Tag Archive for: selflove

Choosing You to Reclaim Love

We all know people whose identity is wrapped up in being the funny, smart or artistic one. And their sense of value is dependent on broadcasting that “thing.”

Their comments regularly remind listeners of this “thing” they believe makes them lovable using shocking jokes, speaking above the mean, or belittling the artistry of others. Not considering how it may make others feel.

Unless you’re the butt of the joke, the one who doesn’t understand or whose work is being judged, their comments generate laughter, status and awe.

But, what do you do when you’re the butt of the joke?

I’ve experienced being under the weight of a funny guy and an artistic mother. Both of whom, had no intention to hurt me, only to broadcast themselves as the “thing” they valued so much. In fact, I don’t believe I even existed in their inner dialogue at all.

This was the problem. I was hurt just by being associated. Deeply hurt. And they were oblivious to it. They didn’t see that their behavior valued the “thing” more than me.

In both instances, I first tried to validate their popularity and appreciate their talents, in hopes that they’d gain enough confidence to stop throwing verbal daggers. Of course this didn’t work, they were completely unaware of any casualties.

Then, I tried to defend my self and my artistic works, but this was met with complete disinterest. So, I decided this was an opportunity to build my own self-confidence. Why not turn lemons into lemonade!

But, no matter my level of confidence, being around them eventually began to feel unsafe. So, I let them know my feelings. I lost my cool, you might say! And, their response was bewilderment. “How could you feel this way?!” I was dismissed and they continued.

Finally, in both situations, I had to turn my back on them. I had to love myself enough to walk away… at least temporarily. This is what it took for them to look at themselves and consider their actions.

Love makes us want to uplift each other, stand by each other. So we can weather a lot before walking away from it or them. Love is also precious. So we don’t turn our backs without due cause.

I learned that loving myself is the answer to reclaim love. Even when the action of turning my back seems unloving. Because it asks them to love themselves enough to be loving to me. And, my own self-love soothed the swallowed hurts that had accumulated from loving them through their assault of unconscious daggers.

The phrase, you can only love another as much as you love yourself, has never felt more true. For them and me.

May we help each other grow in love, forever and always.

What is Good Sense?

First of all, good sense lives in your body. Your mind is the messenger.

You know how it feels to be unhinged?

Your body twitches; your mind haunts. Fear is your emotional guide.

You “will” yourself to think positive. But, you “feel” possessed.
And, you are. From the inside out, unresolved, misaligned, uncertainty breaks you, with no strings attached to find your way back.

Anxiety’s fear overwhelms the whisper hope holds.

While I craft ornaments, shop virtually, and wrap holiday gifts, I feel inspired by love; yet, in the quiet spaces between tasks, I feel engulfed by the belief that I am unloved.

A familiar feeling that grazes the surface of my everyday life. But right now, under the shadow of the plague that killed my sister, it is rising into full force.

I have COVID again.

I’m isolated at Christmas time, for the second time. Canceling holiday gatherings that had crafted a sense of belonging into my first sister-less Christmas.

After a week, I eagerly test again, only to find that I’m still COVID positive.

A pendulum inside me swings between extremes—my greatest fears and greatest hopes. I’m unhinged.

It feels like everyone is moving ahead. I can’t keep up. I’m afraid of losing everything that matters to me.

Alone, and uncharacteristically lonely, my mind desperately spins. I try to figure out how to fix this recurring sense of unlovability. But the only thing I come up with is, who to blame and why I have the right to feel if. Neither, of which, help me feel better!

I need to silence the haunting voices! Separate from my story!!

Balance asks us to relax into the emotional body, with the same degree of attention, as we express the emotional mindset. Extreme outward emotion opens a deeper path for inward resolution.
Tao Principle

Exhausted, I prepare an epsom salt bubble bath. I slip into the elixir. My world slows down. My aching head slides under the water. Instant silence.

The water feels soft on my skin. The warmth cocoons me, except for the parts that break the surface into the cool sharp air. I hear a bass beat from music, without a melody, as if it were a heart beating. My thoughts stop. My body’s soothed.

I keep my ears submerged in the silence until time disappears. (This was a long bath!)

When I rise out of my wet cocoon I feel like myself again. My joy de vive is back. What had been “unhinged” is now “aligned.” I feel a peaceful vulnerability. Like Bambi standing up for the first time.

I wonder if the unloved voice will resurface?
I stay in my body’s senses and listen. I return to my Christmas preparations, witnessing and reining-in mindset relapses. And, in the doing, that peaceful alliance grew stronger.

Your body’s an energetic antenna that can steer the mind’s attention. You hold the reins for change.
Tao Translation

Delighting in sensations, lift us out of our shadow worlds. They usher us into an expanded world. A world where belonging, hope and love live in the space between tasks.

