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Category: Presence

  • Opening Your Heart

    Opening Your Heart

    At the time of Leah’s death, Samyama had been a part of my life for seven years.

    It wasn’t a practice that I turned to daily; it was there when I needed a little more assistance contacting to my feelings.

    I didn’t realize at the time that Samyama would be my lifeline as I began meeting my grief.

    Even though I did not have a daily Samyama practice over 20 years ago, I did know the power of the practice. Samyama helped me to begin to shift anger for the first time. I grew up pushing anger down. It wasn’t allowed in my family. My anger would erupt in rage when it could no longer be contained. These eruptions happened when I least expected them and at inopportune moments.

    I have done lots of work with anger over the years, with limited results. Samyama allowed me to meet anger for the first time in a safe space. From this safe space I was able to fully feel my anger and allow it to begin to shift. After a few months, I got to the root of my anger. As my heart held all those old feelings, the anger was gradually transmuted, shifted, and released.

    These days when I feel anger it is about something that occurred in the last few days, or weeks, not 30 or 40 years ago. I now know how to meet anger, (and all my feelings) and they aren’t pushed down until they can no longer be contained.

    What a relief I felt when anger and rage were no longer controlling my life. This experience with anger showed me the subtle power of Samyama.

    When I was ready to begin to meet the painful feelings of grief, I was instinctively drawn to Samyama. I began working with my own Samyama Practitioner. She was able to hold space for me to go deep into my feelings.

    I began to unravel the stories that were intertwined with my feelings; the stories that kept spinning in my head and wouldn’tlet me sleep or rest. The stories that threatened to devour me and keep my heart locked tight, so I didn’t have to feel the pain of my daughter’s death.

    As I began to open my heart to my feelings, I discovered that it could hold all of them.

    Even today, I can’t wrap my head around the fact that Leah is no longer here physically. It’s only when I bring my feeling to my heart and allow it to hold whatever shows up in each moment that I can get a glimmer of peace. As that glimmer grows, it eventually spreads from my heart to every cell of my body, and I’m once again reconnected to my soul’s purpose. I’m once again connected to myself, and my reason for being here in this lifetime.

    Another gift of my grief journey was showing me the power of Samyama, and how it can help with daily disappointments or concerns. Today I do have a daily Samyama practice. Samyama not only helps with difficult feelings, but it also helps me meet whatever arises in each moment, the full spectrum of all my feelings.

    I bring everything to my heart, and my heart never fails me.

  • A Lesson From My Granddaughter

    A Lesson From My Granddaughter

    Living close to my son and his family means I get to watch my granddaughter Arya’s growth and development. At a little over 1 year old, she is currently learning to walk.  I’ve watched her progress over the last several weeks, first pulling herself up with both hands and walking along from chair to chair, then from chair to wall. She then progressed to pulling herself up and standing without support for a few minutes.  She got really fast at traversing the entire perimeter of her house, moving from furniture to wall, and back again.

    Last week she began taking 3-4 steps from furniture to wall, falling down many times throughout the day.  Each time she fell down, she pulled herself up again, this time with only one hand, and started the process all over again.

    By the end of the week she was standing on her own at times, and taking 6-8 steps in the middle of the room.  Again, falling down again and again and getting up, each time with a big smile on her face, to try again.

    She never stayed down and told herself that she wasn’t good enough to walk, or that she would never get there.  She continues to toddle (I now know why children this age are called toddlers!) find her balance and takes more and more steps on her own.

    We all were just like Arya when we were learning to walk.  We all have that determination and thrill of accomplishment in us.

    When we are working toward something and it feels hard, or elusive, and seems like we are never going achieve our goal, remember that childlike drive.  What if we would have given up when we were learning to walk? What if we remained crawlers our entire life?

    That’s what is happening when we give up too soon as adults.  Each attempt to walk gives Arya more information for her to be successful.  The same is true for us.

