LITTLE STEPS BRING BIG CHANGE.
Start your healing today…two minutes at a time.
Grief is a long journey but you can heal two minutes at a time. Our weekly videos provide you with simple, doable activities that will help you heal your grieving heart at your own pace. From energy healing to eastern and western religion, these videos pull knowledge from a multitude of sources to provide you with unique healing tools to help you along your grief path.
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Grief: Healing Our Overwhelm
Overwhelm. We all know it. We all feel it, especially when we’re grieving. EVERYTHING can feel overwhelming when we’re grieving. Just when we’re keeping it all together, we spill our coffee and BOOM we’re a crumbling mess in the kitchen, crying over spilled coffee. (Which by the way is TOTALLY worth crying about!)
The fact of the matter is that overwhelm can be manageable when it happens for one day, but when we are grieving, we often find ourselves running an overwhelm marathon. Those 26.2 miles of overwhelm can wreak havoc on our lives. Overwhelm lingers. It depresses us and exhausts us. So, what can we possibly do to remedy this state of overwhelm? Turns out…
Overwhelm is a state of mind. We just need to change our story.
But, how do we stop our story of overwhelm that runs incessantly in our mind? How do we stop our mind from feeling the heaviness, the burden and the struggle that is triggered by that spilled coffee, that overbearing co-worker or that grocery line that is just too long?
We ask for help with only the very next step.
That’s it. Don’t ask for help beyond the next step. It’s too much. Asking beyond it can actually create overwhelm. Focus solely on the very next step you need to make and ask for direction and help from something outside of yourself that can help define it for you. If you believe in God, call on him. If you believe there is no God, call upon your higher self. But elicit the support and assistance of something greater than you to guide you and support you with this critical next step.
If you don’t know what to do, that’s OK. Clear your mind and heart, ask for the next step, get quiet and listen. It will come. Trust that it will come. Believe that it will come and it will be perfect. It doesn’t even need to be a radical next step. The next step could be take a nap, or make a phone call, or eat a meal. The important component is that you listen and do whatever it inspires you to do. Trust that next step. Believe that it knows best and one step at a time, you will heal. You will eliminate the overwhelm. Sometimes, we can’t see past or handle what is beyond the next step. As long as we take that next step though, we are healing. We are working through our struggle, and we are moving forward in our life.
Two steps can be too overwhelming sometimes. Just focus on your very next step.
Ask for guidance and the STRENGTH needed to tackle that next step, even if that next step is a shower. Keep in mind, a step, by definition is 2 things:
1) an act or movement of putting one leg in front of the other and
2) a flat surface, especially one in a series, on which to place one’s foot when moving from one level to another.
I think that is key here this week. We are trying to move ourselves from “one level to another” and that is not always easy, especially when we were never asked if we wanted to change levels in the first place. But we do get there one step at a time.
And it’s a series of steps that is going to get us to that next level, a series of steps to be taken one at a time. Each step is dependent on the prior step being completed and it’s OK if it takes a while to complete the step. We go at the pace we’re meant to go.
It’s OK to admit you need something greater than yourself to help you up the step. It’s a practice in surrendering. Surrendering to trust and surrendering to something else to fortify our spirit when we just don’t have it in us to move one single step.
Trust will eliminate the overwhelm.
When we trust in a greater plan, it begins to take the worry away. It begins to soothe us. So, call on that help and just focus on that one simple step.
I used this practice today. I woke up feeling totally overwhelmed and unsure of where I’m headed or what I’m doing. I spent some quiet time and asked, “What is my very next step?” And I was told to come and write this very article. That’s how it works. We just need to listen and follow. I realized this morning; I was allowing myself to get in the way of myself. I was letting myself get frantic, panicked and worried about where I needed to take my life. But guess what? I’m not helpful to anyone in that state; most importantly I’m not helpful to myself in that state of mind. So I went with the very next step. I don’t know what comes next but I’m surrendering to the idea that I don’t need to know. All I do need to know is what I’m doing next, and I need to trust in the fact that each step will be revealed once I’m ready for it.
