Have Faith: If you want to change your thinking, heal your heart...

"To arrive at this place in my life, I had to overcome so very much. I had to overcome crippling abandonment issues, internalized shame, and self-doubt. I had to punch my way through endless challenges as I worked to become the person I am and to surrender to writing as a path.

I had to fight for my right to the light, time and time again, for more than 5 decades.

If there is one thing that distinguishes those who are able to move on from crazy families, from those who remain dysfunctionally trapped within them, it is that the former were able to disidentify with where they came from and seek their identity elsewhere. At some point, they made the courageous, bold decision that they were not them and that they had to look elsewhere for direction and family. This is often a very difficult thing to do because crazy families don’t usually give us the love that grows us capable of taking flight, but it is the only possibility if you wish to break the cycle. Someone has to step out and craft a new path home. Some realities are worth running from…

We all want to manifest our callings, but timing is everything. I learned this the hard way. I always knew I would write, but I didn’t understand that I needed to build the foundation first.

So, I sat down to write, time and again, and I couldn’t quite find it. I knew there was a writer living in there somewhere, but I couldn’t find her. I needed a little more time, a little more suffering, a lot more lessons. I hadn’t lived enough to manifest her.

In this driven world, we are often pushed too early. We are shamed for our uncertainty, insulted for our confusion, called lazy and selfish. But some callings need time to be cultivated. Some gifts cannot be opened too quickly. We have to craft them first, over time, in the fires of lived experience.

If you have a calling living inside of you, don’t rush to manifest it. Trust your own instincts as to the steps you need to take. Build the inner foundation you will need to see it through. Better to offer this ailing world one remarkable thing, than a hundred fragments of possibility.
We need what you have to offer desperately.

We must not give up. It takes so much time to heal because we are not just healing our own wounds we are healing the world’s wounds, too. We think we are alone with our ‘stuff’, but we aren’t. With every clearing of our emotional debris, with every foray into a healthier way of being, with every excavation and release of old material, we heal the collective heart. So many of our familial and karmic ancestors had little opportunity to heal their pains. When we heal, their spirits breathe a sigh of relief. We heal them backwards while healing ourselves forward.
We heal in unison.

When people ask me how and why I did it, I only have one answer- Soul. Not ego, not masochism, not the need to be acknowledged but, instead, the deep need to fully excavate and actualize my soul’s voice- my reasons for being, my entelechy, what James Hillman called the ‘innate image’. It was like a desperate longing to be who I was called to become in this lifetime. And as difficult as it was to find and live that voice, it was easier than the uncomfortable alternative. It was easier than living a lie.

Wherever you are at on your journey through time, be assured that there is a soul path somewhere at the heart of it. And, as difficult as it may be to see it, as overwhelming as it may seem to embody it, it is well worth the effort. Once you catch a glimpse of it, it will beckon you home, like a fire of divine possibility with your name on it. And that fire… will not only show you the direction to walk, it will fuel you as you overcome the obstacles in the way. It will warm and inspire your every step.

When you walk through the gateway of your sacred purpose, you walk into yourself. Blessing buffered from the madness of the world, your purpose ﬁlters out those relationships and energies that undermine your expansion. Infused with vitality and a clariﬁed focus, new pathways of possibility appear where before there were obstacles. Life still has its challenges, but you interface with them differently, coated in an authenticity of purpose that sees through the veils to what really matters."

Don’t lose the faith, wherever you are on the path.
Keep going…

Sometimes we forget how far we have travelled while we are looking ahead to the next steps. Good to lie down and remember what it took to get this far, all those karmic hoops we had to jump through, all those overcomings. Good to stroke our face with love and to remind ourselves how much courage it took and who we would have become if we hadn’t braved the journey. Good to say ‘thank you’ to the inner spirit that walks within and beside us, whispering sweet somethings in our inner ear, reminding us that we are simply and utterly worth fighting for. We ARE simply
and utterly worth fighting for.

Growing is all about leaps into the seeming unknown...