the good moments radiate even stronger.
But there is something about an act of kindness from an unexpected source that causes its healing ripples to be especially powerful.
And most of the time this isn’t some great or inspiring act but just a very small gesture: a smile, a friendly greeting, a sincere question, a few words from someone who genuinely seems to wish you a good day.
I remember the first time I went backpacking, feeling lost in a city, staring at my map, when a random stranger offered me his help in pointing out the way.
I remember feeling tired and lost in thought after a long drive, stopping for gas and a quick bite, and the man working behind the counter at the restaurant clearing my mind with the pleasure he took in his work, smiling with a disarming friendliness.
I remember sitting in a train in Thailand for fourteen hours, anxiously moving toward my first month-long meditation retreat, and suddenly getting a few genuine words of encouragement and advice from a pair sitting across the aisle.
I remember a woman sitting in her car, rolling down her window to share her joy in seeing my son race down a hill on his bike.
I remember yesterday, when the cook at our canteen advised me on what to choose, doing her best to prepare my dish with full attention and then sincerely wishing me a good day.
In all these situations I was not only left with a feeling of joy, but also a sense of connection.
Kindness can bring a short moment of relaxation in an otherwise busy day, or a complete change from feeling stressed and chagrined to feeling elated, open, and interconnected with the world.
Kindness is just that powerful.
And the beautiful thing is that we all have the chance, every single day, to contribute to this kindness in the world.
So, again, pause for a moment and this time think about the last time when you were the kind stranger. When was that? How did it make you feel?
To start with the second question, my guess would be that it made you feel good. The first question might be more difficult to answer. Looking at myself, although I would love to say “today,” that just isn’t true.
Interesting, isn’t it.
So, kindness is very powerful and important, it helps us and others, it doesn’t cost us anything, yet it still is difficult to give every day.
I can think of many reasons why it is difficult, but to keep it simple I’ll list three:
1. You can only give what you have.
If you want to give somebody money, you must first have money in your bank account. If you want to give kindness, you must first practice being kind to yourself.
That is why, for example, Buddhist meditation on loving-kindness (mettā) begins by giving loving-kindness to yourself, and only then to others.
But don’t worry, you don’t have to spend hours each day meditating; just start with a few minutes every morning (or any other time that fits your schedule) by wishing yourself and those close to you happiness and health. Then try to act on this throughout the day by honoring your needs and prioritizing things that bring you peace and joy.
It’s okay to wish yourself happiness; it’s not selfish. If you are happy you will be able to radiate that happiness outward, making spontaneous acts of kindness easier to do.
As your ability to do so strengthens, you can always add a few minutes to wish the same to people you know but about whom you do not have a specific feeling, or a neutral feeling. If that gets easier and easier you can even start adding people you dislike, strengthening the power of your kindness further and further.
2. You have to see the other person.
If you are anything like me, then you probably live most of your life in a form of zombie state. Moving from place to place, working, talking, acting on what’s happening, checking your smartphone way too often, all without any form of true consciousness or mindfulness.
You can do the following test to check this for yourself.
At the end of the day, look into the mirror and ask yourself how often that day you truly noticed how and what you were doing. That’s all.
Chances are the honest conclusion will be that you just rushed through the day (again).
If you don’t notice how you are during the day, if you are not mindful of your own state of mind, if you do not see yourself, then how can you truly see another person?
It all comes down to how much conscious space we have—how open our mind is toward ourselves and those around us.
Consciousness tends to expand when we harbor wholesome qualities such as patience, energy, calm, and so on, and it tends to narrow when we harbor unwholesome qualities such as anger, desire, envy, and so on.
Fundamentally, these mental qualities depend strongly on mindfulness, on our ability to see our mind for what it is.
If you let a goat loose in a field of grass it will just do whatever it pleases and eat wherever it pleases. If you tie the goat to a pole, the goat will only eat the grass within the circumference of the rope and pole.
Mindfulness is like the rope that binds our mind to ourselves, keeping it within. Keeping the mind within prevents it from creating all kinds of illusions and personal realities that cause the unwholesome aspects of your mind to arise.
Keeping the mind within helps bring calm and contentment.
To strengthen your mindfulness, you do not necessarily have to sit down on a meditation cushion as is often suggested. Mindfulness is something you can practice every day, whatever you are doing.
Just pick a few routines you do every day and cultivate the intention to do them as mindfully as possible. Do only what you are doing, with all your attention, and if you find your mind drifting off bring it back to your task.
The more you practice this, the more it will become an ingrained aspect of your mind, bringing with it the experience of calm and openness—and the better you’ll be able to really see other people and recognize opportunities for kindness,
3. You have to practice regularly and be patient with yourself.
In the end, kindness isn’t different from other skills. Every human possesses the potential to be kind, but you have to practice it in order to bring that potential to fruition.