Every morning, I wake up and say, “Thank you. How can I serve?” And then I listen. I listen to what my gut and my heart tell me to do. Sometimes, it’s make dinner for a friend, other times it’s take a nap. The important thing here is to tune in and to listen to that inner voice. Listen for just that next step and trust that the series of steps is laid out in a design far more intricate and amazing than we could ever plan for ourselves
.
So take one step. That’s all you need to do. Step two will find you when you’re ready for it. It’s OK to need assistance with that one step. Are you going to let yourself be OK with it? Are you going to be able to let go and surrender? It’s all about surrender. Surrender to a power greater than you that has your back. Trust that it will be there to hold your hand and help you push through that spilled coffee or grocery store line. Trust that there is a series of steps laid out for you that is far better than any map you could draw out for yourself. It’s there waiting for you and it all begins with one single step.
We can’t wait to hear what your one step is this week. Please inspire your community with your next steps. We love to hear them.
Love and Blessings,
Erin
The Pinch Hit Mom – Healing your grief 2 minutes at a time #64
All month, we have explored ways to mother ourselves and to take care of ourselves. This week, we are going to take a moment to realize and accept the idea that sometimes, we just need another set of hands to help us.
All of us have moments of needing a Pinch Hit Mom.
The great news is that the Pinch Hit Mom can come into our lives in a variety of ways. It can be a friend, a hired professional, a man, a relative or a stranger. The beauty of the Pinch Hit Mom is that we recognize and receive the intentional motherly love that comes from that person. We ask for the help and we receive it as healing mom support.
Sometimes, the Pinch Hit Mom heals our heart more than the real deal.
Often when we are grieving, we hope to find a “caring stranger” to support us. We want someone to love us and support us, but we want it to be someone who isn’t too involved with our everyday hurt, mess or complication. It can just be too overwhelming. We want someone who can just lend us strength. This is where the Pinch Hit Mom literally hits a homerun for us here. Our Pinch Hit Mom comes in to fill a specific need but doesn’t get too involved in anything else. Having them fill that need and heal that one specific part of our heart helps us feel more nourished than by having someone come in who might be closer to our situation.
I was incredibly overwhelmed this week. I have been able to clean our clothes but have not had the bandwidth, energy or motivation to complete the process. After drying, I just kept adding to the pile of laundry. I decided to name the pile since he was as tall as me. His name was Mt. Clean Laundry. Feeling defeated and exhausted every night, I’d kiss him goodnight along with the rest of the family and hope that perhaps the next day, I would get to him.
But today, out of nowhere, my amazing cleaning ladies came and offered to fold and hang all of my laundry. Despite their shock and exasperation of “Wow!” when they walked in and saw him, they wanted to mother me. They realized how much I needed another set of hands. I needed help. I was drowning and they rescued me. They realized how much I needed mothering too. I hugged them all as if they were my mothers and made a point to receive their help as mothering love. Intentionally recognizing and receiving their love healed my heart so much. Healing is so much about intention.
What are you intending to receive? What will you heal when you receive it in a particular way?
For me, these ladies today, healed that longing to have my mom help me when I just don’t feel like I am enough.
But mothering can arrive in our lives in all different forms. A few months ago, I was missing my mom so badly. It was just one of those days, I just wanted her here. It wasn’t a special day. It was just a regular day but I had this huge longing for her to be here mothering me. I wanted her help and her wisdom. I just missed her. When I went to the grocery store that day, this older woman took me under her wing in the produce section and taught me all of these great tips on picking fruits and vegetables. (She had previously owned a produce store and was thrilled to share her wisdom.) I walked away from that experience realizing that we can even be mothered by strangers. It’s all what we invite into our lives. We need extra hands, sometimes. We need wisdom, sometimes. And sometimes, we just need someone to listen.
This week, take a moment to look into your heart and figure out which need in your heart needs the most attention. What needs the most help? What hurts the most? What feels the heaviest? Once you’ve defined your need, figure out who can help you mother it and who can help heal that pain. Will you ask a friend to swap dinner making? Will you swap with a friend to fold a load of laundry? Will you hire someone to help with your laundry? Perhaps you invite a grandmother-type friend over, who might also be lonely, to play with the kids. Perhaps, you go to see a therapist or a healer to talk through your pain and to feel really heard.