    Each time we strive to reach our goals, we gain valuable information about ourselves. Let’s all use that information to continue to become the best possible humans we can be.

     

  • Full Spectrum of Feelings

    Full Spectrum of Feelings

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    I’m often asked how I can be joyful and live the life I am living when I’m doing it without my daughter’s presence in my life.

    I’m asked if I have gotten over her death, or if I’ve healed and accepted her death.

    I will never get over Leah’s death. I’ve had a 20-year inquiry into what healing form her death looks like, and I have a problem wrapping my head around what accepting her death means.

    I’ve accepted that she is not here, and that in order to live the life I was meant to live that I had/have to find a way to honor her, and to be the best me that I can be. That has not been an easy road, and it has meant that I needed to learn how to feel my excruciating feelings of grief.

    In the early days of my grief journey I used diversion and distraction to keep from feeling my feelings of grief. I thought that if I ate enough chocolate chip cookies, I wouldn’t have to feel the pain of losing my daughter. I thought that those feelings would eventually go away if I pushed them away long enough.

    What I found out is that they got louder to get my attention.

    The intensity of my feelings made them overwhelming.

    I learned that feeling them was the way through, and when I allowed them to be met they quieted down. There are many ways to feel our feelings. My own practice of present moment awareness, Samyama, is what helped me learn to get better at feeling my raw feelings. I could bring one feeling at a time, to my heart, and my heart shifted the feeling. Our hearts are alchemical vessels that can hold whatever we bring to them. As I began to have a greater capacity to feel my painful feelings, I found out that I could also feel joy and happiness to a greater degree. I learned that I can feel joy and pain at the same time.

    I like to thing of feelings as clouds.

    There are different kinds of clouds, and they always move through. Even dark storm clouds move through. Our feelings are the same. They are not good or bad, they are energy that need to be met and felt, and then they move through too.

    When they come back, it doesn’t mean we are regressing. When we are present to our feelings, we realize that the feeling may seem similar to feelings we have had before, yet in this moment it is slightly different. Just like no two clouds are alike.

    My grief journey taught me that when we feel the full spectrum of our feelings, we can live a fuller life. When I fully participate in all aspects of my life, does that mean I have healed from the death of my daughter? That is a question that I continue to sit with. Healing doesn’t look like what I thought it would when I considered it early on. That may be a topic for further discussion.  What I know now is that when I can bring all of my feelings into my heart, my heart can hold them, and my head doesn’t have to try to figure out what to do with them.

    That right there is a step in the right direction for me.

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  • Nuances of Perfectionism

    Nuances of Perfectionism

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    When I was preparing to move from Raleigh to St. Paul in the fall of 2020, there was a lot of purging of things we no longer needed. Some of these were easy to pack in boxes and take to places that were accepting donations.

    Then I came across my journals.

    In the course of my life I’ve been a somewhat sporadic writer. Early in my journey, I would decide that writing in a journal would help to uncover what I needed to know to work on in myself, and then I could get to the work of “fixing” it. This was all before I found presence as a practice, and before I knew that there was nothing to fix.

    Whenever I made a new promise to write in a journal, I bought a new one.

    I couldn’t just pick up where I left off in an old one because that represented failure to me, I had stopped writing daily in that journal (or weekly, or….) and I needed to find the perfect journal to capture the deepest thoughts that would lead to the transformation that I was envisioning for myself. Inevitably, I would not be consistent with my latest attempt to fix myself, and yet another journal would go into the pile of half started journals.

    This was only one place where perfection showed up in my life. I used to think that if I could just “get it right” i.e. find the perfect combination of goals, rules, insights, etc. that I would attain what I was looking for, and I always failed. These attempts of finding the perfect combination of things out there to make me happy; always sent me into a tail spin of self abuse.

    If I couldn’t achieve the perfect body, the perfect hair, the perfect disposition; be the perfect mother or wife, how could I be successful?

    How could I teach my children?

    How could I find fulfillment?