Thinking emotions—understanding your triggers and causes—manage them. Changing emotions asks you to deliberately feel something else—sense the life you want through your whole being—so mind and body unite.
This is Good Sense!

Mind body alignment is self-love that aligns your world.

May the quiet magic of the season cocoon you in the soothing heart beat of Love.

Comment with an aligning anecdote or response.

The Healing Treasures of Pain

There are times that we choose pain and times that pain chooses us. When we’re chosen, it’s easy to feel victimized, and we are. But to heal, I believe, one needs to find the gift within the pain.

Being open to pain’s healing is like having a gift that keeps on giving. I was recently elevated out of a childhood pain of parental abandonment. One of those low-grade emotional conditions that you just live with and may not even name as pain. Instead, you may live in avoidance of its squeeze.

Avoiding pain’s squeeze, unfortunately and inevitably, catches up to you.

I met a man about a year ago at a favorite cafe whom I felt uncomfortable around. You know that feeling when your gut churns, your eyes squint, and you take a step back. Through the past year he was a regular customer, so I put a polite smile on my face and gave him the benefit of my doubt.

Well, I will be more trusting of my gut’s instinct moving forward.

While my boyfriend, Anthony, was chatting with someone else one evening, this man leaned into my breathing space and started asking questions about my fitness. He quickly shifted his commentary to my sexy, sophisticated, presence. The most beautiful in the cafe.

If this were my boyfriend whispering these intimacies, I would lean into his love and devotion. But, in this case it felt over-indulgent and self-serving. My brain froze. No words came to change the course of this man’s momentum.

As I shift uncomfortably in my seat, he slides his hand up my side and cops a feel of my right breast. A blatant uninvited intrusion of my space, body and relationship with Anthony, disguised in a gesture to steady me on the bar stool. But, let’s be clear, I needed no steadying.

Rather than stating my boundaries, all I could do was excuse myself. I moved to the other end of the bar until he left.

This moment of freezing is scary. It’s the same freeze that happened repeatedly in my childhood when my father inappropriately came into my bedroom at night. I felt, and feel, helpless, alone and terrified in these moments.

Different than my childhood story, in my adult story, the freeze is what scares me. This man’s conduct was inappropriate, but not threatening my safety. In these situation it’s easy to dismiss creepy disrespect, and instead, judge my muted self-respect.

I shared the incident with a woman who, unbeknownst to me, had had a similar altercation with this man. The story spread and an owner/bartender heard the report. My next visit there, my boyfriend held an outdoor table for us, because the man was inside at the bar.

What happened next blew my mind!

The bartender came out and confirmed the story. As it was told to me afterward, he returned inside and slid the man’s check in front of him. The man slid it back to him saying, he didn’t ask for a check. It was slid back in the man’s direction again and this time paid.

When the man exited the cafe I jumped up, now unfrozen and prepared, to tell him that he’d made me uncomfortable and set a clear boundary. But that’s not what happened!

The bartender followed him out and stopped him just outside the cafe’s dining area.
The man was asked to not return.

Soon after the bartender returned to his post at the bar, a gentleman friend stuck his head out the door and said, “There’s a seat in here for you Tammy.” When we went inside, a group of people ushered me into a love cocoon. I felt treasured.

I was stood up for, protected and loved by all of them. I was offered the cocoon my family of origin couldn’t offer.

I say to the woman, who had had the same experience, that I was intending to speak to the man and practice standing up for myself. She said, “I understand that, but can you accept being stood up for and feel safety from that?”

My whole life has been about developing mind body strength. It has served me well. But the self respect, love and trust gained by this strength isn’t to separate me from the respect, love and trust of others.

The pain I carry around from my childhood was just made lighter by letting others in. Not by becoming more independent and self-entrusted. I’m learning that it also takes strength to depend on others and trust they’ll be there. I am healing and I treasure these moments pain has constructed and amplified.

I would love to hear from others who have lived with a similar ‘freeze’ response to disrespect.

 

YOU Are The One You’ve Been Waiting For Your Whole Life.

Finding the light in the dark.

~ A Stream of Consciousness ~

Every certification or degree earned, book read or letter written, friend made or lost, you get closer to YOU.

Every compliment made, insult received, or opinion shared, beckons YOU into focus.

Every boundary passed and challenge met births you more and more into YOU.

Life shines through you like rays of light keeping you on a path to YOU.
If this ray of light is Source, then you are its flame.
If this light is love, then you are its muse.

This light is what illuminates LOVE as life’s most powerful source of healing, growing and manifesting.

When your peace is disturbed, quiet your mind and feel where it lives in your body. Feel it fully through the light of love. Breathe love into what aches, until you are once again at peace with you.

The darkness of blame and judgment, anger and fear, will interfere with your life for a little-time or a life-time. To resist or reject what feels real and just is to abandon a piece of YOU. Instead, double up on your love and be with your dark feelings.

