Musings

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Signs, Magic, White Rabbits, and Crowns

I considered not sharing this one, as it is quite personal not only to me but my family. However, I wanted to give everyone reading this the opportunity to believe in signs, synchronicities, and magic. Mom and Sandi… I hope you are okay with me writing this openly, and if not, I hope that you can forgive me.

Not long ago, I finally went back. I went back to the spot off of Hwy 24 in Leadville where I got the news from my older sister that her time here on earth was limited, finite. I parked at the space where mine and Sandi’s bodies remembered they were much more water than skin and bones. Yet, when I parked at the Mineral Belt Trailhead, I didn’t have much time to process. The parking lot was busy, which I soon realized was because a local college or high school track was working out there, some of the team XC skiing while others ran loops on the groomed ski trail. Because Pacer and I are both quite sensitive and highly attuned to the energy around us, my main priority was to put my own skis on and get into the quiet of the woods as quickly as possible. 

After a mile or so, we got into our groove and my mind started to quiet. Around two miles in, the pine trees started to close in around us and I thought, “This would be a great place to see Sasquatch.” Minutes later, Sasquatch appeared (maybe just a large black cut out, but let’s use our imaginations) and Pacer made a new friend. I laughed at my mind’s conjuration, and we skied on. While Sasquatch was cool, he (or maybe, she?) wasn’t our sign. Actually, I wasn’t expecting one, which is perhaps one of the best parts about magic… it’s always there, and it reveals itself more easily when your mind isn’t holding on to any particular expectation or trying to predict future events. At the same time, you should always expect magic. It was when we crossed the road, splitting the trail, that I saw it on the back of a sign (this is not the first sign I’ve gotten on a sign…I think it’s the Universe’s way of ironically chuckling and saying “here’s your signier sign!”)…a sticker of a crown.

But not just any crown. This one is gold, with three plain and slightly crooked points. This crown is the signature logo of the band “Train”, my older sister’s favorite band, perhaps a hair over Matchbox 20*. Think “Calling all Angels”, “Drops of Jupiter”, and “Hey, Soul Sister.” While the band Train is still well known, I can’t say its a super popular band in the mountains of Colorado, nor have I ever seen the sticker before (and at least in my area, people put stickers everywhere…the back of cars, on stop signs, bathroom stalls, on the signs naming ski slopes, etc.). It was almost as if my older sister was saying, with her own signature eye roll, “I’m right here! I’m literally always with you.” This was obviously not just for me, but my family as well.

*As you’ll see throughout this post, my older sister often speaks to me through music and her favorite bands/artists: Train, Matchbox 20, Goo Goo Dolls- while born in the ’84 and ’88, we were 90s kids-, and Justin Timberlake (specifically, “Can’t Stop the feeling”, the song my mom played at her post funeral lunch), and Avril Lavigne (my mom played “Head Above Water” at the cemetery, which is when I sobbed and Ieft mascara stains on my dad’s shirt.)

My signy sign.
Me wearing my Amanda’s hoody.

As I was saying before, the funny thing about magic is that magic is all around us and in us. We’ve just been trained to not see it. Even me, just last year, thought I didn’t have enough of it and went out in search for more. Yet when my mind starts to quiet it’s like my awareness opens up and I can “see” more, as in I can see how foolish it is to believe magic is sparse or needs any action on my part to come into fruition. (As Michael Singer likes to say, we’re on a planet spinning around the sun at just the perfect distance that life can grow and we can breathe without burning or freezing, and we think we need to control things?)This all led me to seeing…

Yep. 

A white rabbit. 