Research by the University of Wisconsin showed that compassion can be learned. Just like a muscle can be trained by weightlifting, people can build up their compassion.
The most direct route I know of is training through meditation—by practicing loving-kindness meditation and the practice of being mindful, as mentioned about, even if it is only for a few minutes every day.
But don’t go at it with the businessman’s approach most of us grew up with. A businessman’s approach means expecting results relative to the time you invest. Developing the mind, developing kindness, doesn’t work that way.
We all have our own personal qualities and hindrances, and just as with other skills, to some it comes natural, while others need more time and effort.
Don’t worry too much about the results; getting on the path to becoming a kinder person is the most important thing. If you keep practicing patiently you will develop the power of kindness within yourself sooner or later. And it will become second nature to offer those small gestures of support, appreciation, and encouragement that can completely change someone’s day.
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About Wouter Usually Wouter can be found playing with his children, helping patients as a physician, or relaxing with a good book. Luckily for him, enough time remains for the daily practice of meditation and writing for the Buddho Foundation’s Buddhism & Meditation Blog. When it comes to meditation, Wouter emphasizes patience and perseverance, the desire for (quick) results being one of the biggest obstacles on the path to a free and happy life.Web | More Posts
Get in the conversation! Click here to leave a comment on the site.The post The Joy of Unexpected Kindness and 3 Reasons It’s Hard to Be Kind appeared first on Tiny Buddha.
https://tinybuddha.com/blog/the-joy-of-unexpected-kindness-and-3-reasons-its-hard-to-be-kind/
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Benjamin Franklin
"Well done is better than well said."
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Charlotte Bronte
"Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs."
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“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” ~Lao Tzu
While this Lao Tzu quote may sound familiar, I recently learned there is a second portion of that quote that often gets omitted.
“When the student is truly ready…the teacher will disappear.”
The first part of this quote was a healing anchor for me as I went through what I call a thirteen, or a divine storm.
In one year’s time, I went through a devastating divorce, was robbed, got in two car accidents, and lost a dear friend to a heart attack. I felt like I was watching everything in my life burn to ash, including my deepest desire of having a family, and found myself on my knees doing something I had never done before: asking for help.
I realized the way I had been living my life wasn’t working anymore and I needed to learn, so I became the student and opened my palms to the sky asking for guidance.
So many teachers came. I found a therapist who helped me heal from my divorce, I found spiritual guidance after being lost, I met other divorcees, and found meditation, which was a loving balm to my broken heart. I was ready, so the teachers appeared.
Each teacher that came forward instilled in me the importance and effectiveness of the right support, and as I faced all the challenges of building a new life, I continued to seek help. What I learned allowed me to find my life partner, one who desired creating a family as much as I did.
As my life transformed and I opened my heart to love again, I thought the first part of this quote was the full lesson.
Until recently, when I encountered the second part on a quote website.
Staring at the words on my screen, my whole body stopped. Tears fell down my face as I realized all these years I’ve spoken about the teachers that arrived in the face of my divorce, but hadn’t really spoken about the teachers that left.
Specifically, the biggest teacher, my ex. For the purpose of this post, we will call him Jon.
When Jon dropped the bomb on Thanksgiving Day of 2012, and said he didn’t love me anymore, I honestly thought I could stop it. I thought I could save the marriage. But nothing worked. Not couple’s counseling, not locking myself in the bedroom and refusing to eat, or crawling under the hide-a-bed he was sleeping on in the living room, pleading for him to stay.
Jon’s refusal to work on the marriage left me with something I hadn’t spent real time with in my thirty-seven years. His refusal left me with myself.
And the truth was, I had been lying to everyone around me for years. I had been in an on and off again affair and swayed violently between immense shame for my actions and complete confusion as to why I kept going back to a man I didn’t really love.
I didn’t understand what I was doing or why.
I would cover up the shame and confusion with overdrinking, lots of TV, and listening to constant music. I would cry in the shower, so afraid I would be found out. I was convinced my friends and family would all stop loving me.
But something had been alive for a long time. In fact, it was alive when Jon and I were engaged in college.
I was a musical theater major, and in my last year of school, when I was planning my wedding, I threw myself at two men I was in shows with. Nothing happened with the first guy, but with the second, we kissed, and I immediately felt ashamed and appalled. What was I doing?
So I told Jon, and he asked me a powerful question, “Do you want to postpone the wedding?” I told him no. I told him I loved him. I apologized and promised this would never happen again.
So the wedding went forward, except a week before I walked down the aisle, I felt scared again and asked my mom if this was a good idea. She thought it was just nerves and talked me back into getting married.