There are countless ways to find someone to mother your heart and to help you step through your grief. By finding one solution to one little piece of your heart’s pain, you will begin to move forward. Mothers come into our lives in many different forms. Each one is brought in to heal its own unique place in our hearts. Who will you let in to mother you this week?
We can’t wait to hear who mothered you this week. Take a moment to share in the comments down below what you did to help your heart this week. It might just be the encouragement or inspiration someone else in our community might need to read.
Love and Blessings,
Erin
Have you ever wondered how your thoughts can heal your heart?
As we’ve dedicated this entire month to the mother relationship, it got me thinking. What did our moms provide us that helped us the most? Sure, they cooked, cleaned, drove us around, fought our battles or let us fight our own, but what was is it, really, that they had the greatest influence over in our lives? It really came down to two things:
Food and thoughts.
Last week, we covered how we could begin to mother ourselves with nourishing loving food, so this week we are going to learn how to mother our thoughts. Our powerful all-consuming, life-altering thoughts. Not only are we what we eat, we are what we think. But where do those thoughts come from and how to do we begin to alter them to keep them positive, especially while grieving?
While our thoughts are ours alone, they have often been influenced by our greatest influencer-the person who helped shape our esteem, our personality and our hearts, our moms. Some of us may have been lucky enough to have a mom who told us how amazing we were and how we could accomplish anything. But there are those of us whose moms never uttered a word of encouragement or praise. Why do think it happened that way? I don’t really believe it’s because that is how they actually felt about you.
I think it had everything to do with how they felt about themselves. The lack or abundance of mothering support was a direct result of what was going on in their own hearts. It may have been because our moms, themselves, didn’t feel good about themselves. Perhaps they didn’t believe in their own words. It’s quite possible that they didn’t provide encouragement because they didn’t feel that their voice even mattered. It was their own self-esteem that kept them from boosting up yours. Do you think that could have applied to your situation growing up?
The important point of this week’s message is to begin to recognize that it was your mom’s challenge, her hurts, her heart that held back from providing you with the love and encouragement you so desperately longed for as a child. But now that our mothers are no longer here because they have passed away or have passed along out of our lives, the big questions is: what are we going to do for ourselves? How can we begin to give our hearts the love, the encouragement, and the mothering they need to begin to heal? As we begin to heal, we start to feel stronger. We gain a peaceful knowing that we belong and that we are loved. How do we get there ourselves?
We are going to use a magic mirror.
Yes, a magic mirror. Or at least, your own mirror may feel magic for a little while when this technique begins to take effect. Take a moment and stare into your own eyes in the mirror. Look deeply. While looking into your beautiful eyes, connect and see the beauty that lies there. It may feel a little awkward at first but as you continue doing this, you will begin to connect with yourself. Our eyes are the gateways to our souls. See the infinite possibility there. Write down what you see. Look into your own eyes with the love of a mother, even better yet, the love for yourself. Tell yourself you love yourself. Tell yourself you are worthy and that you are very, very important. Then, see how that feels and write it down.
Only our own hearts know the truth within our souls.
When I first started doing this, I first, looked behind my shoulder to make sure no one was watching, 🙂 and then I could only look for a few seconds at a time. And that felt so sad and so lonely to me. I couldn’t be with myself. I couldn’t get intimate with myself. And if I couldn’t get intimate with myself, who was I ever going to get intimate with in my life? So I’ve added it to my morning ritual. After brushing my teeth, I take time to look myself in the eyes and gaze into the wonder, the beauty and the love that exists there. It’s the same wonder, beauty and love that exists in all of us. It’s there for you too. Take a look and see. Get intimate with yourself and see how much your thoughts, your heart and your life changes as a result.
Inspired by Louise Hay and her beautiful mirror work, this exercise will expand your heart and the love within it. Watch what happens in that moment, after a week, and after a month. You will begin to BELIEVE that person in the mirror as if she were your own mother. Listen to her or him as if he or she were your mother. Cradle your heart and give it the love and messaging it deserves. Mother that heart the way it needs to be mothered. I bet you find that discovering that love within you fills you more than any mother’s love could ever fill you. Healing our hearts is an inside job. You will be amazed by the healing and love you find in this exercise. Recognize your uniqueness and your beauty. We each have a role here. We are all unique and we are all beautiful. We are all little dots that make up a magnificent dot painting. There are countless dots, of all different shapes, colors and sizes that, together, create a masterpiece.