My Alice in Wonderland signs started happening a few weeks earlier. The white bunny came while skiing down another trail outside the town of Buena Vista. I caught only a glimpse, but I saw the magical creature. My mind instantly went two to things: 1) perhaps this was the reincarnation of the bunny I killed the previous year while mindlessly driving up the road below (this of course, led to intense feelings of guilt and many tears), and 2) the rabbit that led Alice down the hole into Wonderland, or Underland. (In Tim Burton’s rendition of the classic book and later Disney film, Alice referred to Underland as Wonderland when she first visited as a child.) Always the one looking for animal symbolism, I drove home with the intention of looking up the rabbit’s message, while, of course, Matchbox 20’s newest song came on the radio with the lyrics “I know you think I’m gone, but I’m all in. Don’t get me wrong.” (I believe when I looked at the time, it was 2:22, just to triple my signs for the day.)

My first Google search led me right to this site (the blogger’s name, of course, was Amanda- my older sister’s name): https://www.amandalinettemeder.com/blog/white-rabbit-spirit-animal-medicine-symbolism. Her post not only talked about Alice in Wonderland, but a white rabbit symbolizing the release of fears, play, and awakening intuition, or, the inner mystic. Exactly my journey of the past 7 or so months, and, what I believe, what I’m waking up to. 

In the next few weeks, I received more signs: A scene from Alice in Wonderland paired with a Carl Jung quote in a random Instagram post, photos of white bunnies, and a client mentioning “not going down the rabbit hole”. Normally, I would have agreed with him…when we’re spinning in a rumination cycle, we’ve got to breathe and recenter. This time, though, I had the insight that maybe, instead of going just halfway down the rabbit hole, I needed to go ALL THE WAY DOWN, and follow my beliefs back to their root, and decide for myself what was real and what wasn’t. 

I watched movie one, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, a day before my mind and old belief systems once again tried to take rule. As you may know, the book is full of good quotes, such as “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Yet, the line that Tim Burton added that struck my heart and raised emotion came from the Mad Hatter:

Mad Hatter (to Alice): I don’t like it in here. It’s terribly crowded. Have I gone mad?

As to which Alice replied: “I’m afraid so. You’re entirely bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”

The following week, as my mind tried to tell me more stories of how I screwed up and wasn’t enough, I pondered and pondered on what Alice meant. Eventually, I gave in to asking for guidance after Obi-Wan sent me a cryptic quote:

“To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world – in order to set up a shadow world of meanings.”   – Susan Sontag

I replied back, “I feel like you’re trying to tell me something :,)”) before replying back with the Alice in Wonderland quote, speaking to my frustration. Obi-Wan’s reply was very Obi-Wan-ish, and perfect:

“Whoever has the ability to be aware of large amounts of stuff, if they can learn to use the awareness, will be on the cutting edge of changing others awareness’s. 

This is how the dark becomes the light and light creates new darkness.”

My mind doesn’t have to bring me down if I can rise above it. And, if by simply reading my words, I can perhaps allow you to start questioning all the voices in your head (or parts, to be more therapeutically correct, in reference to Internal Family Systems), then we all have the opportunity to see things in a new way. Which, psychedelics, or not*, is the point of the movie. To question reality as we perceive it and then choose the world (the heaven or hell of our minds) we want to live in. Then, the unconscious becomes potential.

*As a psychosoul therapist, I am supportive of using psychedelics as a tool for healing. And, while I’ve had many people infer or tell me I should try psychedelics because of what I write about, I have not yet tried them. There are several reasons for this, but the one I’ll name now is that I’m interested in seeing how far I can get into the magical realms of energy by simply quieting my mind and believing what I know, for I often don’t believe what I know to be true.

It was shortly after this when my “rabbit hole” signs started shifting. To be precise, I pulled an Oracle card that read: “Slip down into the rabbit hole of enchantment and wonder.”

To be honest, I’m not sure what “enchantment and wonder” actually looks like for me anymore. I do know I had it as a kid. I loved to build forts, both inside and outside, and get carried away in games of imagination, be it “dress up”, playing with barbies and stuffed animals, or playing “cops and robbers” with my best friend across the street (Terry, I believe, actually did end up becoming a policeman). I remember the last lingering wafts of imagination clinging to my youth after I watched Bridge to Terabithia and then wandered around the trail-less woods under a cloudy Ohio sky. Somewhere soon after, it must have left me, although my love for wandering (and often getting lost) in the woods blessedly stayed.

