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Finding the Magic, I AM

Comparisons, Truth, and Magic

September 10, 2018

 

One of the things I am most grateful for is my ongoing relationship with Magic (the moments of connection between me and the Mystery). I say that because it is a relationship. That connection is a choice that I make more and more and more times a day, and the more I connect to it, the more I am led and the more connections happen.

I am now at a point where I can see magic in almost everything – even in the things that seem hard or impossible.

Once when I posted something on Instagram about being grateful, I got an email from someone telling me that I shouldn’t ‘only post good things’. She said people wouldn’t be able to relate to me if I wasn’t telling them the truth.

The truth?

That little email made me question everything that I put out into the world.

Whenever I send out an email that has a positive message, or gives the impression that life is good, I get unsubscribes.

I’ve had friends stop commenting on my posts, and stop answering emails – ones who were huge supporters of our move.

Comparison is such a brutal companion for so many of us. I feel it. Sometimes I am compelled to unsubscribe or to just stop looking at certain people or certain feeds. I feel triggered by the beauty or the youth or the truth or the challenge or the anger or the love or the success or the questions or the depth or the wonder or the insight or the delicacy or the talent that I see, and in the past instead of wondering about that, I have turned my face away.

One of the easiest examples of where I feel comparison is with our house. We have a beautiful house (for which I am profoundly grateful), but it’s not finished or even very furnished yet, and when I look at some of my feeds, I see lovely cozy spaces full of books and candles and comfortable furniture and kids and cats and art supplies and desks and plants and a real feeling of ‘home’. When I look at these I feel a deep longing for this in my own life.

The trouble with comparison is that it often also comes with guilt or shame or irritation or some other super-fun side order. I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to, and that comparison can be one of your biggest teachers.

 

 

I invite you to try this:

1. Scroll through your Instagram feed until you find an image that gives you a twinge.
2. Really look at it.
3. Ask yourself these questions (but try to keep it in a spirit of learning more about what your soul wants. Don’t add guilt or shame to this.)

What is it about this image that makes me want?
When I look at this image, what do I want?
Is there healing or grieving that I need to do here?
What is this showing me about how I want to feel?
What can I do to bring more of this feeling into my life?

Seeing your own pain, your own wants, your own needs, and your own fears reflected like this may be scary at first, but by doing this you have a massive opportunity to heal your old stories and your old patterns. You may have some healing to do, but feeling those feelings will free up space for new dreams to come through.

In that space, magic can happen.

One version of the truth is that I have experienced heartbreak and devastating loss. There are things and people and dreams that I mourn, that I regret, and that I deeply wonder about. We won’t ever have kids. I struggle pretty much every day with visibility and relevance and who do I think I am? I have made peace with food, but I still carry weight. I am a hermit who has had her heart broken, which makes making and keeping friends difficult. There is stuff in my life that breaks my heart. I have guilt about where my life and my choices have brought me. I am a rebellious good girl (a Scorpio with a Virgo rising), so I am often in heated negotiation with myself. I miss my family and my country – and now my old adopted country – deeply.

There’s more – not the least of which is that I am afraid a lot of the time.

But the other truth is that in all of the hard and the sad and the afraid there is also a place where I choose to connect to an even deeper truth: that there is more to all of this life business than I can ever imagine or understand.

In those places and those moments, more and more each day, I actively choose to find the Magic. I know that the only power I have is the one to decide how I am going to react in this moment. Over the past 15 or so years, I have consciously developed a way of being in the world that is more curious than careful and more wondering than fearful.

I’ve discovered that I am more powerful when I do things on purpose.

I don’t run from sadness or comparison or fear anymore. I also don’t ignore it, or pretend it isn’t happening, or always put it out there for the world to see. I actively turn my face to it. I wonder about it. I feel it. I talk to it. I do everything I can to not install it into my stories and my cells (just to have it come up again later on).

Yes, I am still afraid, and yes, I still compare, and yes, I still have a ways to go, but I also have come to a place where it seems that everything has something to say to me. I have come to a place where I can see the story more than I see the fear. I have come to a place where nearly everything is magic.

It’s been a lot of work, but the work has been worth it.

So the truth – for me – is that there is more to this life than I can possibly imagine, and that I get to choose to be present for and to respond to it in the best way I can in each moment. None of those moments are perfect, but I’m doing my best to make more and more and more of them Magical.

That is my work in the world; that is what I want to share with you! That is what makes me want to run up to you, laughing, and show you the latest weird bug that has appeared, or the family of monkeys who wake us at 4am, or the way the sun is touching the trees, or what is in my heart. That is what I want to write about.

There is a path through the forest, and there is a light just around the bend. Can you see it? Do you want to find it with me? Let’s go together!

