I have been silent…. not withdrawn and hiding out in a hole silent but more of a watching myself and my patterns and a curiosity of what is possible for me kind of silent. This silence is not usual for me. The minute I have a new awareness or learn something that has helped me immensely, I want to speak about it and share it so that others can benefit as well.
So this past 3 months for me has been very different. I haven’t felt moved to share much and even if I did have a momentary nudge of inspiration to speak, I kept getting the message from my internal wisdom “Not yet Glenda. Keep it in house.”
I am now feeling moved to share my story and part of me wants to keep it close to my heart as it is a tender place and I am still on the journey of discovering what is possible. So this is coming from my heart and not a place of having it handled and having it all figured out. I don’t. What I do have are some awarenesses and shifts that have literally changed who I am being and how I am living my life.
Part of what has been holding me back a bit is not knowing where to start. I have kept very good notes of my experience and yet I am not being guided to refer to them. So I will start where I start and see what happens, kinda like how I am living my days right now.
Here we go. In mid November of 2016, I was on a retreat with my coach and the group of people that are in the coaching program with me. It was the midpoint of a year long program called Flight School by the Wide Awakening and it was a launching point of what we each would be focusing on, our “project”, for the next six months. The main reason I joined Flight School, or so I thought, was to really expand my coaching business and maybe look after my body a little along the way, addressing my hormones and energy. So I was really looking forward to this retreat because we would be focusing more on our businesses and in fact, there was an entire day dedicated to just that.
This “business day” was the first day of the retreat and I was excited. Enter back and neck pain and tension that developed into a splitting headache. I was in pain the entire day, pain that brought me to tears. I chose to skip going out for dinner and went back to the condo and went to bed because it was so bad. Message #1 on this trip from my body and I didn’t get it.
Throughout the week, we were discussing what “our piece of the puzzle” was, what we are here to do with our unique skill sets and personality traits combined with the divine part of us. This is something I have not been clear on. I have thought I knew what it was but it was more what I wanted it to be or thought it should be instead of what it is. I have dismissed it and downplayed it because it comes easily to me and I viewed it as not being enough. When my coach asked me “You do know that you are love incarnate, don’t you?” I said no. Aren’t we all here to love and doesn’t everyone love the way I do? Apparently not as the whole group laughed at my question. And I wasn’t able to fully accept that that is one of my gifts because I felt like a fraud. People tell me all the time what a big heart I have and how I emanate love that heals but I haven’t believed them because I couldn’t feel it for myself. I was cut off from it by this belief that I am not enough and by how much I have pushed myself to be something I am not. I haven’t been able to feel the love because I have lived most of my life out of alignment with who I really am.
Message #2 from my body came in the form of a text from my husband. The week before leaving for Quebec, I had 2 more moles removed. Now if you don’t know my story, I have already had 3 melanomas removed from my body. The text said that the nurse from my dermatologist’s office had called and wanted me to phone her. The results were that not one, but both were melanomas and that I had to go back in and have wide excisions done so they could take more tissue to make sure they got all of it. You would think that I would be used to this news by now but I was a little shocked. Seriously? Who has 5 melanomas before the age of 50? When I returned to the group, I broke down in tears as my mortality came to the forefront again. I didn’t get it. Why was I spending the week in pain, my body practically yelling at me and why was I facing dealing with skin cancer yet again?
And then I got it. With the assistance of my coach and people who I consider part of my soul family, I finally go the messages that my body has been trying to give me for the past 40 or so years. The body pain and tension, the hormonal shit show, the digestive issues, exhaustion, a sensitized nervous system that is in fight or flight 90% of the time and the skin cancers have all been trying to tell me how out of alignment I have been living my life. My habit of trying to be someone I am not and then beating myself up for it because I can never do that has been a perpetual feedback loop that has taken a toll on my body and my health. The belief that I tapped into as a child of not being enough and therefore having to strive to be more, to be better, to do it all myself and get it “right”, to people please and put everyone else first has caused me to will my way through life, seeing everything as a responsibility or an obligation. It has robbed my body of health and vitality and it has robbed my life of fun, joy and play. And it will literally rob me of my life if I don’t change my habits of being. I got on that retreat that if I don’t listen to what the melanomas and all the body symptoms have been trying to tell me, then my pancreas will have to start speaking to me in the form of cancer. Both my mom and my Nana died at age 60 of pancreatic cancer. This may seem a little dramatic to you but all I can say is that I know this to be true deep inside of me.
I am flabbergasted with all the work that I have done on myself, all that I have learned and experienced that it has got to this point for me to finally get it. I thought I was listening to my body. Hell, I teach people how to listen to their body wisdom for heaven sakes. It is one of the reasons I am here on this planet. And, I had to experience this to really get it at such a deep level and be of assistance to others who are experiencing the same.