Our first year of marriage was both exciting and tumultuous. We were both actors, and very passionate, and many times would have escalating fights filling our small Queens apartment with our voices. My parents came to visit, and my mother pulled me aside, concerned about how we were speaking to each other.
I told her this was what actual communication was like, not just staying silent like she did with my father.
So the yelling continued, as did all the excitement of our careers, and we spent a lot of time apart as we worked at different theaters. Even though I thought we were on the same page about having a family eventually, the years went on and on.
Until my thirty-sixth birthday, when I finally got off the pill. I was terrified. I never thought I would wait this long to have a family, and as the months went on and my period continued to come, I heard again and again how scared Jon was too. Nothing I said would make any difference, and the fights were getting uglier and uglier.
I felt so alone.
And a panic was rising in me. A panic that he didn’t want to have a family. That I was married to a man who didn’t want to be a father.
Then he kneeled in front of me a year later and confirmed my panic. Turns out, everything I felt was actually true.
“When the student is truly ready…the teacher disappears.”
Jon was my teacher for nineteen years. I met him when I was eighteen, wide eyed and madly in love. But now it was time. Time for me to learn what it looked and felt like to be with a partner who shared my deepest desire.
Time to learn what a healthy relationship is, and what healthy and loving communication sounds like.
Time to learn how to honor my instincts and process strong emotions, and especially my anger at being in my late thirties with no children.
He didn’t need to be there anymore, because I was finally waking up and ready to learn the lesson he was in my life to teach me.
He could leave, and actually had to leave in order for me to grow.
Lao Tzu was speaking to one of the most profound teachings we have, that change is constant. People come in and out of our lives for different purposes, and our deepest suffering arises when we try to control every outcome. We try to control our relationships, our friendships, and the people we believe have to always be there.
But what if each teacher is here for the time needed, and when they leave, it’s actually a reflection of what you are ready for?
What if people leaving, relationships ending, is actually a reflection of your readiness for transformation?
What if your heartbreak of any kind, romantic or personal, is a moment of sacred alchemy?
Take a moment today to honor the teachers who have left. Perhaps write in your journal around this question: What did you learn when they were gone?
For me, I sat down on the floor and cried. I felt a great wave of relief recognizing Jon left because I was ready.
And I would not have known otherwise.
You are so much stronger than you know, and your greatest learning comes when you claim the wisdom of those teachers who have left.
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About Nikol RogersNikol Rogers is a speaker, writer, and empowerment coach who helps people reclaim their confidence, expand their perfect audience, and bring their fearless vision to life. She has taught her ZenRed Method globally and has helped her clients become a more confident version of themselves and in alignment with their true purpose through her signature course, Powerful Presence. Her work can be found at NikolRogers.com and @Nikol_Rogers.Web | Facebook | More Posts
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Sophocles
"Our happiness depends on wisdom all the way."
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Bertolt Brecht
"Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are."
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“When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh
When I was fifteen years old, my dad abandoned my mother, younger sister, and me after a bankruptcy. My mother sat me down at the kitchen table to show me our financial situation scribbled on a yellow legal pad.
Dad left us with six months of unpaid rent. The landlord threatened us with eviction until mom made a deal to pay extra rent every month to pay off the balance. He agreed to let us live there under those terms.
Dad’s abandonment included disappearing with everything we had of any value. He took our music, art, records—everything that made the place a home. He even took the blender.
My mother’s secretarial job covered our housing, car payment, and other bills, but we would run out of money the last week of the month. I would need to find a way to make up the difference.
My father’s larger-than-life personality made him the center of our universe. With no education, training, or experience, he produced movies, invented a tripod, opened a furniture store, and made a training video for golfers.
Every few months, a new business occupied his passion. The three of us were lightless planets revolving around his flaming sun. After he left, the absence of his gravity left us spinning.
My little sister and I walked the neighborhood looking for babysitting, house cleaning, lawn mowing, and car washing jobs. Nobody has money to pay kids to do odd jobs in poor communities. We each picked up one babysitting job for one night—nothing regular.
One day I answered an ad for a telephone solicitor job a mile and a half from our home. If I made seven sales in two four-hour shifts, they would hire me for a salary plus commission job. At fifteen, I looked thirteen but said I was sixteen.
I made my seventh sale and felt victorious. We were going to be okay. Instead, the manager told me that one of my sales canceled, so I would not get the job. I had worked from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. for two days and didn’t get paid a dime. (I would later learn that the company owners stood trial for profiting from unpaid underage labor).
I walked home crying in the dark. A man in a black car pulled over and offered me a ride. He looked me up and down with a glazed-eyed hunger. I ran across the street and the rest of the way home. The walls of my interior crumbled. I felt my first awareness of the impermanence of all things. I had become a refugee in my hometown.
