Day 3: Healthy Community as the Foundation for a Grounded Life

Community has been vital in my process with financial recovery. Without feeling grounded in the everyday rituals of friends, hobbies, nature, exercise and healthy outlook, I don’t think I could get through what it takes to shift my mindset.

Transformation, especially with all the projections, expectations, judgements and other faulty belief systems that permeate our culture, would be impossible without creating these rituals of everyday life. We need to be fully present to what each moment brings to create a different outcome.

People carrying the load of personal trauma, are often “floaters” – not fully present in their own body, their own humanity. They are escapees of what it takes to BE HERE NOW and instead long to remain separate from earth, separate from their own frailty and certainly from the dirty work of life. In fact, their connection to the source of all that is, even if they are “spiritual” tends to be unconsciously blocked.

Because our bodies are representations of who we are as spiritual beings, floaters don’t like their bodies or the message of their bodies anymore than seeing and sensing the complexities of the human existence. The failure to thrive, acted out in one form or another, is about not being grounded in the suffering that exists here. Because to be grounded in it means you must take personal responsibility for your portion of the debt.

Yes, that is the thing I avoided a long time. Not wanting to see the energy of money and create my life came from not really wanting to take personal responsibility for what I knew existed under the surface. I play acted at life. I read all the books, took the courses, went back to school several times.

I hoped that just doing those things would be enough and I would have a magical existence. When I went to film school at the age of 24, I imagined being a famous filmmaker. Nevertheless, not being grounded in my body, and deeply enmeshed in my personal trauma with co-dependent family bonding, doing what it took would have been impossible. Even if I had moved to LA, I would most certainly have been pray for the likes of people like Harvey Weinstein, who at the time of my graduation was already taking meetings in his hotel rooms.

While I had enough sense to not move to LA, I didn’t have enough strength to create my life. In fact, I was at the time of my graduation, so far above my body, and so deeply without structure, that I almost died.

The nature of community

It is important to note that the community I am referring to is a healthy one. Floaters will find unhealthy communities to which they look to prop up their fragile egos. Fellow drug addicts, poverty mindsets, alcoholics and nihilists aren’t healthy even if you all have a good time creating peak experiences of escaping.

Even spiritual communities are filled with fellow floaters looking to gurus, talking about their money problems, doing “healing” work that doesn’t get to the root of the issues and theorizing about the latest ideas on star gates and portals to other planets.

It took a long time to understand and embody healthy paradigms while developing the necessary skills to join healthy communities. Nevertheless, a healthy community is not so much a thing as a mindset itself.

The work

Over the years, all my various exercises from learning to be a massage therapist, taking a coaching certificate, to moving to the Midwest all were attempts at fixing something I knew was not working. It was a path, and every time I took on a new project I did make some incremental shifts. Still, these pivot points obscured a voice in the back of my mind, a small whisper of “but you are still going to need to do this work.”

And here I am. I finally accepted what I avoided for so long. I finally saw that no other degree program or certificate was going to reach the depth of these traumas and heal the bonding wounds that reside in my DNA and energetic structure. These wounds are so unconscious, that as I uncovered them, I couldn’t believe the stories I was hearing from my soul and my body and my ancestors.

I also realized as I worked through these layers, that there was no way that my 24-year old self, craving fame, attention and validation as she was, would ever have been strong enough to handle this work.

Neither would I have been strong enough at all the other pivot points.

Universal timing was going to require from me this epic Hero’s Journey.

Back to community

I went out on my friend’s boat, Sunday. I originally met Duane (the owner of Skipping Stones) at the curling club, along with many of my other good friends. As I soaked in the St Croix with the beautiful trees and nature surrounding me, feeling the river grasses and undulating cool water caress my skin, I was happy to BE HERE NOW.

I took up curling when I arrived in the Twin Cities. It has turned out to be one of the most grounding and gratifying sports. The community is a strong one. It is not perfect. Both the healthy and the unhealthy exist in one space. Like everything, you have a choice which path you choose. The longer I curl and the more I heal, the choice to create a healthy and solid future becomes clear.