My curiosity never completely went away either, and its only grown stronger the more I’ve let go of judgement and comparison. And so, it was my curiosity that led me to the second movie, Alice in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass*.

*Again, I watched the Tim Burton edition, although I have fond but distant memory of watching a much older version with my older sister.

I won’t rehash the full movie for you (beside the fact that the Mad Hatter also endured the “not enough wound” for being a little different, as witnessed in scenes with his father) and instead tell you what thoughts the movie led me to, or maybe, reminded me:

1. What I cannot see, because I have forgotten how to look, is all the times in my past where I have been guided and protected. And, the times where I have chosen my own ego way, when I tried to control rather than (co)create, how my guides worked overtime to make sure I remained safe. I may have ignored the signs, rejected my emotions, and gone astray, but I was and never have been alone. Especially in the times I felt the most lost.

2. The one fundamental truth that I have come to fully believe in is that life is far more magical than we have been trained to see.

Which is kind of weird, but exactly the point. In order to see, we have to unsee. To make our own choice, we have to acknowledge all the choices that have been made for us. To see reality clearly, we have to see what we’ve been trained to believe and interpret. To get to know who we really are, we have to make friends with all the voices in our head, whom may or may not be real. Is the world good or bad? Or does it lie in the gray? Are you or I to be trusted? Or is it all the same? Does heaven or hell exist anymore than Wonderland or Underland exist?

Perhaps we have all gone mad. After all, all the best people have. For it is we who know the secret, that it all depends on how you choose to perceive it.

And, when we let go of judgement and what we think we want, life will bring us exactly what it is that our soul desires..the deepest, unimaginable, fairytales of the heart.

*There were actually way more signs and synchronicities than I could comprehensively include in this blog post without making it longer than you or I are willing to read off of a computer.

**A friend sent me this almost as soon as I finished the full draft of this post.

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Confused: The (Beauty of a) Divergent Mind

Does anyone else get confused when someone asks, “How do you do?”, or “How are you?”, “How was your day?”

To an on looker, it would appear that I freeze for a moment, a moment too long. It’s why most would say I’m quiet, while I pause, debating if I should say what’s on my mind or how I’ve been trained to respond, with an “I’m good” or “fine.”

What I really want to say… 

No, maybe it’s too much…

But maybe not…

In my head I’m wondering…

Do I tell them about all the ideas running through my mind and about all the stories I want to write? Or maybe I should tell them about the white horse I watched running through the field from my window. And the cat! Oh, how I laughed, because it was not our field cat that I saw sneak out of the shed, not the one who’s food was inside. Maybe I say that? Or what about all the things I felt? The deep love I felt while watching Pacer nap. My delight in once again ending up at Brenda’s register at Natural Grocers and how, even though she can have a tough exterior, that I find so much joy in giving her the space to smile. Maybe how I felt it in my body when the sun moved behind the clouds? Or do I reveal the tears I cried watching Good Grief? …WhichI mainly viewed because I like Daniel Levy, and thinking that maybe because I knew the plot from the preview, I wouldn’t cry. Do I say how I teared up watching Alice in Wonderland too, because it made me understand myself and my purpose a little more? And the cows! How, as I rode my bike past, I wished my soulful friends a good day, pedaling away before they could sense the fear and sadness I felt about their futures. Is that too much? Ah! Maybe I talk about the snowflakes. How, in the reflection of the morning sun, I became mesmerized as I traversed up slopes of sparkles that took me Somewhere Else. Or the love… the love I felt, the love I released, and maybe the love I found. That reminds me of…can I say it? The guy I once dated, just a few precious times but felt our energies intertwine. How he told me I spoke too elusively, like I was keeping a secret, not understanding that ethereal is my native tongue? And maybe if he tried to, we wouldn’t have grown so far apart?