Our family of three survived the poverty of financial limits. We made it out. However, the deprivation of abandonment cut more deeply.
Abandonment, at any age, leaves one gobsmacked by the cold awareness that someone you love no longer cares if you’re dead or alive. You’ve been rendered irrelevant to someone who once benefited from your loving affection. You feel discarded like yesterday’s trash.
You’re never the same person once you know that someone you love can walk away and not look back. You have eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is a knowing that lives in your bones forever. The poverty of an abandoned heart is hard to shake.
Therapists talk about “fear of abandonment” as if it were a form of phobic anxiety, like arachnophobia, the irrational fear of spiders. My mother, sister, and I were not left with a fear of abandonment. We were left abandoned.
When someone is shot with a gun and survives, we don’t tell them they have a “fear of guns.” We call it trauma. The pain lives in the wound. The scars tangible.
Abandonment by someone we love is relational injury, like being shot to pieces but with no visible scars. Neuropsychologists found that losing someone we love activates pain receptors in the brain. It physically hurts. We suffer symptoms akin to opiate withdrawal.
Like opiate recovery, eventually, the pain subsides. New experiences offer us hope for relational healing. We learn to love again. Like a soothing balm over a burn wound, love can ease that pain. The nerve endings calm down. Happiness reappears.
Relational trauma changes the brain. We can experience a thinning in two parts of the brain. One part processes self-awareness (the prefrontal cortex), and the other helps us process and cope with our emotions (the medial temporal lobe). These changes can make us prone to anxiety and depression.
Both of my parents were abandoned by their fathers as toddlers. My father displayed extreme polarities of emotion, manic bursts of enterprising energy, followed by depressed inactivity. My mother periodically experienced depression, followed by long periods of recovery.
Trauma changes us on a cellular level and can linger like a ghost memory for generations. The ghosts of intergenerational suffering haunt many families. If you endure, suffering leads to wisdom. Wisdom leads to the alleviation of suffering.
From suffering we gain: The wisdom of resourcefulness. The confident armor of a survivor. The cellular knowledge that security is an illusion. The ability to bring our own peace to the potluck. The instinct to protect our precious hearts.
I had to attempt new things after each failure on my road to healing. Children are naturally self-centered and feel responsible for the bad things that happen to them. The child believes “If I feel bad, I am bad.” With maturity, we learn to differentiate between what our parents bear responsibility for and our own adult responsibilities. I began to recognize that my father’s decision to leave us had nothing to do with us. He chose to abandon responsibility for his family due to his own failures and weaknesses, not ours.
As I matured emotionally, it became clear that if I wanted a better life I had to make better choices. After several relationships with men who feared commitment and didn’t love me, I made the healthy decision to no longer find that type of man attractive.
Necessity made me a seeker of opportunity. I sought out tools to help me cope. Here’s what I found helpful:
Meditation: At sixteen, I learned how to meditate. I believe that saved me from clinical depression and crippling anxiety. Meditation can repair the damage to the brain stemming from trauma. It provides the experience of non-judging, calm awareness.
Friendships: Friendships opened new worlds to me. Friends acted as lateral mentors and taught me how to play guitar, drive, write a resume, and apply to college.
Love: Finding loving relationships helped heal the sting of worthlessness. Watching other loving couples served as models for what was possible.
Meaning and purpose: Volunteer work, a life of service as a psychotherapist, raising a family, and commitment to a purpose beyond personal ambition increased my happiness and resilience.
Compassion: My parents had children at a very young age. They, too, suffered abandonment and loss. I feel compassion for my father’s loss and for what he lost in leaving us. Compassion heals.
Gratitude: I’m grateful for my small family and what we built from the rubble. My sister and I raised healthy children who feel secure, having never endured poverty of resources, or abandonment. We broke the transgenerational pattern.
Today, when our family gathers, I watch our two grandsons play with their pups in the grassy garden. Their father, our oldest, watches the toddlers with alert protectiveness. My husband gives the boys horsey rides on his back to squeals of delight. Our daughter-in-law prepares a lovely meal with fresh produce from their abundant garden. Our other son performs a funny dance eliciting giggles from his nephews. Our daughter and her husband join in an improvised comedy routine to keep the fun going. We savor the meal as the sun slowly sets.
Love wins.
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About Gina Simmons Schneider, Ph.D.Dr. Gina Simmons Schneider is the author of Frazzlebrain: Break Free from Anxiety, Anger, and Stress Using Advanced Discoveries in Neuropsychology (Central Recovery Press, April 2022). She is a licensed psychotherapist, executive coach, and corporate trainer for Fortune 500 companies. She serves as codirector of Schneider Counseling and Corporate Solutions. Dr. Simmons Schneider is a coping skills expert with more than twenty-five years of experience helping people regulate difficult emotions and conflicts.More Posts
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Dale Carnegie
"Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get."