I can’t wait to hear what happens in your mirror this week. Please share what happened and inspire others to take a look into their mirrors too.
Love and Blessings,
Erin
GRIEF: Mothering Ourselves-Our First Step- Healing your grief 2 minutes at a time #62
We all have defining moments in our lives where we find that we must begin to mother ourselves. For some, it may be the first time they are sick away at college. For others, that moment may define itself when their mother leaves this earth, or their life, and she is no longer available to mother them the way their inner child needs to be nourished. But here’s the thing…
No matter what age we reach, our inner child will always need nourishment and will always need mothering.
So what are we left to do if we no longer have a mother in our life? Do we sit still and neglect and abandon our own inner child? Do we pretend that he or she doesn’t exist? We can pretend all we want, but the truth of the matter is that, like most children, our inner child will stop at nothing to be heard and to be given the attention it needs. Who really wants to let their adult-self throw a tantrum like a two year old? But it’ll happen if we don’t give that sweet inner child of ours the love and attention it wants.
And why wouldn’t we want to attend to our inner child? Once nourished, he or she will give us the fortitude to keep moving through our challenges, the patience to handle emotional situations and the security we need to feel when we are alone.
But how do we mother our own inner child? We make a point to allow our hearts, bodies and minds to feel cared for and to feel loved. We can certainly invoke the help of other women in our life to mother us. It feels wonderful but that still puts us in the position to be dependent on someone else’s availability and desire to mother us. What if there was a way for us to mother ourselves? There are many ways to mother ourselves, but this week we are going to focus on nourishment.
A mother’s loving food heals not only our bodies but our souls.
So this week, we are going to act and receive as if our mothers are with us healing our bodies and souls. Your assignment for the week is to pull out your crockpot and make your favorite recipe. While preparing your food, add love to the ingredients and add the intention that you are mothering yourself. Leave for the day and when you arrive home, bask in the aroma and love and the mothering tenderness that is welcoming you home. The beautiful food that is going to heal not just your hunger pains, but your hungry inner child, will be a wonderful nourishing gift to yourself. Receive your own love.
If you don’t have a crockpot, you can do this with a baked potato in the oven and bake it for an hour and then turn the oven off and allow it to continue to cook in the hot oven while you’re away. If you don’t have time to prepare a crockpot meal in the morning, you can set and prepare your coffee pot at night to begin making your coffee in the morning before you awake. Be sure to RECEIVE your mothering love first thing in the morning. This whole exercise is based on receiving the intention you give your meal or coffee. It is about the gesture of mothering. It is about finding a way to give our hearts just what they need. It is about us receiving our own mothering love.
There is an inner child and mother within each of us. There comes a time when we begin to let them take care of each other.
So take the time this week to mother your inner child and to give it the love and attention it so desperately needs and wants. Allow this moment, right now, to be your new defining moment of mothering love.
I can’t wait to hear what you decided to make this week to mother yourself. Share your meal and if you really loved it, please share your recipe.
Love and Blessings,
Erin
GRIEF: Mom did her job: Healing your grief 2 minutes at a time #61
This weekend is Mother’s Day which means that for many of us, these days right now, the days leading up to Mother’s Day, are filled with a myriad of emotions. Whether we have lost our mother to physical death, illness, Alzheimer’s, an argument, a deep rooted hurt, a grudge or a simple misunderstanding, there is simply healing that needs to occur in all of our hearts. Our mothers don’t have to physically die for us to grieve them. We grieve the ideal relationship. We grieve what we thought was supposed to be this idea of our mother. We grieve what never was, or what is no longer, because “life” happened to our relationship with our mother.
But what if life was supposed to happen to our relationship with our mom?