    This cycle repeated itself numerous times before I began to unravel perfectionism in my life.

    After Leah died, the fabric of my life was ripped apart. My life was cracked open. It was only when I looked at my life from that place that I knew perfectionism was not attainable. At first I thought it was because my daughter died, how could I have a perfect life without her physical presence?

    Didn’t that right there mean that I had failed as a mother?

    My grief journey took me to the depths of despair. As I climbed out through presence, and my Samyama practice, I began to see that perfectionism is a myth. That there is no perfect place to go; no perfect way to be.  I learned that I perfectly imperfect just as I am.

    I began to look for answers inside my heart rather than outside myself. My heart would often lead me to a teaching, or teacher, yet the inspiration always came from within.  That was not an easy lesson for me to learn. The more present I became, the more I could discern my inner voice. I learned what my intuition felt like in my body. I learned to trust my full body yes.

    Do I still try to find the best way to do things?  The perfect way? Yes, sometimes I do, and now know that this work is a practice, not a perfect, and I can give myself grace when I find myself heading down that particular rabbit hole.

    Living my life in this way has brought more joy into my life, more inspiration, and yes, more happiness and contentment. I’ve loosened my grip on things that I thought were needed to achieve a particular way of living.  Now I allow rather than strive so hard to attain something.

    Back to that pile of unfinished journals.

    When I found them I read a little from a few of them and realized I am light years away from where I was when I was striving for perfection. I toyed with the idea of picking them up and continuing to write from where I am today.  That didn’t feel right to me.

    Before I moved I held a ritual to burn those journals, as well as other things that helped me along the way in my journey, yet no longer were aligned with where I am today. Burning my journals released more of the hold that perfectionism had on me. I thanked them for serving their purpose when they did.

    I released what I no longer needed to make space for what was coming next.

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  • Is Self-Care Necessary?

    Is Self-Care Necessary?

    Self-care is a hot topic these days.

    Taking care of ourselves is important. One of the things I’ve discovered is that self-care is necessary for us to step fully into who we are meant to be in this world. This was an important lesson for me as I excavated the life I was meant to live over the course of my grief journey.

    I’ve had many conversations about self-care, and so many of us, myself included, think, (or used to think) that caring for ourselves is selfish, and we must take care of others to show selflessness. Yet, if we don’t take care of ourselves, we don’t have the energy to be there for others.

    That led me to do take a deeper look at self-care, how it impacts us, and how it changes as we evolve.

    Our needs may sound similar of we compare early grief and preparation for a marathon; however the specifics of each one looks very different.

    Self-care always calls for attention to what we need at the time, such as, the need for rest and sleep, the need for good food to nourish our bodies, and movement.

    When we are preparing for a marathon, our food and movement needs are much different than what we need in early grief.

    Movement in early grief helps to move our feelings through and may be gentle in nature rather than the regimented schedule required for marathon preparation.

    We may not be hungry, as we emerge from grief, yet nutritious food helps us to regain the capacity to feel our feelings. Food helps to support our bodies as we prepare for our marathon.

    In early grief sleep may be elusive, or we may sleep more than we did before, or a combination of each. Consistent sleep is important as we prepare out bodies to run a long distance.

    As you can see, self-care shifts according to where we are in our lives, and what is going on. I’ve touched on only a few of the activities we can do to take good care of ourselves. There are many more, and each person’s needs are different.

    Take some time to listen deeply to what you need emotionally, spiritually, physically, and intellectually.  Make a list of your needs in each category, and revisit it from time to time. You may discover your non-negotiable self-care rituals through this process.

    Those are the things that are a necessity for you to be the best you possible.

     

     

  • Another Side of Grief

    Another Side of Grief

    It’s been 8 months since we’ve moved to St. Paul from Raleigh, NC.

    We moved here to be closer to my son and his family. Our granddaughter Ayra was born in July of 2020, and after we met her, we knew that we wanted to be a part of her everyday life.

