The time I have spent on healing you would think I would have this perfected by now, but I don’t. It is a continuous journey of healing, lessons learned, falling back into old patterns, getting back up, finding our voice, moving forward, repeat. I am way beyond where I was a decade ago, but I am still fumbling around trying to be the best version of myself. I still deal with abandonment issues, trust issues, low self-esteem, lack of confidence in myself, never feeling like enough and every time I think I have it figured out and well on my way, an old hurt or trauma that I think I healed from shows its ugly face and I am left to deal with my inner demons again. Last week I woke up from the worst nightmare and couldn’t breathe and I haven’t had one of those in over a decade. I took it as a sign that something in my life is triggering old wounds that need to be dealt with when I am awake. I took it as a sign that just when I thought I was healed, I am being shown that I am ready to start dealing with the next layer of that onion that I wasn’t strong enough to face earlier. A new layer of healing always shows up exactly when it is supposed to and you either ignore it or face it head on. My advice for you is to just know that you can only ignore it for so long before it starts screaming at you to be heard and dealt with.
Signs are great but what to do with them is another story, and that is where gratitude comes in. While on this healing journey you will find yourself in places where you have come so far yet finding yourself feeling so confused. I believe that happens right before our life is going to be making a big shift again. We put in the work, we made goals, we are staying positive, we are trying to show up more confident, but then you wake up feeling like you have no idea what you are doing. Are you feeling lost right now? Are you moving or must move soon? Thinking of a new job? A new relationship? Are you just feeling tired and lost and at a stopping point? Look at it as a resting point and start practicing gratitude to find the answers and find your strength to keep going. Being grateful for what we have always opens doors to receiving more – it opens the door to receiving answers from God, Source, The Universe, whatever you are comfortable calling that force outside of yourself. That force is there for guidance and answers and the best way to receive that guidance is to be grateful for everything you have right now. You may not be where you want to be, but being grateful for the little things that show up on the journey is a great way to bring yourself out of your head and back to reality. Gratitude is the best way to get in a mindset of abundance rather than lack. You will be forced to see what you have rather than what you don’t.
The other important part of being grateful is to understand that when you aren’t thankful for what you do have and appreciating what has been given to you on this journey, then it will slowly be taken away from you. We are then forced to live without what we just took for granted. This is a very hard lesson to learn when you have walls up, or feel like you have nothing, or when you feel like you have been waiting and waiting for something or someone and they never show up. The truth is maybe you were missing all the small things and gestures that were being given to you. Sometimes it takes them being taken away to really have your eyes opened to see what you had. Gratitude keeps you humble, and gratitude keeps the people around you feeling loved and feeling safe to keep loving you. Gratitude leaves you feeling like you have everything you need. The lesson is that having that gratitude for the little that you have or what you are receiving is when even more of everything you ever wanted shows up tenfold.
I can remember back to when I first learned about practicing gratitude and at that time, I had nothing. I had just sold everything I had so I was forced to ask myself how do I show gratitude when I am feeling a little hurt and betrayed that I just had to sell everything and every piece of jewelry I had from when I was a teenager to an adult – but I was determined to make these changes so I started being grateful for everything. I was taught that you will get back everything you lost if you just try and stay positive so I put all my trust in that (and yes that part is true – if you stay on this journey, you will eventually get it all back). That is also the time I started keeping a gratitude journal. I was grateful for waking up, grateful that my car was working, grateful for my work, and my kids, and my life and always, always grateful that I had my health. I learned not to ever take that for granted because that is the one thing that I had that could keep me doing everything else I had to. Life was hard but imagine how hard it would be if I wasn’t as healthy as I was. I knew that without my health I would really have nothing, so that was what I would be grateful for everyday when I woke up. That was over a decade ago and I am still grateful for that every day and something I will never take for granted.
The best way to start practicing gratitude is to just be thankful for
everything. Be grateful for the people in your life that show up for you. You
want more of anything, then be thankful that many times a day. I remember when
I first started, I would say thank you with every step I took walking to my
car. Then I would do it again getting out of my car. I had thank you stickies
all over my house. Thank you for this, thank you for that, thank you, thank
you, thank you. I had to get out of my head with being so angry at everything I
had lost, so being grateful was going to help me with that. That was a big
lesson back then, and one I find myself going back to right now. Start writing
in your gratitude journal. Whenever life is getting hard and you are faced with
dealing with the unknown, then the best path to take for the right now is to
practice gratitude.
In love and light,
Fran
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