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“Whatever you’re feeling, it will eventually pass.” ~Lori Deschene
Can you feel an intense emotion, like anger, without acting on it, reacting to it, or trying to get rid of it?
Can you feel such an intense emotion without needing to justify or explain it—or needing to find someone or something to blame it on?
After successfully dodging it for two years, I recently caught Covid-19. The physical symptoms were utter misery. But something much more interesting happened while I was unwell.
The whole experience brought some intense emotions to the surface. Namely seething anger about something that had nothing to do with the virus.
In the handful of days that my symptoms were at their worst, I was absolutely livid. And while on some level it made sense that I was angry that getting this sick was both extremely unpleasant and delaying work on a project I was all fired up about, the anger was manifesting with a deeper-rooted blame.
I grew up in a religious denomination that had a profound effect on my childhood and adolescence. It taught me through debilitating fear, division, and confusion. It ingrained black-and-white rights and wrongs for living, thinking, and being that had never made sufficient sense to me, no one could adequately explain, and were damaging for me on a number of levels.
In the past couple of years, I worked through its various effects with shadow work, inner child healing, forgiveness, and even quantum energetic healing. Each of these modalities supported me immensely with healing different layers.
But the emotion of deep anger I harbored clearly hadn’t gone away, and it simply needed to be felt.
The more we learn to observe and witness our emotions, the more acutely aware we become of where they’re stemming from, and the more we’re able to notice and catch ourselves when we’re associating our emotions with narratives and situations that are not in fact to blame for how we’re feeling.
Although I’d initially managed to fashion some connection between being unwell and the church I still harbored so much anger toward, I became increasingly aware that there was none. My inclination to blame the church was part of an ongoing pattern. And it was time to break this pattern.
At the same time, I’d recently become very aware that whenever I’d hear mention of the church or any of its associated beliefs, a brief surge of anger would leap up in me. I was still feeling triggered.
I was very ready to move beyond these patterns of blame and anger. And getting to that inner peace I so wanted to feel meant addressing this on an emotional level. I realized that what I needed was to actually sit with these feelings so they could be fully acknowledged and allowed to move through me.
The only person who is ever responsible for your emotions is you. And your emotions are simply powerful feedback. They show up for one of two dominant reasons.
Either they’re unresolved past emotions that are surfacing because they’re ready to be acknowledged and felt now, or they’re feelings that demonstrate how a situation is resonating for you—in other words, they’re your own inner compass.
Sadly, although traditions like Buddhism have been teaching us how to develop emotional awareness for thousands of years, we’ve somehow landed on two dominant, ineffective responses.
Acting on our emotions or trying to brush them under the rug.
Brushing an emotion under the rug will only keep it trapped inside of you. Meaning it will resurface to bother you as many times as it needs to in future, until you deal with it.
And the practices of toxic positivity fall under this category. Write a gratitude list and look for the best feeling thought you can find, they say. In other words, avoid the “negative” emotion for now and let it fester under the surface a little while longer.
Newsflash: No emotion is negative unless it’s fueling a negative action or reaction. It’s simply feedback pointing you toward growth or clarity.
Which brings me to the next dominant response we resort to. Acting on the emotion (by yelling at someone, for example) will at least give it an opportunity to release, but will most likely create consequences that won’t serve you. We’ve all been there and done that, so no judgment here.
As I emphasised earlier, the only person who’s ever responsible for your emotions is you. And we tend to act on our emotions by deflecting this responsibility. So we learn, understand, and gain nothing from them.
So, I sat with the anger. I was fully present with it—by itself, separate from any experience or event that I could possibly associate it with.
I acknowledged it, felt its full intensity, and breathed through it. I sat with the parts of me that felt this emotion, with compassion. I surrendered to letting it move through me.
Despite having felt the intensity of this anger for a few days, it released fairly quickly when I leaned into it. And when it released I was able to see pretty clearly why being ill had triggered this anger.
I’ve also noticed that since this whole experience, the little surges of anger I’d previously felt have gone away. So far I haven’t felt those triggers since, which is a relief.
Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge that many of us are carrying deep trauma that’s often too painful to even fathom triggering. So have compassion for yourself in whatever you feel, and don’t put off seeking the right support to work through your emotions if you feel you need this.
Now, this might sound counterintuitive, and it’s incredibly uncomfortable to do at first. But real emotional awareness—and maturity—means sitting with the emotion and feeling its fullness.
It’s identifying what this emotion is and how it feels. Including where you can feel it physically.
It’s giving yourself some time and space to focus on really leaning into the emotion, and separating it from any narrative or incident it may be associated with. Focusing on the emotion by itself in isolation allows us to process it. Without blame, justification, or self-pity.
