My daughter was just diagnosed with Lyme Disease today. After an hour long appointment with the Lyme specialist, my head dizzy with information, details and fear, I walked out to my car to find a parking ticket. I apparently did not turn my wheels in enough on the San Francisco hill to appease the patrolling officer. Seriously? It was almost comical, except that it wasn’t. It was my tipping point. I was a mess. My daughter was a mess. We were both crying and both feeling overwhelmed with what’s to come for us. The gravity of all we had heard in the previous hour hit us like a ton of bricks. My daughter was in the back asking me what was going to happen. I felt helpless because I couldn’t answer her honestly. I had no idea. I didn’t want to lie and I didn’t want to commit to any outcome I couldn’t provide. To top it off, I found myself feeling miserable because all I could tell her was “I don’t know.” What kind of mother was I to her in that moment? While I was being all I could be, which was honest, I still didn’t feel good enough. In that moment, I was the pure definition of downward spiral. Crying, overwhelmed and ticked off at the SFPD.
But, I think this same episode happens no matter what news you receive. Maybe not this diagnosis, maybe not this ticket, but there is a moment of overwhelm where the culmination of fear hits us when faced with a new challenge and you spiral downward like any good human with a heart would do…and it’s important to let yourself go there, at least for a few minutes.
Before starting my ticketed car, I let myself wallow. “How will there be enough of me to handle what she needs?” “How can I be spread out even more?” “How am I going to remember all of what needs to be done?” Always searching for the teachable moment even for myself, I mentally scanned my body and realized I felt like I had been punched in the gut. My third chakra was totally devoid of any strength or energy. As you might remember from our Grief through the Chakras series, our third chakra holds our fear, but it also holds our courage, too. I was clearly lacking all courage and being eaten up by fear.
How many times have you been eaten up by fear on your grief journey?
No matter what caused your grief, we have moments of doubting our strength and feeling unsure about how we’re going to make it through our next challenge. But the thing is, we always do. It might not be pretty. It certainly isn’t always perfect, but we get through it. We learn more about ourselves along the way and we always come out stronger and more resilient than before we were met with something we’d prefer to not have in our life.
Epiphany or no epiphany. Strength building or no strength building, sitting in my parked ticketed car, I still felt like I wanted to throw up. So I put my hand on my third chakra, (above my belly button and below my rib cage) and began asking myself, “Fear or Courage, Erin? What are you going to choose?”
And then I remembered gratitude blocks the part of the brain that feels fear. It can’t feel both at the same time so I decided to rattle off all the things I could find that I was grateful for surrounding this news. I thought it was really important not to rattle off general gratitude. That would not suffice. I needed to find gratitude for THIS…this precise situation in order to heal my fear. I actually found quite a few- from the timing of it all, to the support people we now have in our lives, to the knowledge we’ve acquired that is going to help us get through this more efficiently and effectively.
Bam! Gratitude for Lyme? How could that even happen?
Faith. That’s how it happened. During the middle of my gratitude download, I focused on my hand that was on my third chakra and focused on receiving beautiful love and energy from heaven. I reminded myself “I’m not alone” and I am being watched after by God. This, too, is part of my journey. After a quiet one-handed drive home, one hand on the wheel, one hand on my belly, I felt composed, supported and far less scared than I had just one hour before. That’s all it took…a little bit of gratitude, a little bit of prayer and a little bit of intention. What if we tried to do that every time we felt afraid on our journey?
What if we replaced our fear with faith on our journey? And even though we might not always like what’s in our way, what would happen if we trusted that we’ll be stronger and more resilient once we get through it? I think we would find that there’s a lot less to fear and a lot more to be grateful for in our lives…especially in our most vulnerable and down-spiraling moments.
How did you turn your fear into gratitude this week? What were you afraid of most? Did your third chakra intention help you feel more calm?
We can’t wait to hear your story and help support you!
Love and Blessings,
Erin