Are we stronger because we can no longer depend on her? Are we forced to be more thoughtful or patient because she is ill or just ill-tempered? Think about that for a moment. How is your mother continuing to do her job, to grow your heart into full completion, just by what she is doing to you today? The biggest growth doesn’t always come from love and hugs. It comes from tears, from being angry, from being hurt, from being disappointed, from being left to find our own way. But are you really being left or is she doing exactly what she needs to do, intentionally or not, to grow you into the person you were meant to be?
Growth makes you stand on your own two feet, which is all she wanted for you anyway.
Standing on our own two feet can feel isolating, at first. But when we begin to empower ourselves and truly embrace who we are, we realize THIS is where we belong. The only place we CAN stand is on our own two feet. It’s not our mom’s job to heal our hearts, it’s ours. Even if she’s the one who has upset us, it’s still our job to do our own heart work. But how can we do it?
Over the course of this month, I’m going to cover four empowering ways to heal our own hearts-to teach us how to mother ourselves, to care for ourselves and to heal ourselves. This week, we are going to talk about the amazing essential oil, Myrrh. In addition to being physically healing, essential oils have amazing emotional healing components to them. Myrrh helps us to heal the relationship we have with our mother. All of this amazing healing power is packed into this tiny little bottle, just waiting to help heal us.
“Myrrh helps the soul to feel the love and nurturing presence of “Mother”. Like the warmth of a mother’s love for her child, Myrrh assists individuals in feeling safe and secure.”-Emotions & Essential Oils by Enlighten.
Supporting your body to feel safe and secure will begin to help heal the stressed emotions over our mothers. Do what feels best for you. You can rub the Myrrh directly onto your heart, you can diffuse it in a diffuser or you can treat yourself to a wonderful salt bath. A perfect bath recipe could be:
1/2 c. Epsom salts
1/2 c. Dead Sea salts
10 drops of Myrrh (or whatever feels right for you!)
Pour all ingredients in warm bath water.
Enjoy a 15- to 20-minute soothing soak.
During your soak, think about your mom. Think about the events that have hurt you. Cry it out. If you just miss her because she is no longer physically here, cry that out too. When you are done with your bath, create a mental picture that your tears and your hurts are leaving down the drain. You are cleansed from that hurt and healing your heart with each release.
Your mom may have physically left this world. Your mom’s body may still physically be here, but her mind has left. Your mom may have just emotionally left you. No matter how she left, you are still here, standing on your own two feet. Take the time to heal your own heart and to make yourself strong because of her, or in spite of her. It’s your choice, but it’s your heart that gets to decide what you want to do.
Because whether your mom loved you to pieces or hurt you deeper than you could have ever imagined, she did her job. Her job was always to turn you into who you are now.
How will you heal your mom’s relationship in your heart this weekend? Will you use your Myrrh? Will you reach out to her? Will you just make peace with your own heart after recognizing she is the one who helped you grow? We can’t wait to support you and hear from you as you stand on your own two feet.
If you’re interested in learning more about Myrrh, you may click HERE.
Love and Blessings,
Erin
GRIEF: Your Healing Heart List: We simply cannot heal until we define what is hurting us
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
Grief Decluttering: Turning our emotional land minds into intentional honoring
Hello Beautiful Person!
It’s spring! It’s the time to declutter and simplify your life. A few weeks ago, I shared our first decluttering tip on decluttering our hearts first. Until we clear away our emotional clutter, we are just simply unable to part with the physical objects around us. Once that heart clutter is cleared, it’s time to move onto our physical objects. Once we finally do start decluttering, what do you think will derail our progress the fastest? It’s what I love to call:
The Emotional Land Mind
What is an emotional land mind? It is that note, that letter, that very personal ANYTHING that we find lying around in a drawer or a closet that catches us by surprise and takes us down in our hallway where we find ourselves crumbled and crying in a ball of tears, all the while vowing never to return to that closet that did this to us. Over time, we find ourselves avoiding those very closets entirely because of what is looming on the other side. We think our broken hearts can’t take it. We think we won’t be able to open that wound again with another uncharted emotional land mind. But what if there was something we could do to not only avoid those land minds but also bring them to a place of safety faster? This week, we’re going to empower ourselves in two different ways to create a path of healing and strength so we can put those land minds right where they belong.