When you can truly feel, acknowledge, and breathe through it, it releases. And when it’s released you’re able to understand what it represented for you. You grow through it.
This may take time, but a feeling is only ever there to be felt. And until it is, it will be increasingly vociferous in how it tries to get your attention.
This can require a lot of courage, especially because too many of us have been conditioned to fear feeling our emotions and believe that we can’t handle them.
But if you need to cry, cry. If it feels intense, this is where deeply buried stuff is surfacing for release.
And when you let an emotion move through you, you let it move out of you.
This doesn’t mean that you’ll never feel another “negative” emotion ever again.
But it does mean that you’ll understand how to respond to these emotions, and allow them be felt and understood with a lot more compassion.
And that’s more than worth the temporary discomfort.
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About Nadine SaadNadine is a certified coach and Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT®) practitioner. She combines coaching with deeper inner work to help conscious leaders take a purpose-led and intuitive approach to their life and work. She supports leaders to dig deep into what drives them on a subconscious level, connect with their purpose and break through patterns that don't serve their higher potential. Visit her at nadine-saad.com or on Instagram.Web | More Posts
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Napoleon Bonaparte
"If you want a thing done well, do it yourself."
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“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.” ~Eckart Toll
It was perfect. Well, almost.
I was doing the work I love, with someone I love, my two boys were thriving, and we seemed to finally be on the road to retirement. What could possibly be wrong with this picture?
A lot, apparently.
I was waking up worried and unsatisfied. Always feeling like life was missing something, like I was missing something, not doing enough, asking: How can my business be better? What will my kids do next year? Is my partner gaining weight? Did I run yesterday?
Anxiety crept into my mind and contracted my body before I had a chance to get ahead of it. It was an unease that something just wasn’t quite right. And if it was, then it wouldn’t be for long.
I knew enough about neuroscience and anxiety to know what was happening.
Negative thoughts are a protective pattern that come from scanning our environment for potential threats.
Our ancestors were wired this way to survive, thankfully, and we are probably in the first generation that can even talk about the word “abundance,” at least in this part of the world. The intergenerational trauma of feeling unsafe is in the recent past and runs deep in our DNA, especially for women.
But even armed with all the knowledge of trauma and all the best practices of breathing, meditation, and yoga, there was still a missing link.
My worries seemed trivial given the war that was raging in the world. It seemed self-indulgent to want more, to even consider that this was not enough. Even when it felt enough, it was because all the factors were lining up in that moment, but it felt precarious, like a house of cards—even though I knew it wasn’t.
All the self-help books promised I could “reach for my dreams” and “have my best life ever” if I only changed my habits and my mindset and lived like I thought all the people around me were.
In fact, I was so busy working on my life that I felt exhausted and still felt like I wasn’t doing or giving enough. Even when deciding what charity to donate to, to help those in need, I felt like I had to choose the “right” one!
It was through my work with people in chronic pain that one day something shifted. I was teaching about the difference between acceptance and giving up in the search for a cure, and I said something like “It’s not so much what you are doing but how you are doing it.”
Doing something from a place of pressure and intensity, with a worry about making a mistake or not getting it right, creates fear. Fear creates more fear in the end, and it creates pain.
My inner perfectionist gasped and took a step back. She was outed.
Not only did I see how my inner perfectionist had been running the show, I knew that if I wanted to negotiate with her, I was going to have to come from a different energy other than “getting this right.”
She had helped me; she had worked so hard to stay on top of everything and got me through some tough times.
She had guilted me when I felt like a bad mother, a bad friend, a less-than therapist, or a mediocre spouse and showed me all the ways I could be better. She even lent her expertise to my family, telling them how they should behave, what they should eat and not eat, and how they should conduct their lives.
This was sometimes done directly, but she also worked coercively behind the scenes through people-pleasing, manipulation, and other passive-aggressive behaviors.
She was based in fear and shame as a trauma response, learned early on in my childhood years, that told me my authentic self was clearly not good enough. So I employed her services to keep me safe, help me fit in at school, get good marks, and be an all around “good girl” on the outside. But the inner pressure of a perfectionist is unbearable and soon morphed into an eating disorder when life felt out of control.
Many of us live in a nasty triangle that can be difficult to see and even more difficult to disrupt. It goes: shame-inner critic-perfection, and it balances itself precariously inside our mind and body leaving its imprint of “not good enough” to guide our lives.
This is compounded by a culture that primes us to feel like we’re not okay and there is always something to buy, change, or fix, because it is not normal to just be okay.
Even though my trauma happened decades ago, the vestiges remained. I could not quite relax into my life without something or someone, mostly myself, feeling “not quite good enough.” I also found this same core belief to be at the root of many if not all of my clients’ struggles with anxiety, depression, and chronic pain.