Or, maybe I talk about the fear I felt before I could catch the thought that caused it. Then I can describe, to help shift their energy as well as mine, how all my fears became forgotten, how they just melted away, like Frosty on a sunny day returning Home, while watching another sunset. How I once again got lost in the beauty of it all, and in the lostness was my expanse.  Or do I talk about the deer, who greeted me and Pacer soon after the sun said goodnight? How I know they are my spirit animals, always protecting me and turning me towards my own spiritual self. Maybe, maybe, I just say “It was a magical day.”

But by then, just a few seconds after processing this all, all I see is a shoulder and the back of head.
My time has passed. The stranger is still a stranger. I say a quick “I’m good”, as we both continue down our different paths.

Yet now, now at 35 and years of inner work, I still feel okay rather than overlooked. I’m grateful for my courage to diverge from the normal way. I know there are others like me, who crave depth and run from superficiality. At heart, I actually think that’s what we all want, the neurodivergent and those who are not. We aren’t meant to all be strangers. We are meant to connect. To see ourselves in one another, a soul behind a face. And no, it doesn’t mean I have to leave my solo nature and animal time behind. I can still be an introvert and wish for depth that can be shared, harmonizing the two.

I’m still a little awkward at it, being me. But I am freer than I ever was. 

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Swordswoman

Would you believe me if I told you I was an expert swordsman in a past life?

That I became so skilled, in fact, I learned to disarm my enemies rather than harm them?
(I guess I’ve always been an empath.) That I continually grew in honor and rank until…until I realized that I really just liked being with everyone else?

Whether the psychic was speaking metaphorically or not really doesn’t matter*.
And she wasn’t just describing to me my past. She was telling me my future. All of our futures, really.

*If anything is egotistical, wouldn’t it be bragging about a past life?

Maybe I’m one of the many leading the charge against darkness, fear, and evil, using my sword not to fight but to disarm. I’m just sharing my pain, what I’ve learned about it, my light of awareness that grew from my journey through the dark, and my love. 

We’re at a time where so many people are beginning to realize that attacking, criticizing, and killing other people solves and heals nothing. That in hurting others, we’re only hurting ourselves.

Instead of using your own sword to attack or defend*, can you use it instead to disarm?
*As in, defend your position, your view point, or how you protect yourself from love.

Instead, can you love so fiercely that the other person feels safe to put down their shield and shed their armor? Can you shed your armor, too?

The paradox (more on this soon) is that the more vulnerable we become, the more invulnerable we are. It’s the opposite of armored. The more stripped and exposed we become, the more we can get know love and our true selves…and once you remember who you are and what is real, nothing in this physical world can hurt you. 

(My therapist trick: When I want to judge, it helps me to remember that fear creates evil, that underneath hate is fear. In the fear is a scared inner child that has been exiled, that is really just looking to be loved. There may be a small few, I’m not sure, who have managed to completely annihilate their inner child, their innocence (pure love)…but in 99% of people we want to judge or call bad, I believe this to be true.)

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Beauty Pain: A Gift

Beauty Pain: Waking up to the knowledge that life is both beautiful and fragile. It’s seeing the hate and fear, but realizing there is even greater love. It’s the awe and the tears encompassed in the breaths, the limited breaths that mark our beginning and our end, while watching a golden-pink sunset. It’s what you feel both in watching a new life enter the world and a life surrender to death. It’s the lifespan of a dog. It’s the bittersweet feeling of a holiday party full of loved ones- full of love-comes to an end. Its the overwhelming gratitude when a once met friend pays me 8x the amount my book is worth. It’s my sobs seeing god in everyone and everything, even when others do not, and the most innocent being killed. It’s forgotten love. It is the acknowledgement of feeling. It is the acceptance of being human.