We are going to turn our emotional land minds into intentional honoring.
How do we do this? We begin to fill a box with those aforementioned land mind objects. Upon discovery, you can choose to read it or put it in immediately and save it for another time. You will begin to find that the land minds that you feared so much become an opportunity for intentional honoring. You can make the choice to open that closet door and pull out that beautiful box of reminders and use that time to honor your loved one, instead of fearing what you might find scattered behind closed doors. It’s an empowering and beautiful keepsake of all of your loved one’s love notes.
But what do we do if we think we don’t have enough power in us to even open that closet door?
We bring in reinforcements.
A friend, a loved one or even a professional organizer. Bring in someone who will listen to your cards or letters as you find them. Bring in someone who can wipe your tears, hold your hand and then help you get that land mind secured in your intentional honoring box. That friend will also help you keep going and not let you stop there so you can make it through that whole closet.
Don’t get me wrong, it can be very nice to get your “hello” from your angel as you come across sentimental items in your home. I assure you, this will not go away if you create this box. Your loved one will find other ways to say “hello” so you can know they are around you. Your intentional honoring box helps YOU feel empowered and strong and less surprised and pained by finding that beautiful birthday card just lying in a drawer. With your brand new box, you will not only enjoy that card but it will become a true honoring of your loved one during a carved out moment in your day. You can bring your whole heart to this box prepared and ready to cry, reminisce, remember and heal.
I can’t wait to hear how your intentional honoring boxes work for you this week. What did you find? What did you put inside? Take a picture and post it below.
Love and Blessings,
Erin
GRIEF: Our loved ones make up the details of our life- Healing Your Grief 2 Minutes at a Time #58
Ok, I have to admit something. I didn’t even follow my own great advice this week. My mom’s Angel Birthday was on Monday and I filled my day. I didn’t just fill my day, I PACKED it full. I had a full day of reiki clients to see and I went to yoga class at night. I did not leave one moment for reflection, healing or celebrating as a family. At the end of the day, I had realized what I had done. I had fallen into the busy trap (which is not hard to do given our hectic schedule). But I do believe it is imperative that we take time to pause, reflect and honor our loved ones and our emotions about our loved ones on this sacred life-changing day. No matter how we felt about our loved one while they were on this earth, no matter what tough stuff happened, no matter if we were speaking or not speaking or if we were as close as possible, OUR life changed forever on their Angel Birthday and it is important to honor that life moment for everyone involved. So rather than getting down on myself, I decided to turn this around as a teachable moment. Tapping into the student I still am (and always hope to be), I sat there at my kitchen table at 11pm at night thinking…”What can I do to honor my mom at this late hour?” And then it hit me…
I honored her all day long.
I realized in that quiet moment that she was an integral part of everything I had done that day. When I do my reiki healing, I often feel my mom’s presence in the room. I know she is there helping me, guiding me and assisting me in healing my clients. Instead of feeling guilty that I hadn’t carved out dedicated time to honor her, I found myself abundantly grateful to have had all of my reiki clients that day. They allowed me to be closer to my mom than if I was home honoring her on my couch or sitting quietly, reflecting. Her involvement in my day didn’t end there.
My mom was my very first yoga teacher. In fact, when I was sick in the hospital after the birth of my daughter, she made me do nose yoga and toe yoga in my bed. She was relentless, and she knew just how to heal me. She knew how important moving the energy in my body was for healing me, and she would not let me off the hook. So she sat on the side of my bed, and together we held our noses and breathed and tried to hold up one toe at a time. (By the way, that is REALLY hard and really great for you if you want to give it a try.) Reflecting on her inspiration to make yoga a huge part of my life left me realizing, yoga class was exactly where I needed to be on her Angel Birthday. So, I then gave gratitude for honoring her in a way that brought me back to my roots with her.
She was there. All day long. She was a part of everything I did.
The icing on the Angel Birthday cake was going onto Facebook and reading the beautiful notes people had written. My sister-in-law had posted a picture and lovely comment about her and it inspired so many touching responses from people that knew her. Some of these people I did not even know. Most of these people might not have remembered or thought about reaching out to share their love on this day, but this simple post evoked beautiful heart-filling notes of love and gratitude for her life well lived. It was so healing and special to savor each and every note. Facebook really is a blessing.