It was the constant feeling of being here but wanting to be… somewhere or someone else. A knee-jerk resistance to life or an inability to truly sink into all life has to offer without finding fault or a hiccup somewhere. Or worse, thinking that I had to earn my worth by doing more and being more, and all without effort!
Not. Good. Enough.
Not good enough for what? For whom? This is an unanswerable question because it is a lie. But it is one thing to know that and another to let my inner perfectionist know I was safe now and she could take a backseat because, well, I’m good enough.
I thought about the times I felt free and at peace.
I thought about the people I knew whose lives had the biggest impact on me.
I had a chat with my future self twenty years from now about the qualities she had, how she moved, and what she valued.
And it came down to a word: simplicity.
Here is where I had to tread carefully. My inner perfectionist would make finding simplicity very, very complicated and approach it with an all-in attitude, as she did everything: live in a tiny house, two chairs, two sets of cutlery, and a bed.
No, there had to be another way, an easier way.
It turns out, it was the easiest way possible: Embrace what is here now.
What if everything was good enough, just as it is, in this moment? What if I was good enough, just as I am, in this moment? What if my body, my health, my relationships, all the ways I tried, were just good enough?
It felt radical, revolutionary. It felt like I was disrupting all my programming about what it means to live a good life. It was not the energy of giving up or rationalizing that I didn’t deserve more and I should settle for less. It wasn’t even the energy of gratitude or appreciating what I have and how privileged I am.
It was the opposite.
Embracing my life as good enough busted the myth of inferiority and superiority that tells us some people are more or less worthy than others. It let me relax into the fact that we are all doing the best we can with what we know at that moment. If I was good enough, then others were too.
It busted the myth of needing more and being more, because I didn’t have anything to prove to anyone. It also busted the myth that if I truly accepted my life as it is, I would just lie down on the couch and never get up. Again, the opposite happened.
Energy was freed up for more of what I love, not what I should do. Worry and struggle were replaced with self-forgiveness.
Embracing my life as good enough gave me the doorway I needed to a quality of life I couldn’t imagine.
I realized I was good enough to show up just as I am.
I realized I was good enough to set boundaries around what and who aligned with me.
I realized I could write, speak, and create in a messy, fun, good enough way.
I realized I was good enough to rest.
I realized I was good enough to embrace my own wants, needs, and desires.
I realized I was already good enough for pleasure right here and now in a million ways I couldn’t see before.
I realized my life was not about being better, improved, fixed… it was about being who I am, and that was enough.
I realized I could work less and make more money.
I realized my body was a remarkable organism that was to be loved and held, not manipulated.
I realized that every decision I made was right for me because it was good enough.
I realized that struggle was never meant to be my life, but giving, loving, and contributing were.
I realized I was already good enough to live a life of joy, comfort, and ease.
One of the most beautiful parts of this is looking in my children’s eyes and knowing that they, too, are so perfectly good enough just as they are. They don’t need to prove their worth to anyone.
Embracing my good enough life has allowed me to enter my life, just as I am, and has turned “good enough” into “how good can it get?” It gave me the safety I needed to “do what I can, with what I have, where I am” (Theodore Roosevelt).
Can you imagine a world where everyone knew they were just good enough? Where we all lived life from a place of forgiveness, grace, and compassion for ourselves?
What are you already good enough for that life is just waiting to give you?
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About Madeleine EamesMadeleine Eames is founder of Mindful Living Now, which helps people heal trauma and chronic pain and realize their worth through counseling, breathwork, mindfulness, and yoga. Join her in the quest to reclaim our lives at mindfullivingnow.com or on Facebook or Instagram. Join Madeleine’s next online retreat Good Girl to Good Enough.Web | Facebook | More Posts
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Lillian Hellman
"Things start out as hopes and end up as habits."
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“At the end of life, at the end of YOUR life, what essence emerges? What have you filled the world with? In remembering you, what words will others choose?” ~Amy Rosenthal
Most people believe sorting through a loved one’s belongings after death provides closure. For me, it provided an existential crisis.
After glancing at the angry sky in my father’s driveway for what seemed like hours, I mustered up the courage to crack open the door to the kitchen. The eerie silence stopped me in my tracks. Wasn’t he cooking up a storm in this cluttered kitchen just a few days ago?
I started with the mounds of clothes and cuddled them gently before pitching them. The sweet aroma of his fiery cologne still lingered. The air smelled just like him.
My father’s belongings served as physical reminders of how he spent his time on Earth. Some of my favorites included:
A weathered yellow newspaper clipping of his parents. Cherished family photos, with him grinning ear to ear. A collection of homemade cookbooks. Framed quotes such as Mi casa es su casa. A prestigious Pottery Barn leather chair, distressed by puppy claw marks. Nostalgic t-shirts from the early 90’s.
