Joy For My Wounds – A Thanksgiving Thought

2016 has been a year of transformation which means a year of chaos, turbulence, perceived suffering and ego drama for many including myself. So many people that I have worked with over the course of this year came to me with visions of desires that they truly wanted and still do but were faced with the healing process of mourning.

Perhaps you are one of these sweet souls who is going through this transition somewhere in your life or in multiple areas of your life. Mourning is something that we typically relate to the death of a loved one and we allow ourselves to feel the pain of loss for them as we figure out how to take the next step in life and move forward. The mourning process often finds us feeling:

• fearful
• overwhelmed
• uncertain
• angry
• emotional
• lost

We recognize these feelings as a state of depression. We know that we cannot change the events and through the process of mourning we tend to focus in on ALL the characteristics, moments and feelings about the thing that we lost that we LOVED, APPRECIATED and wished we still had. In this moment we find ourselves appreciative and upset. Angered at our loss but appreciative that we had been blessed with the moments spent.

So how does this relate to TODAY which happens to be Thanksgiving or the transformation process and all the shit that happens on this path of growth?

Simple, our true growth and transformation comes when we can allow ourselves this same right of mourning even with the programs and shifts that we know we have to make that are holding us back from our true abundance and power.

Why should we mourn or be grateful for these programs, negative events and suffering you may ask?

Because these events, programs and perceived suffering is exactly what we needed to make us strong enough to have the vulnerability, the courage to walk the path of our destiny. It is these very things that teach us about gratitude. Without these events and feeling in our lives we would act like a spoiled Charles born with a silver spoon in our mouth. We would indeed take life and all our blessings for granted. And even with all the trauma that we humans inflict on ourselves as we move through life we still manage to lead a life full of blessings that we constantly take for granted.

No matter how bad it is in any one persons life there is ALWAYS a place for gratitude. No matter how abused, sick, broke, hungry, abandoned, lonely or in pain a person is there ARE BLESSINGS. How can I say this? Obviously I have no clue what I am speaking because I have not walked in the shoes of the homeless man who sleeps on the cold streets of Chicago. I have not been abandoned by my family . I am not suffering with a drug addiction. I am not dying from an incurable illness. I am not living in a sex slave camp. I have not witnessed my whole village and family massacred before my very eyes. Or any other horrible human trial. But still, I write this in complete confidence that no matter what the trail, the pain, the suffering or situation that there is BLESSING and a place for gratitude. If nothing else there is a blessing in the lesson.

The lessons of our soul come in two formats:
Pleasure and Pain.

It is when we discover the blessing in our suffering or wound as I like to say that we actually step foot on our true path. It is in our wounds that we discover our passion, our purpose and our GIFT to the world.

Only through gratitude can we fully embrace our calling.

But just saying that we are thankful is not enough. We must actually touch gratitude with the feeling of it penetrating our core, our heart. We must enter a space where we not only speak our gratitude but act on it. Without committing to gifting the world with our appreciation and moving into the lessons of our wounds we remain closed and shut up. We keep ourselves armored and locked away where we can not relate, feel love or joy.

We prevent ourselves from living a life of abundance. When we hide away from the mourning process which leads us to gratitude we in turn say, ” No thanks to the Fuck YES Life! ” The life that you experience not just yeah that sounds nice but Fuck YES I want that. Fuck YES I am blessed. Fuck YES this is awesome. Fuck Yes I am in Love! Fuck Yes I am living my dream.

So on this day of Thanksgiving focus on what your blessings are.

Find the hidden blessings and start by praising life for the opportunities that come in those challenges.