So many of us spend so much time rushing and worrying that we miss the beauty of what surrounds us, be it the people, animals, or nature, only to later realize that our time on Mother Earth is limited…which makes life all the more beautiful.

It’s hard to use words to define the term “beauty pain.” Perhaps I described it better in past posts that more so provoked the feeling rather than tried to define it:

Still, I think my older sister said it best in her journal, the few words she wrote in her dying year: “Life is beautiful…even when it’s not.”

Each time I come back to this term, I come to understand what it means to be alive a little more. I come to more deeply know myself.

“What if your ability to feel pain is the most beautiful thing about you?” I scribbled in my journal.

What if?

What if my biggest weakness is actually by biggest strength… my capacity to love?
It is in my heightened senses, the depth of my emotions, that makes me so human and so alive. And yet, I feel and have felt so deeply that I have tried to numb my pain and attempted to reject my humanness, claiming my want to leave this planet, with doG (Pacer) always grounding me back.

Maybe it’s because I grew up in the midwest to baby boomer parents, loving but mostly unemotional (outwardly), that I learned to deny pain, thereby rejecting myself. Showing emotions wasn’t really accepted in my family. My mom got laughed at (with me as one of the perpetrators) for crying during a movie. No one was there to tell me that my depth was my power.

Eventually, I learned to carry and hide so much that I learned to fear it, to fear my pain.
Honestly, I thought it might kill me if I let myself feel it all.

Yet, maybe…

Maybe I don’t have to fear pain, because pain is just love. Maybe it’s sometimes wrapped in a cloak of fear or tinged with sadness, but it is still love. And maybe my pain, my love, is my gift to the world, because my pain carries my light. In fact, pain is a big part of the reason I chose to practice psychotherapy (what I know call “psychosoul therapy). I didn’t want others to have to feel what I felt. Now I know they both do and they don’t… They just have to accept their pain, because their pain is love and shines a light on “wrongness”, the wrongdoings created from darkness. The worst part of pain is actually resisting feeling it.

(However, I can lessen my pain. Here I realize I’ve used the word “pain” in different ways in my blog – thank you for giving me the space and grace to process and shift. Sometimes, what I mean is really “distress” or “suffering”. What has helped me a great deal is learning to check in with myself when my emotions feel heavy and then bring awareness to the thought I’m thinking.  Usually, my thought is far, far away from love. Additionally, I’ve learned to “tap in, tap out”, a great skill for any empath. It’s an amazing gift to tap into someone else’s shoes, but it is neither helpful for the empath or the other person to get stuck in the other person’s energy field. Switching to compassion helps me help others.)

It is my pain that makes me mortal and it has been my fear of pain, my resistance to it, that has kept me from Love. It is Love that makes me immortal. When I resist pain, I resist both my humanity and my divinity. When I accept my pain, when I accept my beauty pain, I accept my humanity and my divinity.

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Joy: Our Connection to Spirit

Joy is our connection to Spirit.

This doesn’t mean we will all start hearing the voices of our angels or guides*, because when we’re in joy, we don’t need to. There aren’t any problems to ask about or find our way out of. We’re simply matching the vibration of higher realms, and that’s enough. It is the energy that speaks. 

*Some of us may, but more likely, you’ll feel closer to deceased loved ones. 

The days I get to spend out in nature, moving my body, with Pacer and family are the joy triple whammies for me. My worries go away. I truly feel like I have everything I need. Nothing more could make me happier. I both feel loved and I feel great love for others, be it humans, animals, or trees. Joy is the magic that brings me to that place…the place inside myself where I am fulfilled and at peace. 

It doesn’t make me ignorant or blind to the pain of the world (I am an empath, afterall), but I can see it without my energy getting drawn in, or rather, down. Which ultimately, is a much better space to think and create from. 

And in my heart, I know everything is going to be alright. That I am alright. That we are alright. 