The more magic you see, the more you’ll find. 😉

That’s the truth.

xo

 

 

Alignment

90 Days of Showing Up

July 28, 2017

Warning: there’s a bit of swearing in this one. 😉

”I think midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear: I’m not screwing around. It’s time.” ~ Brene Brown

 

I’ve always been the girl with the plan. If I wanted to write a book or lose weight or start exercising or learn something, I would sit down and figure out where I wanted to be, then work backwards. If you were to open any past planner of mine, you would find at least one countdown on those pages.

But I never got there.

I never got to the end of the countdown with success. I never ended at my goal weight, I never wrote 50,000 words in a month and I never got to ten push-ups.

Why?

I think for four reasons:

  1. I’ve always been a bit rebellious and my ‘screwyouiwon’tdowhatyoutellme’ notion sadly even works on self-imposed rules.
  2. I was getting something out of staying where I was. If I never got there, I wouldn’t have to see what there meant.
  3. I bought whole-heartedly into the notion of ‘be gentle with yourself.’ But instead of doing that, I used it as an excuse to not show up if I didn’t feel like it or if I was tired or if or if or if…

And that’s all crap. Yep, all just excuses.

Yesterday I did a long guided meditation in which I asked my guides for the answer to a question. There is some stuff I want to clear, and this seemed like as good an idea as any. I went in, I sat at the feet of a guide, and I asked my question. The answer?

“Stop fucking around and show up.”

Not your usual answer, but I took it, mostly because I’ve been getting the same answer for weeks in my writing and my course creation and my journalling: just show up.

Over the past twenty-four hours, I have read the other part of that phrase four different times in four different places: stop fucking around.

Those words? Five times in two days? Really?

Today I counted – because that is what I do – and I realised that it is 90 days until my birthday. And within those 90 days, we will be moving into our house. Usually that would have me making a Plan and writing a goal in my diary.

But not today. Today I am admitting that that doesn’t work, and instead I am going to stop fucking around and just show up at the page. Every day. No matter what. No matter how I feel or where I have to go or what I have to do. Everything counts. This matters. My work matters.

I matter.

90 days of showing up. 90 days until my birthday. 90 days.

I can count that down.

It’s a good Plan.

xo

 

Costa Rica, Finding the Magic, I AM

Magic Happened.

May 10, 2017
plumeria blossoms

 

Today I am going to tell you a story about Magic.

Several years ago – and I can’t remember exactly how many, but it’s more than 5 – I was part of a wonderful coaching circle led by my friend Jamie Ridler. Jamie IS Magic, and the circle she led was all about us moving our creative dreams (and lives) forward.

plumeriaDuring one of the calls, Jamie had us visualise our future self. Now, I am more auditory than visual, so I have found visualising a challenge in the past, but Jamie always manages to get me to ‘see’ something.

I saw myself in a house. It was mostly white, open plan and all on one level. It was quite modern looking, which is weird because I always pictured myself in something else. There was a large deck around it and a walkway to it, kind of like a dock. I have always wanted a dock, so I intervened and put it onto a lake – because nothing else made sense to me.
The me that I saw in the house was wearing light clothes – I was even in a skirt. (Me?) I felt comfortable. Peaceful. Soft. Grounded. I knew who I was and what I was doing. My days were filled with love and creativity. I was connected to something more. Most of all, I felt a sense of freedom. I had stopped searching for something.

When Jamie gave us time to journal after the meditation, I sketched the house and then, over time, forgot about it.

Two years ago when we started picturing our house, we were going to build a wooden bali-inspired house, but in the living here and the understanding Costa Rica (especially that bugs LOVE to eat wood), we have changed our plans. Now the house we are building is an open-plan, one level, very white, kind-of square, modern house. With a huge deck that you have to walk across to get to the door.
(I’m sure YOU can see the connection, but I didn’t.)
my viewFast forward to last week. I was sitting on the couch with my husband and we were having a conversation about True things. We were quiet for a moment and out of somewhere I got a strange feeling of, ‘oh there you are!’ and felt this weird click.

In that moment I knew that somehow I had caught up to my future self; that we had finally come together and were now the same person. I had forgotten about the meditation, but in the middle of the click I remembered it and saw me and the house and all of it. I felt a strange sense of peace and what I can only describe as yesness.

Holy holy holy.

The most interesting part is that I never – not once – aimed at that image. The house was nothing like I thought I would live in – and I was in a skirt for heaven’s sake!  But for the past six or seven years I have been focusing on those feelings: Peace. Soft. Grounded. Knowing who I am. Love. Creativity. Connected to something more. Joy. Gratitude. Belief. Wonder. Transcendence. And Freedom: Magical Freedom.

I didn’t plan it, but somehow, even all of those years ago, I knew. Or someone or something did.

meghanIn that moment I could only sit and breathe and wonder, and it has taken me a few days to process it all. I feel different, and all I can feel right now is gratitude. There is so much more to all of this than we can possibly imagine. It’s a Mystery and a dance and a conversation.

Listen to your nudges. Listen to your feelings. Ask for help and signs and support and messages. Follow your instincts.

Find the Magic and it will take you places you can’t even imagine.

I love you.