    One of the things that I’ve been aware of since we’ve moved here is the grief of all of the time lost when we lived apart.

    I was surprised to come upon this as grief.

    The fact that I can still be surprised by grief tells me how complicated grief can be. Even though I am aware of grief in my life, I can still be taken aback by the more subtle nuances of grief.

    My son had lived an airplane ride away form us for over 13 years.  We saw each other 2-3 times a year during that time, and we all longed for more time together.

    There was a time when I didn’t see a solution to wanting to be more of a part of my son’s life.

    Because I didn’t see a solution, I also didn’t see the possibilities.

    Because I didn’t see the possibilities, I was not open to any of the ways we could be a part of each other’s lives on a more regular basis.

    Once I began to get curious about how we could spend more time together, possibilities began presenting themselves. One of the first was to build a tiny home in his back yard, and spend summers in Minneapolis, and winters in Raleigh. Our plans to do just that were well underway when we learned of our granddaughter’s impending arrival.

    Because I had already opened the door of possibilities, when we were called very strongly to move here permanently, we walked through that door with ease.

    My grief came from not engaging the field of possibilities sooner.

    Thinking that I have wasted time that could have been better spent. I’ve found that is a common theme when we are looking at life decisions from the lens of grief, or disappointment.

    What I’ve learned through my own journey is that we are not ready until we are ready. When we are ready, we find what we are ready for, our teacher appears. Lamenting what we haven’t done, what we didn’t say yes to earlier can keep us stuck.

    Learning how to live with presences helps us to embrace what is here now, where life is calling us in each moment. It doesn’t mean that we will never feel difficult feelings again, or that grief stays up on that shelf where we put it, hoping it will stay our of site.

    Rather it means that we have the resources to meet our feelings, all of them, when they show up.

    As I met these most recent feelings of grief, I realized that up until now, I was not ready to make the move that I made. I am aware of all the reasons that this is true. I became aware of them in a moment of knowing as I sat in my daily Samyama practice. I was able to hold those feelings of grief in my heart, and allow my heart to transmute them. I also know that I don’t know ALL of the details of this move, and that is ok. I trust that as I continue to be devoted to the present moment, I will know what I need to know at exactly the right time.

    When you are ready to get curious about your own grief journey, I am here.

     

  • Labels Are Confining

    Labels Are Confining

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    I’m often asked if I am an intuitive or an empath when I ask a client a sacred question, one  that hits the heart of the matter, or that cuts to the core of what they have been working on. A questions that brings clarity to what they thought of as chaos.

    As a child growing up, I was often given labels.

    The shy one, the stutterer, the oldest, (which carried expectations) the quiet one.

    Because of this, labels have always made me cringe. I also cringed when I heard labels intended for others. In my heart of hearts, even when I was a child, I knew that I could not be defined by a label, that I was much more, and much less than anyone else’s perception of me.  It took me a long time to be able understand who I was, and it was through my grief journey that I was finally able to step fully and unapologetically into my Self.

    Even though I work intuitively, I don’t label myself “An Intuitive.”

    Even though I am able to feel how my client is feeling, I don’t call myself  “An Empath. “

    To me these are labels that confine me in a box in which I don’t fit.

    I’ve had business coaches tell me that I have to define myself in specific terms. And nothing ever resonated completely.  I can tell you what I do, and I won’t confine myself to a box that limits who I am.

    Sometimes I describe myself as a Grief Journey Guide.

    That feels spacious enough to allow all of me to show up as I do in each moment.  It also allows my prospective clients to get clarity on what that means. When I’m asked, “What does that mean?” or “What do you do as a Grief Journey Guide?”  Then I get to tell them what I do, and more specifically, what our work together might look like, because by that time I’ve spent enough time with them to feel into where they are being called.

    My work with each client looks a little different.