We have a choice to be here or float, pretending it all doesn’t matter, and complaining about the negative outcomes floating leads to. Being here is the work. Removing the blocks to us inhabiting our bodies and creating from the Universe, is the work. Creating healthy communities and positive paradigms is the work. Without doing the work WE will die. Either individually or collectively.

The healing is a choice.

#2018 #ancestraltrauma #Curling #mind #innerwork #familytrauma #Transformation #financialhealth #betterchoices #bestself #wellness #health #Authenticity #career #learning #threedimensionaltherapy #EmotionCode #BodyCode #energy #connectiontoself #soul #selfhelp #empathic #patterns #intimacy #process #mindset #empath #emotionalsupport #personaljourney

Day 2: The Real Cost of Ice Cream and my Journey with Finances

A word on the cost of this ice cream

I purchased the pictured ice cream at Grand Ole Creamery on Monday. It is a double scoop – birthday cake and chocolate fudge brownie with their homemade cone. It isn’t cheap ice cream. The bill was $10.93. It tasted amazing and I appreciated the moment of sitting there with all the other denizens enjoying my summer treat.

Except it cost me more than $10.93 in the end. While I knew my account was low, I wanted to treat myself after a heavy week of interviews and rejections.

Unfortunately, I dipped below zero in my account and it cost me an additional $33, along with three other charges that same night for a total of $66 in bank fees.

Even though I’d paid off the overdraft I was carrying in that account (with a property tax refund) and started using the YNAB app (You Need a Budget), living on less than $400 a week in unemployment takes its toll on every aspect of my life. In theory I should never have taken my wallet out for my evening walk.

A sorry state of mind

This is more than just a treatise on spending plans and deprivation, though. It is a state of mind. Somehow, I created a life that barely sustains my existence on this planet. While I consider myself a happy person, deep down inside, I am clearly not feeling worthy of existence. Let’s get real about abundance blocks. They are insidious. Band-Aid approaches do not work for those of us with these deep-seated blocks.

Given the high profile and not so high profile (just see the RIP posts on my Facebook on any given day) suicides and early demises which have taken place, and you have to admit something is wrong with this picture.

Most people are not feeling worthy of their existence and it plays out in a myriad of ways from actual death to dying slowly – dating the wrong people so they don’t have to be alone, drinking too much and drug use (often backed up by a bunch of reasons why they NEED to be on drugs) and loads of other ways our shame is played out on the world stage.

Just this weekend, friends of mine were dealing with a member of their own family who had been committed to a psych ward with a suicide note and a heroin addiction. This shit is real. And everyone is touched by it in some way.

A long history of financial problems

My financial issues have plagued me my whole adult life. As I realized in 2016, I would need to deal with them head-on or I’d probably die early. Not from suicide (although when you aren’t able to sustain a regular existence it comes across your mind) but from a failure to thrive. Not eating enough, not paying rent on time, and a mounting debt problem weighs you down for real.

But how do you change this?

The fact is, it isn’t just a case of managing your cash flow – or all the books I read, classes I took or the software I owned would have made a difference before now. Yes…managing your cash is actually what it takes, in theory and if you just use your mind. However, realize that people with a skewed vision of money, carrying the baggage of ancestral and family trauma can use all those tools, and their subconscious will play out the pain body, sabotaging these efforts.

How money feels to me

It was never around, abandoned me just when I thought it was going well, looked like it was going to work out and disappeared (I often didn’t know “how” it disappeared), and was continually plagued by outside circumstances – i.e. - how does one pay rent with so little coming in? The shame around not being able to do what all my friends were doing was real almost every day. Still is.

How trauma works

Painstakingly, I have had to go into my energy body through my therapy sessions, uncover and heal stuff that I would have had no idea affected the way money worked in my life. Most all of it was passed down and I agreed to take it on, in utero.

