Dec 14 2012

My Treasures

I have been a walker 30-plus years. I occasionally find pennies, quarters, sometimes dollars as I take in my surroundings. For years now when I picked them up, I’ve thought, “Oh! I found a treasure. Thank you!”
Eventually, when I finally arrived home with my small treasure in hand, Because I believe in the amazing power of gratitude, I would declare to my family with joy and excitement, “I found a treasure today” as I opened my hand to share my find. All I would receive back was rolling eyeballs, a sign I took that they were not as thrilled about my treasure as I was. Clearly, they didn’t understand my joy of living a life filled with appreciation for even the smallest of gifts.  

Through the years, when I’ve read a paragraph or even a sentence or two that resonated with me, made me sit up, perhaps reread, take note, I’ve considered this a found treasure and highlighted it. For the sections that struck me as really valuable, I put a dollar sign next to them in the margin, on the sides of them, possibly all around them so upon opening up a book randomly, I could locate my valuable treasures at a glance.

One such treasure comes from You Can Heal Your Life, written by Louise L. Hay. She writes, “Blame is one of the surest ways to stay in a problem. In blaming another, we give away our power.” Two little sentences, yet so profound. What helped me to let go of blame was to learn that everybody does the best they can with the understanding, awareness, and knowledge they have, at any given moment.

Will this treasure help you to stop blaming someone for something? Perhaps these few sentences will help you let it go. Please visit the My Treasures page where I will be sharing more of my treasures with you. It is my hope that one or more of these treasures will resonate with you, maybe make you sit up, take notice, or perhaps help you as much as they’ve helped me. 

Hugs, 

Casey

 

 

Photo courtesy of Muffet

Dec 04 2012

Part of My Journey

My journey of crawling out from a life of abuse continued with a homework assignment I received. The assignment: to consider what I wanted and to put it on paper. I sat quietly one day with a pad and pen. “Breathe,” I told myself. “Breathe again.”  I tried hard to settle myself down and to quiet my mind. To allow myself to ponder what I really wanted. I filled one and a half pages of that legal pad in a matter of minutes.

It was a question I never even thought to ask myself. I was too busy living in fight-or-flight mode, trying to survive, to ever have such a question enter my mind. I was surprised at how much fun I had answering it.

Five years passed and I forgot about that day until I stumbled upon that legal pad while searching for a picture. As I read my response, I was proud to see I had accomplished many of the items on my list. On the last line of the first page, I wrote: “I think I want to write a book.” The very last line of the second page read: “I am going to write a book.”

I was amazed when I read those two sentences−because I had absolutely no memory of writing them. The seed was obviously planted then, because when I stumbled upon that old assignment, I was well into writing my story.

At the time, I didn’t sleep well, often waking up every hour or two with lots on my mind. One morning I decided to meet a friend/client for lunch. I asked her to help me with my book. She said she would be honored to help, adding, “What will make your book unique is you.” Then she asked me, “Do you remember years back when you asked me to write it for you?” Another surprise for me−I had no memory of that conversation either.  

You see, I was being “nudged” to tell my story, long before I was able to recognize it. Before long I started a routine of sitting at my kitchen table at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. I wrote for hours and hours. Yes, my first draft−all 400 pages typed−was handwritten while my son slept upstairs. Sometimes my friend would come to my home with her laptop and type away as I read to her. Other times, I would hand over that trusty legal pad that had become a part of me, and she would type up the pages at her leisure.

Reliving the traumas of my life through this cathartic experience required many hours of work and produced many tears. This purification process brought up and out many repressed memories stuffed so deeply they were killing me physically, emotionally, and psychologically. My hard work has helped me detoxify my heart and soul, an ongoing, lifelong process.

Just a simple question. Is today the day you sit with a quiet mind and ask yourself, What do I really want?

Hugs,
Casey

Photo Courtesy of Clicksy

Dec 03 2012

I Want to Be Me Again

In a previous post, Where Does It All Start? I shared a little bit about a homework assignment that started me on my road to recovery. The assignment: ponder the question, What do I really want? Today, I share what I wrote on the very first line of that legal pad. I wrote, “I want to be me again.” It wasn’t long before more questions started popping into my head… “What does that even mean? Who am I, anyway? Where did I go? When did I stop being me? Was I ever me?”