Joy comes from our inner being. It’s when the heart feels expanded and the mind quiets. It grows in play, connection, creative endeavors, and exploration. (If you’re like me and have an “inner Josh, or “inner gaslighter”, do be a little careful of doing things that you feel “should” bring you joy). There’s definitely no fear involved in joy. Joy and love aren’t exactly the same, but doing things that bring forth your joy definitely leads you to love. 

So, if we “do” anything, we “should do” what brings us joy. In a world still partially cloaked in darkness and in dire need of more light, it is of the utmost importance, to our inner selves and the lives of everyone on this planet.

#joy

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The Choice

In all the best movies about light and dark, be it Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, or Harry Potter, the protagonist always asks themselves the question: What if I am just like them?

What if I am just like Darth Vader? What if Im just like Lord Voldemort? What if Im just like Sauron?

The wise teacher usually replies with something like: Well, it’s your choice.

Do you want to believe in fear? Or do you want to believe in love?
Which is the same thing as saying, do you want to give your energy to the darkness?
Or do you want to give your energy to love?

Most of us, at some level, have already made that choice. We’ve chosen to, to the best of our conscious ability, to be good friends, good neighbors, good partners, and good community members. Some of us have taken another step and chosen to be good to the earth and all the animals that inhabit earth. Yet most of us have forgotten to look at how we treat ourselves.

In order to look at that piece, I believe the better question is: What if they, the villains, are just like me?

What if Darth Vader is actually just like me? What if he simply just chose to believe in fear, and in doing so, shut down to love? What if he killed his own innocence before trying kill everyone else’s? Because…he got so scared that he thought he had to dominate the planet in order to feel powerful, because he had actually lost his own true power when he left his innocence and creativity spirit behind?

In the end, we don’t have to fight the darkness. We just have to make a choice. Darkness is just forgetfulness, which invites in fear and we create these crazy stories in our head of not being enough and unworthy of love. When we shine the light of love and truth on darkness, when we choose to love ourselves even when we’ve made a mistake- a choice that wasn’t in alignment with love, darkness can’t survive. Darkness was never real in the first place, just made up. Instead, we can put our own light energy into the belief, the deep knowing, that we are all enough and all deserving of the highest form of love. 

The choice is yours: Will you believe in your own light?

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Hidden

Just because there are clouds hanging low from the sky doesn’t mean the mountains (or sun) aren’t still there.

Just because we can’t see our emotions doesn’t mean we are not experiencing them, or that there isn’t peace underneath.

Just because we can’t see energy doesn’t mean it’s not the force that keeps all physical things, including our bodies, in motion.

Just because it gets dark doesn’t mean the light isn’t on.

Just because there is fear doesn’t mean there isn’t even greater love.

Just because there is pain doesn’t mean that there isn’t healing underneath.

We can accept, love, and validate what presents itself, while also knowing the truth of what is currently hidden.

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What Survives

If we can still love those who left us, who broke our hearts, who moved away, and who passed on, does that not prove love’s infinite existence?

The greatest act of love I have ever witnessed is watching my parents saying goodbye to their eldest daughter. My older sister had spent a long two years fighting cancer, and when it came to the point where she was clearly closer to Somewhere Else than here on earth as well as looking more peaceful than she had in weeks, they didn’t say, “You’re my daughter. You are supposed to outlive me. You have to keep fighting, because I need you.” (Let me be clear, I do not judge anyone who has said that to a loved one on their “deathbed”.) No. Instead they said. ”We love you. We don’t want you to be in pain. You don’t have to hold on anymore. You can go.” And while my sister did hang out until after my dad’s birthday (I know that was her choice) and I believe my parents, as well as my twin sister and I, releasing our attachment to her physical presence, is why she was able to pass peacefully in her sleep a night later. Letting go was an act of unconditional love.

When she died, all that was left was love.