After I was born, I just took those subconscious beliefs and created more on the top of them, based on how I already felt about my experiences from the ancestral baggage. This continued building through different periods of my life until the load was so heavy, the real world showed the signs. I could have read every book on the planet related to money and none of it would have made a damn difference.

How stuff started shifting

Unravelling the trauma required sessions at least every two weeks if not more for the last several years. As the past unwound, and my co-dependent relationship patterns emerged and left, the real-life stuff started happening. I have had to let go of structures (like my apartment I loved), friends, family members, jobs, dreams, dreamy thinking. I have had to create new structures – finance spreadsheets, apps, calendars of bills, paying only what came in (even if it meant making smaller payments for rent), and living a nomadic existence while I did it.

It DID NOT happen overnight. Each week I healed, maybe some tiny behavior shifted and it was easier (not easy) to do something like manage a spreadsheet. Or maybe, that week, it was time to tell a friend off and let them go because their way of thinking and being just wasn’t supporting my growth. That is A LOT OF PAIN. Trust me…each time, I felt I was ripping off a piece of my soul to do it.

The path forward

I look around at the destruction going on right now. There is a war going on in my inner world too. My ancestors and parents and other family may not have realized they passed down their unresolved feelings, beliefs and mucky attitudes. Nevertheless, somehow, I was left with the bag. The bag is going to be left behind before I die though. That is my plan.

Unfortunately, all around me I see the pain body – people hooked on drugs, people slowly dying in abusive relationship, people settling for less than the amazing life, people domineering and controlling, domestic violence, racial tension and violence and elected officials who would rather rape everyone then step up to the plate. People everywhere are not feeling worthy of their existence.

My YNAB app today

So, I got my unemployment check and a good $150 of it was already spent on ice cream and bank fees. Then I had to look out for the next couple weeks – something I just recently was able to do – and see all the charges going out. I was left with $20 – if I don’t spend anything on anything that isn’t already planned for until my next unemployment check. I *may* but it is not guaranteed, make a little cash at my part-time job at a restaurant movie theater on Friday. Our sales have been down, and my shifts cut so the likelihood is 40%.

Nevertheless, technically I am making more money than I did last week because an even higher percentage of my income was going to overdraft fees. We’re making a concerted effort to stop that from happening this week.

My soul today

I may not have healthcare, a job or even any prospects for making an adult living and yet, here I am surviving on less than $400 a week without my parent’s assistance (also not always the case). My Dad has been sending money to my school loan for my MBA, which is great because right now I can’t send anything to anyone that isn’t just about living right now. Past expenditures are not on the list yet.

I guess I feel a little better about myself deep down than I did a year ago. While not everyone would say my present is successful, I choose to see all of these steps as a huge win. Every day I get up, update my Excel spreadsheet, my Quicken file and my YNAB app and I am willing to look at my actual checking account without cringing (most of the time). Only a month ago, I was lucky if I could force myself to do it weekly.

This is day 2 of my writing journey. Let’s see where each day takes me. Let’s get real about who and what we really are made of. And it isn’t wine and cheese – at least not today.

#2018 #mind #innerwork #connectiontoself #betterchoices #wellness #energy #health #soul #selfhelp #financialhealth #Transformation #intimacy #Food #Heartwalls #BodyCode #threedimensionaltherapy #EmotionCode #Relating #empathic #empath #selflove #selfempowerment #bestself #life #career #caring #family #ancestraltrauma #patterns #familytrauma

Day 1: A Blog Journey in 30 Days of Authentic Writing on the State of Possibility

Six months since my contract position at Thomson Reuters ended after two months. Here I am beginning a 30 day journey of writing on the state of possibility and change.

I remember telling my co-worker that being there was like being in the middle of my family trauma patterns.

How did it begin?

I knew something wasn’t right at the interview. I hoped that they’d just pass, and I could keep going doing what I was doing. Except they didn’t pass. I’d been looking for work in marketing communications since graduating from St Kate’s in February of 2016. Here it was, December of 2017 and my intuition was both saying to move forward and I KNEW that this was not a great place to work.