I didn’t know the answers to any of those questions. What I did know with certainty was that I was more than a frightened, broken, confused little girl scrambling through life trying to survive. As I struggled with my new questions, I received homework assignment #2. I had to ask friends and family, “What do you like about me?” Apprehensive and vulnerable, I began asking a few of my clients the question. As my apprehension started to slip away, I was brave enough to ask even more people and, as with the first assignment, I started to have fun with it.

This exercise turned out to be monumental for me and my moving forward in my search for me. The assignment wasn’t so scary after all. I ended up asking 35 to 40 people and started to learn how others saw me. I heard words like “strong,” “honest,” “resilient,” “courageous,” “diligent,” “optimistic,” “very grounded,” and “funny.” The most popular comments were “bubbly personality,” “sensitive and caring” and “a dedicated, wonderful mother.” The comment that touched me the most was “inner beauty.” I wondered, how could anyone see inner beauty in someone so broken?

All of these comments were a surprise to me. Why didn’t I see any of this? So the assignment that frightened me so turned out to be the very thing I needed to assist me in understanding who I was and learning how to show up. It helped me to begin to move off the broken-person survival path and to peek down the path of thriving and being me again. The more I showed up, the more I began to love exactly who I am.  

Doreen Virtue, one of my favorite authors, taught me: “When you love yourself for who you are, you praise the creator’s hard work.”

Do you know who you are? Is it your time to praise your creator’s hard work?

Hugs,
Casey

Photo courtesy of uzvards 

 

Nov 13 2012

Where Does It All Start?

Where does it all start? In the womb? The first month? The first year? Perhaps the first time you were dismissed or ignored. Maybe your story begins with the first slap or the first beating. Have you thought about the messages you received? Does it even matter? Abuse is abuse, broken is broken, and dysfunction is dysfunction. And the cycles continue.

 I was well into my thirties when I heard the word dysfunction for the first time. I learned that it means “abnormal or impaired.” Anxiety and devastation crept in when I began to realize how the word applied to my family growing up and to my life, that not everyone grew up the way I did. Four hours later, I realized that my boyfriend of six years came from the same type of background.

 I felt as if I had been diagnosed with a fast-growing cancer not yet named. The understanding that a therapy session or two was not going to fix this was overwhelming. But this very new awareness started me on my journey of crawling out. Opening one can of worms at a time led me step by step to the peaceful, forgiving ground I stand on today.

Where does it all start? What were your messages? What is getting in the way of you living a life filled with peace?

Hugs, Casey

Photo by  Nick Harris1

 

Nov 08 2012

The Innocence of a Yoga Class

I was in a Monday morning yoga class; we had just started warming up the muscles of our lower backs. I was attempting to push the “to do list’ out of my thoughts, to get into the present moment, when out of nowhere, there it was, big as life itself. A cascade of sadness engulfed my entire being.

Instantly I knew these were very old, heavy clouds I had stuffed away, pushed aside, ignored, or denied, buried for a very long time. The unspoken sadness of all I was robbed of in life that I had yet to acknowledge showed up as BOLD as can be.  As the hours and days passed after that yoga class, it became clear to me this heaviness would not allow me to hide from this reality another moment, another day ,or worse another, year.

The realization of this lifelong sadness buried so deep inside brought on a feeling of despair. As I moved from that despair to the first stages of mourning, I felt exactly like I did the morning I received the phone call my baby brother Sammy had passed away. Oh, my gosh! He was only 35 years old. This can’t be so radiated from my pores.

For years, I knew this sadness was within me, but I told myself,”Oh! It wasn’t so bad,” or “Don’t be such a baby.” But as I started to identify and name this piece of the past I refused to look at for so many years, I began to see it was a big deal. I was robbed! Robbed of a childhood, of respect,worthiness, being cherished, guidance, my innocence, safety, present parents, and the list went on.

This time I let the tears come, I gave myself permission to finally feel and speak this truth out loud. Clearly, I was going through another stage of healing. Obviously, I was ready to expose this wound and willing to work on another piece of forgiveness to move me forward to more peaceful ground.

Oh! The innocence of a yoga class! Where will you be when a piece of your broken past shows up as BOLD as can be? Will you be ready to acknowledge it, expose it, and get it up and out, or will you choose to dismiss or ignore it, stuffing it even deeper once again?

Hugs,    

Casey