So my tip for this week is to recognize your loved one in your everyday life.
They are there. They are in everything we do.
It’s always important to know and accept we are exactly where we are supposed to be. So if you find yourself able to host a celebration and poignantly reflect, that is exactly where you are supposed to be. If you are hectic and busy, that is exactly where you are supposed to be too. Either way, your loved one is right there with you in every detail of your life. They are the inspiration and the meaning behind so much of what we do. Take a moment and look for it and give gratitude for the multiple ways they’ve touched your life. Know your life itself has become a reflection of the parts of them that touched you the most.
How has your loved one touched your life? We can’t wait to hear in the comments down below.
Have a great week!
Love and Blessings,
Erin
GRIEF: The Storm Before The Calm: Healing Your Grief 2 Minutes at a Time #57
My mom’s Angel Birthday is coming up this Monday, and one thing never ceases to amaze me. For every single Angel Birthday I’ve experienced, for the many different loved ones I have lost, over the course of many different years, I always forget about the one thing that throws me every single time. I always forget about…
The Storm Before the Calm.
Wait! Isn’t it calm before the storm? No, not in this case. As with everything grief, this too is turned upside down. “The Storm” is the clump of days leading up to our loved one’s Angel Birthday. The lonely, quiet, reflective and SUPER hard days right before their Angel Birthday… what I call “The Storm”. With every storm, I find myself incredibly emotional, sad, and depressed and really, really missing my loved one. I lash out at other friends and family. Without fail, I never seem to recognize this pattern until the day before their Angel Birthday. It’s like this big “Ah-ha moment” when I finally realize why I have had such intense feelings. When I finally recognize that I’ve been in the storm, then and only then, do I find myself being more compassionate and gentle with myself. I, of course, then must analyze it all and think to myself, “what is this storm?” and “why wasn’t I nicer to myself through it?” This whole storm thing… it’s kind of a big deal for our hearts. So what happens during our storm, and what can we do about it?
Our storm is the preparing of our hearts to be ready for what we think will be the big heartbreak day.
We begin to prepare ourselves for the heartbreak we think we are going to feel on their Angel Birthday, without realizing our heart is already breaking in preparation for the big day. We start planning for this wave of emotion that is going to overtake us on this special day, without realizing the emotion is already overtaking us. We find ourselves projecting how we think we are going to feel when that day arrives, without realizing we’ve already brought up all those emotions. We’ve brought them all up in order to be ready for the big day, but what we don’t recognize is that those feelings are now already in our hearts waiting to be processed. They are sitting there waiting for us to pay attention to them. But since most of us ignore them or don’t even recognize that they are already there (since they’re not SUPPOSED to be there until the actual Angel Birthday anyway), these emotions release themselves in every direction possible, in every way possible, at every person possible. Thus creating a superstorm for ourselves and everyone around us.
The hardest part is that no one really knows about it.
The storm is our own personal, private emotional process that we find ourselves having to endure alone. We find ourselves alone because our loved ones are busy mailing cards, marking their calendars and setting reminders to call us ON our loved ones’ Angel Birthday. They are preparing to support us on the big day. It will be these very people that will make the Angel Birthday itself feel less emotionally charged than the storm days leading up to it, because we will feel so supported and loved. THANK GOD FOR THEM! It makes the actual Angel Birthday day calm and full of gratitude. I think it becomes a calm day because we finally allow ourselves to pause, to stop, to reflect. To give gratitude for their life touching ours. It’s our calm that we give ourselves permission to feel after making it through our storm. And with this calm, we allow ourselves to begin to heal.
But what if we gave ourselves that same permission to pause, to reflect and to nurture ourselves during our storm? This week’s tip is to help us recognize our storm pattern, so we can be kinder to ourselves during this sacred time. Be extra gentle and loving to yourself in your days leading up to your Angel Birthday, and know THIS is where the storm is… this is where the processing lives. This is the tough work, the private, quiet healing work that must be done to heal.