Chipped and heavily-used Williams-Sonoma platters. An entertainment center that mimicked a NASA operation center, with 70’s CDs left in the queue. Invitations to neighborhood block parties. An embroidered apron which read “World’s Best Grill Master” paired with still fresh barbeque sauce stains.
Homemade recipe cards with quirky quotes like “It’s good because it’s cooked on wood.” An entire closet of camping gear. Leftover birthday celebration goodies. Glazed pottery from local North Carolinian artists. Entertaining sports memorabilia on full display. And a tender card from me:
Dear Dad,
You’re the best dad ever! I hope you have a birthday filled with tasty BBQ, blaring seventies music, and a pepperoncini pepper to start the day off right. Thank you for being there for me. You are my hero. I can’t wait to celebrate with you this weekend!
My father collected items that brought him joy, and, clearly shared them with others.
While you may not know him, or think you have anything to do with him, you do.
You will be him one day. We will all be him one day. At some point, someone will rummage through our drawers. Scary, isn’t it?
Weeks later after organizing his possessions, I returned to my lavish apartment with cloudy judgment. As soon as I arrived, I dropped my luggage near the door and waltzed into my closet. The items that once made me proud, made me nauseous. If someone rummaged through my keepsakes, they would find:
A closet full of color-coordinated designer brand clothes. Scratched CDs listing my favorite nineties bands. An entire drawer filled with vibrant, unused makeup. A high-end collection of David Yurman rings, necklaces, and bracelets. Wrinkled Nordstrom receipts. An assortment of gently used designer handbags. And, pictures of fair-weather friends scattered throughout.
Do you know what they all had in common? Me.
ME! ME! ME!
Comparing my life to my father’s led to a life-changing decision. Should I continue to splurge on meaningless items or start completely over?
After a moment of contemplation, my life mirrored a blank slate. Products related to “keeping up with the Jones’s” were no longer my jam. Instead, my money was reserved for incredible moments that produced long-term joy and warm memories.
My new spending habits derived from the following financial values:
Seek experiences that make me feel alive.
Purchase life-changing products.
Invest in creative hobbies that I’m proud of.
Provide others with joyous moments.
Initiate celebratory activities.
Make financial decisions out of love.
With a little trial and error, I traded in frivolous shoulder bags for top-rated camping gear. Saturday shopping days transformed into baking Sundays. And most importantly, I went from feeling not enough to experiencing fulfillment.
Twelve years later, I’m happy to share that I continue to evaluate my purchases using a “Will this make a good memory?” lens. In retrospect, mending my financial habits was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Why? I’m no longer impressed by status. I prefer art, learning, and the outdoors over any invitation to shopping. In return, my life is filled with purpose, meaning, and long-term satisfaction.
What I know for sure is that most commodities on their own overpromise and underdeliver, unless we intentionally create an evocative memory with them. Materialistic purchases provide us with fleeting moments of happiness. On the contrary, curating beautiful moments with others delivers long-term joy.
While you won’t find many luxurious products in my house now, you will find:
A four-person picnic backpack for sunny days at a park. Bird feeders galore. A fine assortment of tea to share with others. Homemade bath bombs for birthdays. Color-coordinated self-improvement books. Aromatic sea salt exfoliants that replicate a spa experience. Cheery holiday decorations.
An assortment of various vision boards and bucket lists. Seasonal candles galore. A bathroom drawer filled with citrus soaps, shampoo, and lotions for overnight guests. A collection of homemade scrapbooks featuring beloveds.
An emerald green trekking hiking backpack for outdoorsy adventures. Crinkled Aquarium tickets. Handwritten family cookbooks. Seeds for a blooming garden. Hygge and cozy themed library nooks. A bright blue hybrid bike, for nomadic quests. A closet full of board games. And my most prized possession of all, a sentimental card from my darling father, John:
Happy Graduation, Britti!
I am proud of who you are and proud to be your dad. I like how you hold your head high. You are becoming a beautiful young woman and fun to be around. You have taught me things. You are so important to me. I treasure our time together and will always be here for you! It’s not always easy, but, you have a lot of love around you. I hope that life keeps blessing you. Keep spreading your wings and following your dreams!
Love, Dad
The real question is, when someone organizes your belongings, what will they find?
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About Brittany PowellBrittany Powell is the founder of Positivity Pledge, an online community where people build meaningful lives. Brittany’s work has appeared in various publications, including Voyage Phoenix and Shoutout Arizona. To build your own meaningful life, visit Positivity Pledge and follow her daily meaningful activities on Insta.Web | More Posts
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John M. McHugh
"As America celebrates Memorial Day, we pay tribute to those who have given their lives in our nation's wars."
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