My body has been trying to tell me that expanding my coaching practice in a big way right now is not what is best for me. In fact, it won’t work and it hasn’t. This past year is a testament to that. My body and health were not in a state to be able to receive a the bigger business that I desired. It will be the size it is and new clients will come to me in the perfect timing, as they have been. I get it now. So my “project” for the next 6 months is me. It is not “fixing” me but instead, it is me coming more into alignment with who I really am. It is putting my wellbeing first above everything else. It is healing my body so that it can catch up with all the shifts in consciousness I have experienced so that I can truly thrive in my life and be the piece of the puzzle I am here to be.
I took 8 weeks off work completely and rested. Here is the crazy thing. I didn’t even know how stressed I was!!!!!!!! If you asked me if I was stressed, I would have said no. What did I have to be stressed about? No major dramas were going down in my life. How could I be stressed?
I love this analogy about stress. If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will hop right back out of the pot as it’s fight or flight response kicks in. But if you put a frog in a pot of water and then slowly turn up the temperature, it will stay in the pot and die because the heat was increased in small increments. That is how stress was for me and how stress is for a lot of people.
When I gave myself permission to rest, my body took me deep. I was exhausted in a way I had not felt before, not even when I was pregnant and had gestational diabetes. And on top of that, I would be lying in my bed resting and yet my nervous system was completely revved up, in fight or flight, for no apparent reason. My heart would pound, it was difficult to catch my breath, there was tension in my body especially my chest, neck and face and I felt really anxious. It was sooooo uncomfortable! I felt like I was losing my mind some days as I watched myself go through this phase. I am so glad I had support or I might have lost it.
I also went through a period of mourning my life but not in a “poor me” sort of way. I mourned the joy I have missed out on, the love I haven’t been able to receive or feel, how hard I have worked in my life by constantly willing my way through my days and the sadness of my perception of the roles of mom and wife as obligations and responsibilities. All the feelings had to be felt to move through me. I knew this and yet it only made it feel slightly less painful.
This lasted for weeks and then December came with all the kids’ school activities and my Dad visiting for two weeks. I got through that period by asking for a lot of help. For someone who has done everything herself and been uber independent her whole life, this was not easy. But it was necessary so I asked and received the help I needed. And there were times were I defaulted back into my old habits of doing it all and it resulted in me having to rest even more. I remember the moment vividly when I realized that I didn’t know how to go through my day without pushing. Everything seemed like a chore and something I just had to get done. I remember crying as I was heading out the door to grocery shop, wondering how I was going to be afterward because I only knew how to push through it and get it done.
Then Boxing Day came and my eldest daughter began vomiting. And two days later, my youngest daughter began vomiting and also had a horrible cough and congestion complete with a fever. I wasn’t getting a lot of sleep during this time and didn’t feel great but just when they were on the mend, I came down and with the cough/congestion fever. Three weeks of “sickness” in the house was difficult to get through on top of my adrenal exhaustion. What I realized though is that even though I had given myself permission to rest for the latter part of November and the month of December, part of me (my ego) was judging it. I was resting but felt like I should be doing more. So it took being sick on top of the adrenal fatigue for me to surrender and rest fully, without judgement but with acceptance instead. Can you tell that I have a very strong ego that wants to keep running the show?
While it was NOT a very pleasant experience to go through, I am very grateful that I finally came to that place of acceptance and surrender. Because on the other side of it, I am changed. I no longer feel like I am not enough. I no longer live with a feeling of desperation to get somewhere or be anything but myself. And while I am still discovering who the real me is, I am in a place of curiosity and not in a place of fixing. I am much more in the present instead of looking to the future. I am not feeling responsible for others’ journeys and am not carrying other people by worrying about them. I am no longer willing to push my way through my days with productivity and achievement fuelling me. I am learning how to move through my day from inspiration with play and fun while listening every so closely to my body for signals of when I may forget and start pushing. I am taking care of my body with bodywork, nutrition, yoga, meditation and dance.
And every morning, I am starting the day asking the Universe to show me how to live my day from inspiration, to show me what would love do and being curious about who I get to dance with today. I have been learning to be in flow and will continue to do so through my experience. That, I am committed to, 100%. That is what I know.
I am forever grateful to my mentor Jennifer Hough, my soul family (you know who you are), my friends and family for all your love, support and insight and to my husband, Tom, well for everything and for loving me and seeing me in my wholeness.
Thank you for allowing me to share my journey with you. It has been the biggest gift to me and I have shared it in the hopes that you have received something as well.
Until inspiration strikes again,
Much love,
Glenda