I am going to live rather than die
To recover rather than receed
To rest and rejuvenate without guilt and loss
To take it easy on good days despite my urge to run and play and dance and do
To cry without going to the bottom again
To know my symptoms are messages from a brain that is working like hell to fix itself
To see myself well and strong again
To know, without a shadow of doubt, that I will make a full recovery.
To love myself unconditionally through this to the other side.
These regular posts of inspiration and determined focus on what is fabulous are like buoys in the ocean. They are like little guide posts on the path towards the good life.
In the inevitable ebb and flow of existence I’m going to admit to feeling a little less than fabulous today. My recovery from post concussion syndrome and whiplash is taking longer than I ever anticipated and my capacity to remain calm and centred is eroding.
Gloria Steinem said “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” I guess my current truth is that I have had to let go of control of my body. It has pissed me off to the point of total surrender. It is not fun. It does not feel like liberation. It does not feel like awakening or any of that good stuff. It actually feels like failure if I’m totally honest.
So in this place of surrender, with a looming feeling of failure, I offer it all up. I let go of it all. Like leaves in the river I will let the current take me away and have faith that it will all work out.
Today in meditation I spoke with the younger me. I asked her to dream big; dream wild and crazy and wonderful things. She looked at me with a huge smile and said, “Can I really dream big? How big? Can it really come true?” I replied with an enthusiastic yes! “What you dream I live; what you believe I become” I explained. She threw up her arms, tipped her head back and twirled while she whispered “I know exactly what I want, I can see it when I close my eyes, but I don’t know how to get it.”
Recognizing this fear, I took a breath and then told her the secret I had just learned. I explained that the path effortlessly unfolds as long as you passionately dream it. Dream big without hesitation or hindrance. Dream with faith and enthusiasm.
To this she was quick to reply, ” I want to do cartwheels, laugh and joke and make people smile. I want to dance and dream and be happy!”
My little tap dancing self.
Tears welled up in our eyes as I held her hand and said “That is a wonderful dream! Your life is beautiful;even better than you could ever imagine. Please just keep dreaming, never stop, never let go of the joy of all that is and will be.”
After having that conversation with my younger self I felt a tapping on my shoulder and heard a whisper in my ear. I realized it was my older self. She said “I am thinking nice thoughts from a yacht in the Caribbean, glass of champagne in hand. You dreamed so big, you believed so much and I am so grateful. The time you are living now is the time when everything changed. Something lifted, a door opened and you took a fork in the road towards pure bliss love, passion and belief in yourself. This made all the difference.” She went on to tell me of the future I was headed for. It blew me away. It was the future I had been dreaming of but feared would never come to be.
With a lump in my throat I said to my future self “What can I do now to be sure that this all happens the way you say?” My future self told me to abandon all fear and replace it with faith. She said “When I look back upon our life I see the path wind around obstacles that simply weren’t there except in our mind. Walk slowly with determination and joy towards that which you really desire and I promise it will all come right.”
I told her my dreams and we had tears in our eyes. She held my hands and said “You already are all those things and so much more. You live a beautiful life that is even better than you could have ever imagined.”
In that moment I realized that no matter what stage of life, all I have to do is dream big and fearlessly allow all that will be. It all made such beautiful sense and filled me with a sense of peace I’d never known.
I opened my eyes and gently returned to the present moment. I smiled and took a deep knowing breath.
Stuck in limbo suffering from post concussion syndrome I feel trapped by the limits of my own miss functioning brain. During this time it’s hard to avoid walking the path of fear which inevitably leads to doubt. My feet are too inclined to march downhill. As much as I want to take the road less travelled I’m tired and worn down by pain and despair.
What I have left is my imagination. I can push forward far enough into the future that I can see myself as well again. When I close my eyes to what is I can open my heart to what will be. This is my salvation but it is also my choice. I paint the future with my mind. The colours and brushes I choose define the path I will walk.
I paint joy, abundance and freedom. I paint laughter, travel and acceptance. In my imagination I am. All that I want to be.
Constant access to anything makes it invisible. Gratitude brings it back into focus.
I live in the Rocky Mountains in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. I am surrounded by stunning natural beauty and encounter wild animals almost daily. I have often wondered if I’ve become complacent in my awe of this place until I was recently struck by a thought that cut deep into my existence.
On a recent road trip with my family I was daydreaming and gazing out the car window when out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of something common, but saw it with new eyes. What I saw was a group of tourists on the side of the road taking photos of a handful of bighorn sheep. As I watched the visitors inch closer to the dangerous wild animals I was struck first with concern for their well being then harsh criticism over their response to something as banal as a herd of sheep. Rather than revel in the beauty of these majestic wild animals I was contemplating why anyone would ever want to photograph this roadside scene, nevermind risk their lives to do so?