    Since I don’t limit myself in to a specific way to work with everyone, we are free to explore where my client is being called at the specific time we begin working together, and the course our work takes is created from there.  It all starts with presence.  I teach a present moment awareness practice called Samyama, and then we see what arises.  The present moment always holds the question that will allow my client to feel deeper into the answer.

    My work can’t be described in a 30 second commercial.  I don’t resonate with traditional marketing strategies. As a matter of fact, I don’t market my business.

    I share who I am and trust that those who are drawn to my work will show up, and they always do.

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  • How Did I Get Here?

    How Did I Get Here?

    It occurred to me that if you are a recent reader of my blog, you might not know how I got to a place where I’m able to be vulnerable about my grief journey.

    Let me take a few minutes to bring you up to date.

    All my life I’ve been a seeker. Even as a child, I always sensed my inner light, even though I was sure I was wrong. A lot of things in my early life led me to believe that I had no value.  Neighborhood kids bullied me, I was sexually abused starting at age 8, and I had a severe stutter, which affected most of my early life. Still, I had glimmers of what came through to me as my true essence. I always thought that was hogwash.

    I did a lot of work to move beyond the abuse of my childhood. By the time I had my own children, I was in touch with a semblance that inner light most of the time, yet I was still a work in progress.

    In November of 2000, my 17-year old daughter Leah died from injuries she sustained in a car accident on her way to school; she was a senior. She hit a tree, the only one in the middle of a cornfield, and had severe brain injuries. After 5 days in the hospital we had to make the impossible decision to remove her from life support. I thought my life was over.

    And it was, my life as I knew it would never be the same again.

    Shortly after she died, I received two messages. They were similar to the message I received as a child about my inner light.

    Losing Leah is too high a price to pay to not live the life you were meant to live.

    Everything you have done up until this point has prepared you for what is coming next.

    I had no idea how I was going to make sense of either of those messages at the time; however, I knew that in order to honor my daughter, I would have to try to excavate the life I was meant to live. I turned to a practice that was already a part of my life at the time, a direct experience practice of present moment awareness called Samyama.

    Samyama helped me to be with the pain of my daughter’s death, without all of the stories that went with it.

    I also already had a trusted Samyama practitioner. In those days I didn’t want to talk about Leah’s death to anyone who didn’t know me well. I was self-isolating, and staying in my pain.  It’s what most of us do in early grief.

    I found Samyama to be a powerful resource to unravel the stories that held me in a place of suffering after Leah died.

    I found that my heart could hold the pain, and teach me how to be with my feelings, which eventually began to shift them.

    I discovered that my heart is an alchemical vessel that can hold anything, no matter how big or painful or uncomfortable.

    I learned how to get better at feeling my feelings.

    Every time I was able to bring my feelings to my heart without the stories, I would receive blessings and grace, every single time. I was beginning to experience the alchemy of grief.

    The alchemy of my grief journey allowed me to go deeper into those old childhood wounds, and heal them more fully. My daughter’s death provided me with the initiation necessary to fully excavate that light that was only a glimmer earlier in my life.

    I found my voice through my grief journey and I learned how to take a stand for myself. I learned that when I speak from my heart I do not stutter. I learned that I can feel joy and pain at the same time; they are not mutually exclusive.  I became an author and a speaker. I uncovered that light that has always burned in my soul.

    I am living the life I was meant to live.

    Living the life I was meant to live means that I continue to be present to where life is calling me in each moment. That is the biggest lesson of my grief journey, and how I continue to honor my daughter.

     

     

  • Do You Have a Daily Practice?

    Do You Have a Daily Practice?

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    Throughout my life I’ve always been fascinated when someone talked about a daily practice.

    I imagined that their practice allowed them to be exactly the person they wanted to be, 100% of the time, especially when the person talking about to me was someone I looked up to, someone who seemed to have it all together.

    I tried many times to cultivate a morning practice of my own.

    Do you have a morning practice?

    Maybe a better question is do you have a practice that is sustainable?

    What makes a morning practice sustainable?

