Hello Beautiful Person!
After losing my mom, I couldn’t do any type of heart healing work for two full years. My friend continued to encourage me to go see an amazing reiki healer and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t have enough strength. When I finally did go I realized, as always, it was at the perfect time. I couldn’t have gone a moment sooner. That was five years ago. I wish I could go back in time seven years and tell my broken heart that it’s OK. I would tell myself not to beat myself up for feeling too weak to go and that everything happens at the exact right moment. The fact is: healing isn’t pretty. Grief isn’t pretty. It’s messy and rough and our grief is designed specifically for each one of our hearts, individually.
Healing will come when it’s ready, when you’re ready. And it may not always look like what you think it should look like when it arrives. But it will not come until you figure out which parts of your heart need to be healed.
Here is how it arrived for me this week and I, of course, had to make it a teachable moment. I not only give and receive reiki healings but I have also added traditional talk therapy to my self-healing line-up. I recognize that all of this healing is being delivered in precisely the perfect time, but let me tell you… it is REALLY hard work. I think we have this idea in our minds that healing is this nurturing, beautiful place that is going to take us far away from everything. We wish for this beautiful place far away but what we don’t realize is that unless we heal what is in our hearts, that very hurt will follow us and be the first to welcome us to that place far, far away.
Healing hurts. Healing is heavy. Healing makes us want to curl into a ball, literally. And this week, I’ve been emotionally smacked down with my very own truth and healing not once, but TWICE. The truth, about all that I’m doing to my very own self, has been hand-delivered to me in two different situations. All of sudden, I recognized something in me…a pattern, a way that I’m translating love and life that is doing nothing but hurting my own heart. On both occasions, it stopped me in my tracks and brought me to tears. In an effort to bring purpose to those tears, I became determined to figure out how I could transform this new self-awareness into something that could be helpful for my grief healing and everyone here.
In both healing sessions, I was faced with what was holding me back and what was keeping me from opening up my heart to receiving all the love around me. These realizations broke my heart open, and I mean O-P-E-N with a capital “OUCH” for the O. We’re talking, “Not allowing people in because I have encountered so much loss, I don’t want to let anyone get close” kinda stuff. Yet, all I want is to be is close to my loved ones. But that’s the tricky little thing about all of this heart stuff.
The walls that we create in our hearts prevent us from receiving the very things we really want.
In an attempt to break down these walls, I wrote out a list… a list of what needs to heal in my heart. When I wrote out this list, I just started writing and crying, and writing and crying. I wept for my heart and for the people who I can only visit there now. I wept for the patterns I’ve innocently created that have brought in great pain into my life. I wrote out this poignant list of areas of hurt, real hurt. But then something happened. By just writing these situations and emotions down, these things that seemingly had so much control over me, they instantly lost their power. Why you ask? Because I gave them my attention.
The parts of us we want to change act so much like a little child (which let’s face it, most of our patterning began when we were children).
Once we give our destructive behavior the attention it needs, it calms down and goes away.
What is left is a heart ready to enjoy life. Once empowered, we can watch for those patterns to rise up and when they do, we can acknowledge them, work through them and not let them own us anymore. These emotions and patterns on my list have been causing me so much pain throughout my life. But now they have my attention, so I can process them and heal from them. So write your list. What’s hurting in your heart today? Most importantly, don’t stop there.
Once you’ve written your list, LOVE ON IT!!!
Once you have your list of hurts, start loving on each item. In fact, don’t just love them, love them to death. Love what brought you here. Love the people that played a part in your creating those hurtful patterns and love your heart for not knowing any better. Loving them will help eliminate them. As Maya Angelou said,” Once you know better,you do better.” And once you recognize what needs to be healed, you will act and heal accordingly. You will do better. The loss of a loved one may have brought up these emotions or realizations in your heart but that’s just the conduit by which it was brought to your attention. That’s the part of grief that is so overwhelming. We grieve the loss of our loved ones, but all of those emotions circulating bring up so much more for us.
We are raw and vulnerable and absolutely beautiful.
We are truly alive when we are feeling all of these emotions but they require time and attention for us to work through them and ultimately heal from them. It is the most important work you could ever do for yourself. Through the process of healing, we come out stronger than when we entered because we have allowed ourselves to see clearer, to go deeper and to find our real truth. But it does take time and attention and it cannot happen overnight. So love yourself exactly where you’re at. Love your beautiful list of healing work and know the healing will come when it is ready, when you’re ready… and be sure to shower it with your love in whatever shape or form it comes in upon arrival.
I can’t wait to hear what is on your heart healing list this week. Please share one of your list items in the comments down below.
Have a great week!
Love and Blessings,
Erin