This thought suddenly sent me back to the first time I ever saw a big horned sheep. As a 19 year old girl living in the majestic Jasper National Park in Alberta, I eagerly whipped out my camera every time I saw an elk, bighorn sheep, deer, and of course a bear. It was an awesome and new experience to cross paths with such animals and snapping a photo was part of the excitement. Those photographs live in a box somewhere and have long lost their luster, but for a time they hung on my walls and refrigerator and filled me with enthusiasm and appreciation for the place I temporarily called home.
When did it change? At what point did this experience go from awesome to ordinary? Why do I so easily criticize people for doing the exact same thing I did years ago? As I followed this thought I realized that there was a profound lesson here.
Why does the newness of something dictate its value? Perhaps our conditioning to want the next and the newest and the best and the brightest has eroded our ability to value what we already have. Would escaping this paradigm not alleviate some of the pressure to constantly work to accumulate and obtain?
What I realized in that moment was that access creates invisibility. When we have constant, never ending access to anything it loses its value. Constant access to money reduces the value of each dollar. Constant access to love can make it so invisible that we take it for granted. Living in a place without war makes peace invisible.
I don’t want to ever lose sight of what is true and what is right and what is important no matter how accessible it is to me. The best way to do this is to practice daily gratitude. Gratitude opens the heart and the eyes to things we already have and brings the invisible back into focus. When we take time to really appreciate the things that are presently in our life we direct our attention to what we love rather than focusing on what is missing.
So to those eager tourists I say a humble namaste and thank you for reminding me to appreciate all that lies in front of me.
Find me on Twitter @tallerthanilook
I’m always giving myself a hard time.
Have you ever heard someone say that?Have you ever felt deep inside that you are giving yourself a hard time?
Do you criticize and critique your every thought, every move, every action… thinking that somehow it will propel you to be better.
Do you think that doing this protects you in some way? Think it will make you smarten up or behave or do the right thing or be the right person?
The truth is it will do nothing but cut you down and make you feel awful. Harsh words reduce and diminish they don’t inspire and ignite. Whether said to yourself or someone else criticism is not what makes us grow. It is love and compassion that makes us better.
If we get what we give in the world and we spend so much time giving ourselves a hard time it makes sense to think that what we would receive in return is a life that feels hard, feels difficult, like it’s beating us up.
Whether we like it or not we are part of this cycle of giving and receiving and if we continue giving ourselves a hard time that’s what we will get. Give yourself a break.. give yourself love and compassion and you will receive that in return. Look for examples of how you are in the cycle of giving and receiving in your life and you will see very quickly that it is true. Look for beauty and it will find you. Give into the temptation to find what feels good and your life will be full of things that feel good.
Find me on Twitter @tallerthanilook
In sharing my struggles with post concussion syndrome with my friends family and readers on my blog, I have opened a door to compassion and love and sharing. I think on some level I felt as though sharing my pain with the world was a sign of weakness and I was very hesitant to do so. As I pursue positivity and strength and wellness in this world it is what I wish to project, but I am also human and vulnerable and in this moment going through something very difficult and painful.
A friend of mine shared the photo above with me on Facebook and it shook something deep inside me. What a beautiful sentiment to imagine that the darkness is where you plan to yourself and from this place you grow stronger and into the Sun.
I would really like to open a conversation about how the darkness can become a place from which you grow. Does anyone have an experience they would like to share?
It was as if someone pulled the rug out from under me; like a gust of wind picked up and blew apart the house of cards I’d been diligently building. I tried to carry on, push through and catch up. Ignoring the signs my body was desperate for me to read, I carried on… until I absolutely couldn’t. The pain literally shut me down – first body, then mind, then soul.
I’m working on living an authentic life. Trying to be mindful, aware, open and accepting. I’m determined to let go but trying to not try is harder than it sounds. But I’m not alone in this endeavour. I’ve got support. From Elkhart Tolle to Bruce Lipton to my dear friend Liza Hindmarch I’ve learned that our mental state is not meant to be reactionary, it’s meant to be creative. Our thoughts are powerful contributors to our experience and we’d all do well to make them supportive rather than destructive.