Experience your darkness with the same love as you experience your light.

Love all of you to heal all of you.

You are what you are looking for. Every experience is for you to find YOU and align with YOU.

So be it, and so it is.

Love Hurts… but always serves

Love can turn bad or grow strong. They both hurt.

Heart wrenching moments happen when you question someone’s alignment with you or yours with them. But the first question, that we sometimes neglect when in love is, am I aligned with myself?

The hurt of love is a deep sword. It asks you to soul-search, with an unspoken promise of self-aligned positive change.

This kind of change asks you to dig beneath the intellect to raw emotions.

Recently, in an emotional conflict with someone I love, I realized that when experiencing my heart’s ache I was judging both of us. I wanted both of our stances to change, so the conflict would disappear.

I felt like an ostrich with my head in the sand, unable to see my way out.

Then a friend pointed to the judgment, “that’s right-wrong thinking.” As she put it, “can you both be right?”

I recognized that making us wrong was, very effectively, distracting me from feeling unchecked, unwanted emotions. And I know, you can’t think your way out of heartache, you feel your way out.

What feeling was I avoiding?

I revisited the emotions of the conflict and surrendered into the heart of it. I tracked where it lived in my body, stayed with it, and listen. (The Peace Process)

What I heard through my fear of losing alliance with someone I love was: I’m not allowed to feel this way. I was hating myself for feeling my own truth. Because it was interfering with, what I perceived, theirs.

What if, I allowed myself to feel this way? And loved myself for being truthful.
What if, I gave myself permission to love what matters to me.

Suddenly, the fist in my heart released its grip. A surge of “I matter” cursed through me. Tears flooded my cheeks. I’m not insignificant or broken. What I feel matters!

The question always exits: How will differences effect relationships? But exploring the options in an environment that is loving rather than judging feels hopeful.

First step is, love yourself. Second step is, share that love with another.

Choose YOU

We all want to be chosen, but choosing ourselves can be riddled with judgment and uncertainty.

We get a break from this internal scrutiny when someone else approves of us. This distraction offers belonging… but WITH CONDITIONS.

How do you know when self-love overrides the habit of satisfying outside expectations to get love from others?

You feel Peaceful belonging.

From the start, I was a bouncy baby. I found being in my body’s movement and strength a refuge. It was a place where I felt like my own person; and a place I could improve myself with practice and discipline. So, what I didn’t have yet, I could develop. Dance and athletics offered me peaceful belonging WITHOUT CONDITIONS.

How does peaceful belonging show up in your life naturally?
Infuse that place into other aspects of living and you up-level your life!

I didn’t experience delight in belonging with family relationships or any intellectual study, until I was introduced to Tao Philosophy. So, it was clear that, peaceful belonging came from a small niche of interests.

Later in life, when the tension of competing for Broadway dance jobs started to put CONDITIONS on my physical refuge, and I let the FEAR of not being good enough chip away at trusting my personal safe place, I entered Tao seminary for 4-years.

What I learned there was, delight is a discipline; and self-love is choosing delight. The discipline of delight leads to self-love.

That understanding continues to inspire me to share my BodyLogos Method as the mind body strength training practice that helps you let go of needing outside validation and open up to loving yourself.

Tao see’s our Original Natures––essential selves––as Nature’s way to establish wholeness. Each of us is appreciated as a spoke in the wheel of life. What delight’s you in you, is what makes you love you, because it’s what the world needs from you to flourish.

There are 3 requirements to activate self-love:

  • Exercise your mind toward who you want to be.
  • Become aware of your emotions with curiosity, not judgement.
  • And, energize your body’s strength.

Exploring what delights you in these daily practices will reclaim the self-love you were born with. And, they’re all integrated in the BodyLogos Practice.

Self-Love is: a self that has the courage to see and appreciate all parts of you; and, a love that trusts the being-to-becoming journey as a magical journey that insists on self-mastery.

To belong to your Original Nature is to invest in your purpose.

A baby’s gaze reminds you of your Original Nature’s peaceful belonging, but with NO AWARENESS. And that Original Nature is what you are learning to reclaim as an adult, WITH AWARENESS.

This is life. Self-love is a way of life. Having the discipline to follow delight toward self-love is the way to choose you. And in that choice, you experience belonging for the world… NO CONDITIONS.

Please share a comment about your Original Nature.

From Duty to Delight

Storytelling in a maze of art. A true story about love, duty and delight.
In a search for one’s Self.

All eight storytellers of The Courageous Messenger Collective were intended to gather at the Gary Marshall Theater in Burbank, CA. to speak to a live audience and be streamed on-line. Due to COVID we were asked to tape our talks and the interviews were organized on Zoom.

The show must go on, as they say!

 

Enjoy all the speakers and our host Jeffrey Van Dyk.
My contribution: From Duty to Delight can also be viewed HERE.