    I’ve strived to find a morning practice, or any practice for that matter, that I will do consistently. I was reminded recently that a daily practice is like making an investment in your self.

    • If you put $5 a week in your bank account after a time, your money will not only accumulate, it will grow.
    • If you watch a rain barrel fill with raindrops, it may seem empty for a long time, and then it’s overflowing and able to water your plants.

    In my own quest to find a sustainable daily practice, I’ve tried many things, and many times of the day.  Things like Samyama, or prayer, or writing to name a few.  Consistency has always been elusive for me, in many areas of my life. Every time I strayed from my practice  even for one day, I considered myself a failure and spiraled into days of negative self-talk for not doing what I set out to do.

    Have you ever done that?

    Over time, (lots of time) I realized that I was trying to be too perfect. One of the great lessons from my grief journey was giving myself grace when I was striving for perfection.  I have now cultivated a daily practice that is sustainable and that won’t derail if I miss a day.

    I begin (most) days sitting in Samyama,  (presence) followed by writing, followed by movement. When I have an early morning commitment, I do at least one of these things some other time of the day.  As I continue to consistently invest in my self-care in this way, I find that I can ease up on myself when I’m tempted to berate myself for skipping a day.

    The “results “ of a daily practice may not be apparent on a day-to-day basis, and maybe not even on a week-to-week basis.  Yet I’m beginning to feel the accumulative effect of my daily practice. And that right there is enough for me to continue each day.

    You may wonder the same thing, if you’ve been doing a daily practice fairly consistently.

    Is it worth the time?

    Could you be doing something more productive?

    And then you find yourself in a situation that calls for patience, and you know exactly how to access it.

    Or the answer to a prayer you’ve been saying arrives in a miraculous way.

    Scrupulous devotion to our daily rituals creates alchemy that show up as miracles.

    What have you noticed in your own life?

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  • Reclaiming My Voice Through My Grief Journey

    Reclaiming My Voice Through My Grief Journey

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    One of the biggest changes I’ve experienced as I traveled along my grief journey is speaking up; I’ve reclaimed my voice.

    As I prepared to bring my book into the world I needed to cultivate the capacity to tell my story in the way I was being called to tell it.

    This was very daunting for me. I grew up with a severe stutter. I avoided speaking (not just speaking to an audience) at all costs. I felt shame, and was sure something was deeply wrong with me. Yet, by this time, I recognized my inner guidance. I knew what it felt like in my body, and I was being called to tell my story.

    I prepared for this calling in several ways.

    I worked with an Embodied Movement coach to cultivate the space in my body to hold my story. I found that even after all the inner work I had done through my life, my body was still holding on to remnants of old stuff that needed to be released. I was able to free up space in my body so that I could embody my story. This work was so powerful that when my coach offered her work to other professionals to learn how to incorporate it into their own work with clients, I took it, and now am able to use Embodied Movement Practices with my own clients to help them to move old feelings through, and make space for where life is calling them now.

    I joined Toastmasters, Video Mojo Toastmasters, specifically. Here I was able to not only learn how to speak in from of an audience, I learned how to create good quality videos, as well as how to create a You Tube Channel.

    I also worked with a voice and messaging coach. She helped me to speak with emotion in my voice without breaking down. Up until that time, I could tell my story, yet there was no emotion in my voice or face. It was one of the ways I protected myself from completely losing my composure. Learning how to tell my story with emotion, with vulnerability helps me to connect with my audiences.

    One of the myths of grief is that time heals all wounds.

    It’s a myth because it’s not just the time that heals; it’s what you do with that time.  Similarly, finding my voice, there were things I needed to do to use it effectively.  I learned how to embody my story, so I could tell it with vulnerability, confidence, and grace.

    Finding my voice not only assisted my to tell my story, it also helps me in my everyday life. I now speak up when I am compelled to speak. I’ve discovered that when I speak from my heart, I do not stutter.

    I’ve dismantled the shame.

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