So what happened? Why, four months after a car accident which left me with whiplash and a concussion, after rounds of acupuncture, chiropractor visits, guided meditations, massage and rest, did my symptoms suddenly return with a vengeance? The pain and mental disconnect became so bad I took medical leave from a job I love, sequestered myself away from the children I adore and wept in bed for weeks. I leaned more heavily on my husband than ever before and resented myself for having to do it. I was so far from accepting and allowing that I gobbled up pain meds like candy and drilled my knuckles as deep and hard into my temples as I could muscle. The CT, MRI, ENT and blood work all revealed a healthy body. Doctors postulated around the headaches, selecting new pain meds almost daily, but despite the pharmacopoeia that was my purse, the pain endured and the wooziness remained. As I write now, my brain feels like some wires are loose. My capacity to function has returned enough for me to be awake and partake more in the day, but I’m still recovering. I’m still frightened and fragile and far from myself.
This is post concussion syndrome. It’s a medical word to describe feeling messed up for weeks , months or years following a head injury. It’s invisible, and insufferable. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. But there is a lesson here… I will uncover the message my body is sending me.
My whole life I have always dreamed of living a life of travel…of feeling the wind at my back and a stir in my soul. I want to allow things to unfold and stop resisting the natural current of my path. Having two young children to care for on a daily basis I have found myself buying into the ‘security’ of the pre-conceived life. Recently I have realised that there is no ‘security’ in this existence, that we must give in to our base vulnerability in order to live fully and in the present moment. At 40 years old I am taking stock of what is really important and finding ways to please my restless heart and fill my soul with the nourishment it deserves.
This photo is from a camping trip my family took to Mitten Lake near Golden BC. It is one that captures all I want in life. I am deeply in love with the man in the plaid shirt, am inspired by the incredible determination and effortlessness of my two boys, and together we are on the edge of something incredibly beautiful. Can we take the plunge? Can we really design our own lives?
I have recently been struggling with intense headaches, wooziness, and a detached mental state. Medical tests have been unsuccessful in diagnosing the issue. I have had to give up work and am required to ‘rest’. I feel on some level that this is a reset button…a painful yet important opportunity to just stop…stop trying, stop planning, stop fixing, stop chasing, stop doing and start being. A friend once said to me “we are supposed to be human beings but we spend all our time as human doings”.
I’m tired. Chasing my tail has wrapped me in chains that just don’t fit. I’m going to state my intentions here, hand them up to the universe, and then let go…
I want to travel the world, I want to write for a living (and a loving), I want to show my boys that they can do anything they want to do, I want to make money doing what I love to do, I want to cherish my marriage, I want to drink wine with incredible women, I want to inspire myself and those around me, I want to live in the home of my dreams, I want to receive a job offer that is too good to pass up.
I honour the feisty girl inside me…I hear her begging me to stop. I hear her asking me to come play. I am listening…
As I search for something I can’t quite define I find myself drawn to Sonia Choquette. There is a beauty and life in her books and I devour them with pure gratitude. As I read I feel as though we are connected, as though she knows me on another level. She has taught me to trust myself and my own inner guidance and I am forever changed.
This letting go is completely counter to the way I was raised. Without discrediting my parents, who are deeply loving and protective, this new way of viewing the universe as a supportive rather than hostile entity is both liberating and unsettling.
Sonia tells me to trust my vibes… To listen to my own inner guidance. But deep down I wonder what my inner guidance has to say? How can I listen?
In order to do that with any success I first need to scrape away layers of conditioned thought and patterns of behaviour. This is easier said than done in a modern world full of distractions and the glossy venere of traditional perspectives. If I wish to peek behind the curtain to find the real me, I’m going to have to let go of some beliefs that I’ve come to rely on, beliefs that ultimately provide me with my comfortable life handcuffs.
I was lucky enough to meet Sonia Choquette at the “I can do it” workshop in Vancouver last spring. She wore a red and white gingham print skirt straight out of a 1950s kitchen, a bright red sweater and a smile that was indescribably honest. She had all 1,200 of us stand up and shout HA while beating on our chests. After 3 minutes of this she asked us to stop, and feel. I stopped… And felt an amazing rush of energy, joy, abundance, wellness and love. I had tears in my eyes. She paused, drew a breath and then said “Do you feel that? That is your spirit. That’s how your spirit always feels. When you connect with it you connect with this wonderful feeling and you’ll never want to feel anything less.”
Why do we live so far away from this feeling? Why do we look to reason before intuition when seeking guidance? My own acquiescence to ‘walk the beaten path’ has led me to chronic headaches, shingles and a growing dependence on prescription medication. I want more. I want out.
Sonia’s advice is to stop, breathe, beat my chest and resurect my spirit. I’m going to follow her down whichever
rabbit hole she ventures into.
It is a new time for me. I choose wellness. I choose simple and honest and true. I’m on a journey to uncover my own spirit and am willing to let go to do it.
Jo Traveller 