I hope this helps you recognize your storm days. Don’t be afraid of them. Welcome them and let them wash away your sorrow. Let it rain. Let your storm days clear what needs to be cleared, so the sun can shine for you again.
Share this article with your support community, so that they can begin to recognize their own storm days and better support you during yours. I can’t wait to hear how you are supporting yourself through your storm and how you are being more gentle, kind and loving to yourself. It’s the only way to survive the storm.
Have a great week!
Love and Blessings,
Erin
GRIEF: TOP 3 TIPS FOR LISTENING TO A GRIEVING FRIEND
We all want to help when our loved ones are grieving but we think we don’t know how, or we won’t be good enough or we’ll say the wrong thing. Well, this week, we’re going to learn that…
Sometimes not saying anything is the best thing you can do to show your love!
Not say anything? What does that even mean? We need to sit down and listen to them. I mean, REALLY authentically, actively listen. But how do we do that?
Especially in these times, there is a difference when someone REALLY listens. Anyone who has been on the receiving end of someone who is REALLY listening knows the difference. So here are my three simple and hugely effective listening tips for you this week.
HERE ARE MY TOP 3 TIPS FOR LISTENING TO A GRIEVING FRIEND:
1) ZIP YOUR LIPS
I mean, literally. When we are grieving, we need to tell our story over and over and over again. One of Thich Nhat Hanh’s most beautiful messages is that it is our job to be there for others to allow them to empty their hearts onto us. It’s as if we are holding a bowl for them and they are emptying their heart’s content into it. Now that is love and that is exactly what will help heal a grieving heart. But how do we create this safe space for our loved one so they can feel protected enough to empty their heart’s contents into our bowl?
We do not say a single word. Zip your lips.
Try not to say, “Uh huh” or “I know.” Not only do these tiny little statements imply that you could understand how they feel, they also make your grieving loved one feel like they should hurry up or feel pressured to wrap up their sharing. This will cut that heart clearing process short and leave them feeling less cared for and healed. Zipping our lips not only helps the talker, it actually helps the listener too. How you ask?
It takes the pressure off! We no longer have to feel that pressure of providing the perfect and absolute profoundly supportive response we all hope to provide when someone comes to us for help. By zipping our lips we no longer have that pressure. It’s done and off the table! Besides, your listening support will be far more impactful and healing than any speaking wisdom you would be able to provide.
Just hold that space for them.
That is all and it is everything. Holding space may take a little practice but watch what happens when you begin to hold that space not just for those grieving but for everyone who wants to share with you. You will find that they will begin to feel deeply heard and understood. Practice with a friend so you can understand how great this feels too!
2) TALK WITH YOUR EYES
Since we can’t speak with our mouths in this session, we are going to need to express our feelings with our eyes. It is amazing how much you can feel through someone’s eyes. They are called the “windows to our soul” for a reason. Let’s put them to work and talk with them instead. While listening, provide a loving glance, a concerned gaze or an empathetic tear. You will find that words are not necessary to convey your feelings of support, understanding and love. It is so powerful. Just try it and see. Practice with someone first so you can be on the receiving end of this amazing healing technique before you go in for your session with your friend. Then, you will truly understand the beautiful gift you are providing.
3) REPEAT THEIR WORDS IN YOUR HEAD
In order to remain engaged in their story and to remain 100% present for them, repeat their words in your head. This may actually help you if you are feeling muted from zipping your lips. 🙂 By repeating their words in your head, instead of thinking about what you’re going to say next, you will be able to remain engaged and present with their feelings and emotions. It may also help you feel their pain and begin to understand their circumstances better.
When you have completed steps 1,2 & 3, give yourself a pat on the back! It takes a great deal of effort to listen actively and attentively but there is truly no greater gift you can give someone… whether they are grieving or not. So the next time you don’t know what to give to someone who has lost someone close, stop by and give them the gift of your active listening heart.
I cannot wait to hear your comments down below on your results from your practices and your real-time listening gifts. How did it feel? Were you surprised how heard your loved one felt without you saying a word? Did you forward this onto your support circle so they could give you the gift of active listening too?
Love and Blessings,
Erin