The big AND. Diving into the unknown and taking a risk wasn’t just any risk-reward model…it was the path into the space of no return. I would not be looking back – more like Indiana Jones moving forward into the abyss of a cavern with spiders, black magic and ancient riddles.

These riddles were like my life story imprinted on my soul. And staying safe wasn’t going to cut it. I had to quit where I was working and go to WORK. It just wasn’t going to be at Thomson for too long. I rode it out for as long as I could. It just wasn’t my place – although I used every leadership, business and self-preservation skill I had in my toolbox. My co-workers appreciated my training and my attitude. Unfortunately, they weren’t making the decisions.

State of possibility

We’re on the long road. I lost count of the number of interviews since. Contract roles, perm ones. I have used my network and plowed deeply into my volunteer work – more committed than ever to this path.

The path isn’t about “getting a job,” although that may be the final result, or a part of the result. The path forward is about finding myself – the true North within. A path, if I look back on it I avoided with self-help spirituality and talk. A trained life coach, massage therapist, a spiritual healer -- a person who took all the classes, all the University courses, read books and was known as “the most spiritual person I know” in some circles.

…and I still wasn’t grounded. I created what seemed like good ideas at the time. Nothing is inherently wrong with me or my path. I am a 33 lifepath number -a Master Student. I regret none of the things I did I mentioned above. They all compound to make me who I am. Nevertheless, in October 2016, after a series of experiences and one text from someone I know (I’ll leave that between them and me), I knew I had a journey to take.

It was the journey I had avoided, trying everything else since I graduated high school. Cycles came and went and while all the other attempts at reaching my potential were great and, in some cases, even noteworthy, I still hadn’t really gone THERE.

On the journey

I have attempted to write about this journey before. I might fail again. The last couple weeks, I came “that” close to achieving my dream job and something wasn’t quite right. I remain (mostly) unemployed and I have time on my hands. Furthermore, the journey into my family/ancestral trauma patterns has been exacting. Strange. Sometimes lonely. Unpredictable. For certain, it is clear why I avoided it for so long.

You must be willing to lose everything. And not just willing – do it…repeatedly. Unapologetically.

Here I am... the 33 lifepath. I see destruction all around me right now. The planet is in upheaval. My life is lived from crates in temporary housing. Our politicians are unhealthy and trauma-filled and grossly misaligned from any Spiritual North. The Statesmen we need can’t win elections. The racism, the gross negligence, the poor choices, the consumerism, the unconscious business practices are all in my face. I can’t avoid it anymore.

Sure - there are wonderful, amazing things going on too – boat rides with my friends, nature, new community members I have met, music, an increasing amount of love as I open my heart to the full potential. No idea where this journey takes me. My intuition gets more insistent by the day. This is no ordinary life.

My sacred words. My writing. If my job search is frustrating with twists and turns and dead-ends, then maybe, just maybe I can redeem myself through this…

Where I am beginning

My goal is to write daily – something. Post daily – something. I have wanted to commit to a 30-day writing adventure. See where it takes me. In the meantime, I keep clearing and processing and healing. I release the patterns one day at a time.

Work with my energy therapist, make new choices, and let go.

Brutally face the Truth. It may not be enough to save us. We’re at war. And the war isn’t fought with guns (although they are used), it is fought with our own fragile minds. Will we survive? The future has yet to be written. Time is running out…

All I know right now is that I have tried (and failed) to finish an interview blog for my volunteer work. It started with my voice-recorder not recording the interview. I could have regrouped. I could have used my notes – I just couldn’t bring myself to write it. Instead, it seemed my soul wanted me to write this first. My path home was this work, this writing. I avoided that too, for several weeks. Now I have just surrendered to it.

Let’s see where it takes us.

#2018 #mind #innerwork #financialhealth #energy #betterchoices #Vulnerability #soul #Transformation #intimacy #bestself #coach #empathic #empath #career #story #publishing #blogging #blog #selfhelp #connectiontoself #wellness #learning #jobsearching #energyclearing