I REMEMBER TAKING THIS PICTURE WITH MY DOG RUDDY… I HAD JUST TURNED 16.
The year was 1992.
It was autumn, my favorite season and I was madly in love with a boy. I got my mom to take this picture of me to send a hard copy (yeah no texting or email back then) it was snail mail… to my boyfriend who was in boot camp.
We wrote to each other daily.
Hating to be apart, however, the game plan was that he served four years and that would get him the college he wanted plus provide us housing, loans and opportunities once I was of legal age.
I had freshly graduated high school myself, and was working at my mothers clothing store in a small Northern California town that I call home, Chico. Under her thumb I listened to her daily fearfully warn me of his ill intentions. Telling me about how he was most likely cheating on me, running around with his buddies and doing who knows what. She warned me that he would abandon me like my father had abandoned us. Her anger for the masculine was obvious and yet I listened, wanting to know her thoughts but not feeling in alignment with them at my core.
I believed differently.
I trusted him.
I loved him.
And we had plans together.
My mother, bless her resting soul, I know had the best desires for me, however through the course of time she managed to teach me one very unuseful thing.
TO NOT TRUST MY HEART.
Her rampage about my boyfriend often ended with her anger and bitterness toward my father. I would and still do recall her many tales to me of how she hated being married, how she felt controlled but that was the bed she had to be in. She proclaimed her status as a victim to life and to the relationship and she shared openly her pains about it with myself from the youngest of ages. I was forever her sounding board. Although her desires for my life were most likely set in love, they did bare with them the idea that I was going to be used without choice by the masculine and to NOT trust men at all cost. Try as I might to ignore her feelings and beliefs and hold firm to my own, they did manage to seep into my psyche and have caused me much pain through my adult years.
Because you see, my mothers fears and experiences ended up laying the foundation to me doing what I felt I “had or should” do in life and relationships instead of following my intuition and heart or soul. As a young adult, I had no idea that I was in as much control of the outcomes of my life as I understand now. I believed that I was a victim to what life handed me and that I had to make the most “logical or smart” choices for my survival as I could.
And so, I got married to a man a decade my senior at 18. I had babies. I worked a job. I focused on setting up the house that appeared “normal and expected of me” and I was unhappy to my core.
I did not chase the boy who held my heart at that time.
I let him go, believing that he had abandoned me just like my mother predicted. And because life tends to give us what we expect, he did walk away from me. Or run from the wrath of my mother, but that’s a different tale for another day.
My mom was so happy the day I got married.
She was ecstatic the day I gave birth to my eldest child, a daughter.
I recall her tears on both events and her grabbing me with sheer delight.
I wanted to make my mom proud.
I wanted to be different from other teenagers and young adults.
I knew I was intelligent and a self-learner.
I knew that I was pretty logical and sound in my reason,
that I was wise beyond my years.
After all, adults much older than I told me so often.
And perhaps I was.
But I wanted to do right.
And with the learning that my mother taught me to NOT TRUST MY HEART, but instead listen to only my mind and always make the smart play, I opened the gateway to listening to others, especially my husband.
I knew that my heart was unreliable.
It would do nothing but get me into trouble.
So when he would tell me that I was thinking, doing or acting a certain way because of……
Or that what I really wanted was….
Or that I would just enjoy this or that if I allowed myself…
Because he knew, I tended to believe him even though it felt off inside my body and heart.
Fast forward a few decades, My second long term relationship with a man ended with him telling me that maybe I just did not know how to be happy and did not know what love really was.
This man too also told me how I felt, why I felt this way and what I was thinking.
Both managed to get me to question my own reasoning, my feelings,my emotions, my actions and thoughts and they were strongly supported in their efforts to lead me on the best course of life by my mothers teachings of don’t listen to your heart but instead make the smartest play for your survival.
Neither relationship fulfilled me.
Neither relationship felt right.
Neither relationship was based in love,
they were based in mind.
And both relationships were guilty of gaslighting.
They both acted not in my best interest or even the best for the family, but instead acted according to the best interest in my partners desires, needs and ego. Whether that be sexually, business, moving houses, friendships, child rearing or what I did with my spare time or how I showed up as a partner.
What they wanted mattered more than what was right for me.
And I spent a ton of my adult years believing that this was the only way.
WOW! Was I ever wrong?
One day I discovered something different.
One day a spiritual teacher of mine confronted me on my allowance of such events and why I was choosing to ignore my greatest gift.
My GPS system to my soul, to life and to my power.
This teacher then spent a few years helping me transform my debilitating beliefs and showed me that the things that I feared were nothing to fear if I (get this…) listened to my heart and intuition. Through trial and error in learning myself again and coming home to ME, I rediscovered my path.
My power as a soul living a human experience and a co-creator of my life.
I found true connection with a partner where I feel certain in revealing myself and am not afraid to challenge him when I feel my soul and heart are not being heard.
I have discovered that I can show up just as I am and not need to sacrifice anything of myself to have that love based connection, nor feel safe and be able to trust and surrender in the relationship.
I have discovered that this coming home to my heart and soul,
the listening to my intuitions which at my core I have always known to be true, will ONLY GUIDE ME TO MY HIGHEST AND BEST LIFE in all areas.
And that is powerful AF!
We adults forget ourselves.
We change the way we transmit things in our brains by not using our creative sides, by ignoring what we feel and our curiosity.
We allow ourselves to create a time loop in our life where every day is groundhog day and we are okay with it because it is comfortable and safe, but we are not happy.
Today I challenge you to inquire with the self and to ask “Why am I not happy?” Really allow yourself to dig deep into your heart with this. Move past the ideas and conscripts that you have been taught that THIS IS what happiness is and that it is not okay to not be happy with the lot you have allowed yourself.
Ask yourself, “If I truly allowed myself to be/do/have anything that I wanted, how would I be choosing to show up in life, love, relationship right now?”
You are worthy of a life that makes you happy.
You are worthy of feeling and knowing that you are powerful.
But you have to first challenge the way you have allowed yourself to be gaslighted in life. Don’t accept that your core, your soul, your heart are faulty and that all that matters is the mind, your feelings about things are gifts from something more than what you believe is you.
START THERE.
And As Always,
Stop Existing & Start Living
“Coaching for Grown A*s Believers”
Summer is upon us.
I have many local DFW workshops coming up to help you get educated, transform the way you move through life, let go of anxiety, fear and find your power once more. Reach out to me for deet’s and links on these, and for anyone looking to go deep in the work of YOU let’s chat about 1:1 mentoring where I can share what my master teachers shared with me so many years bacak that awakened me to my power and truth. Message me now for summer specials.