Pause

The last thing I wrote last week was that we are the creators of our life and no one else should own that copyright. Now that my week has ended and my move complete, I am realizing that statement also comes with the responsibility that every choice you make comes with a consequence and that is all on you. The momentum of change has begun but you must take the time to reflect on where you have been and where you want to go. There comes a moment when you must pause. You must give yourself time to be still and just sit in the moment, so you don’t repeat old patterns and make the same mistakes. In times of stress, we resort back to our old ways of doing things. This is the time to change the old patterns and work on a new vision. We are trying to create a new life independent from our past and that requires conscious choices. Pause and reflect before moving forward. Be true to yourself and to be kind to yourself. Honor the changes you have made this far and then show gratitude.

There is a great book titled, Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway, that a college professor introduced me to years ago, and I am thinking that this is a good time to reread that book. We make great strides moving forward, creating change, and then fear and doubt slip in and we want to stop in our tracks. Remember that fear is ok, the trick is to power through it. Everyone is afraid at one time or another, what makes us different from each other is whether we allow fear to dictate our choices moving forward. Feel the fear, honor your feelings, and then use that to move forward towards your goals. I am sure that every successful and happy person out there will tell you that they have been afraid, but that fear was just a feeling that didn't dictate their life.

This is the stage I am at right now and I can feel my insides wanting to scream, wanting to run, wanting to hide, but I know that is just fear of change wanting to show its ugly head. I am trying to ignore those feelings, remembering that I initiated this change and now I must stay committed to it. I am very grateful that right now I am in a very peaceful, stable environment where I feel very safe. I am outside right now writing my blog and all I hear is the sound of nature. I find that to be the most peaceful sound and feeling in the world. It allows me to bond with the outside world where, at times, I feel like I have more of a relationship than the real one. I understand that those are just walls of protection I have built up over time and I am working on slowly taking them down.

When you are codependent or a people pleaser like I was, you tend to give away your choices to other people. When I was younger, I didn’t realize that I would wait until I gauged the temperature of the day from my surroundings before I would decide how I would feel. Were the people I was with happy, ok then I was too, were the people I was around on edge, ok then I was too. There was no distinction between where I started, and they ended so it all became one. There was no sense of self – I was always a part of a chaotic dynamic and that’s who I was. When I was older and married, I did the same thing. I wouldn’t know how I felt until I knew how they felt. It wasn’t until long after my second divorce that I realized I was holding the key to my misery, but I was also holding the key to my happiness. This was the time I embraced everything about myself and learned about what it was to be an empath. I learned that I was going about it all wrong and there was a way to gain strength from who I was while learning to put up boundaries with others. There is a place where I end, and you begin. There is a sense of self, my feelings matter and I have control of those feelings. I didn’t have to live my life as a chameleon and giving my power away. I could still be a good person even if I put up boundaries. My role in this life is to love myself and protect myself and I could do that from a very loving place. I could still show up how I want to without giving my sense of self away in the process. That knowledge and that awakening is when my healing journey began.

I know a lot of you are on the same journey and currently going through many changes. Our lives are in a constant state of change, so this is a great time to learn to embrace those changes. We are at the end of Summer here up north and everything is changing right now. Beach days are dwindling, winter clothes will soon be coming out of hiding, the leaves will be changing, change is all around us. This is the perfect time to take a pause before the next chapter, the next season. Know that it is ok to take a moment for yourself. Be confident knowing there is a difference between taking a moment to pause and staying stuck. Staying stuck means you keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results (which is the definition of insanity). Taking a moment means you are in a flux of change and just need to pause to see where you have been and where you are going. You need to regroup because you have been doing things differently and viewing things differently and wanting something better for yourself. You are not stuck but taking leaps of faith. You are trusting your intuition. You are expecting more and not accepting less. You are different. You have released fear. You have changed. Take that moment to be proud of yourself and to be grateful. You, my loves, are healing.

In love and light,

Fran