Personally, my greatest fear (I don’t think I’ve ever admitted this before), is losing my* dog. (Well, her and my twin sister.) To be honest, I’ve never been sure I could survive it. And there is something inherently beautiful and almost innocent** in that, that my greatest fear is in losing unconditional love. Specifically, the embodied presence of unconditional love that has been almost constantly by my side for over a decade now. While I still hold onto the hope of her living to 20 (not unheard of for an Aussie), I can only free both me and her by accepting that in most cases, a dog’s lifetime is significantly shorter than their humans. (Maybe this is because dog’s are already so close to God/Love and as furry angels, are more helpers to humans wanting to evolve.) And, even though Pacer is still happy to have some big adventures with me in the mountains, I also have to admit that she prefers snuggle time and getting doted on by her aunt and uncle even more. I’m so grateful, too, because she already physically thrives beyond other pups. So, when the time comes the most loving thing I can do for Pacer is let her go back Home. Of course, if she is ever sick, I’lI do anything I can to help her heal. But I don’t want her to have to stick around because I need her and I’m lost without her. Because that wouldn’t be love on my part, that would be fear. 

*Again, this word “my” is part of the problem…the possession of another being that is also not actually separate from us. 
**Innocence predates fear. It is love without fear. My feeling comes from more of a child who recently lost her innocence.

Could I…will I…be able to survive that? Love will always survive it.

In truth, I know energy doesn’t die… especially an energy like Pacer’s (this is the first law of energy). I know that part of Pacer’s purpose in coming to earth was to remind me of the love that always surrounds me and that is within me. I’m usually just too blind, too unwilling, to see it. I also absolutely know she will always be with me. I truly believe we’ve always been together in some way.  It’s the fear and lie of absence that always gets me. That and the amount of pain I know my body is capable of feeling. Really, I’m not sure how the skin around my 5’4 frame has survived the amount of pain I’ve held on to in the past. Yet I know I can hold more love then I have yet tested, because of all the times I’ve allowed pain to break me open. All I can really do right now is keep seeing the fear and loving it, not away, but anyway… that and snuggling with Pacer.

Love is the only force that can survive death. In death, only love will remain. 

*Note: Because we are human, it is essential that we love ourselves when in pain. In doing that, we can also realize that pain is an occurrence that happens when we feel separated (by our minds) from Love.

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More Poems on Love & Dogs

I love my dog so much, it hurts.

And this is my new hope for 2024:
To love each day, so much, that it hurts.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Love So Much

I love my* dog so much, it hurts.
Leaving her for a grocery trip, I feel the pang of absence.

I love some people so much, it hurts.
Sometimes, my gratitude for connection comes out in tears.

I have loved some people so much, it hurts,
especially when they died or left me.

I have loved the Earth, the mountains, the rivers, the animals,
the Sky, the birds, the sun, and the moon so much, it hurts. 
I don’t ever want to leave.

Rarely have I ever loved myself this much, so much, that it hurts.

Usually, it hurts because I don’t love myself at all.

I wonder what this means,
that I can love a dog, another being, the mountains, so much that it hurts,
but it also hurts that I can’t love myself the same.

If I loved myself like my dog,
it would mean I could be weird and make any wrong,
and I would still love me.

If I loved myself like I loved my dad, my sister, my mom,
it would mean I didn’t care what I did,
I would just want me to be happy.

If I loved myself like my sister who passed,
it would mean I would love myself through death.

If I loved myself like the lover who left,
it would mean I would love myself,
even after breaking my own heart.

If I loved myself like the mountains, the rivers, the sun, the moon, and the stars,
it would mean I found both expanse and home, everywhere I go.
I would never have to leave.

I would love myself so much it hurts,
and turn around and love again,
realizing love is limitless,
that I have only mistaken pain for love,
another for myself,
life for death,
and see that it is only Love that remains.

*It always feels a little bit wrong to use the word “my” with a dog, like we can own such precious, loving energy. Really, I prefer the Hawaiian phrase “animal kahu”, meaning I am the guardian and protector of these enlightened beings.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Remember

I love Pacer so much I could snuggle with her for hours.
Wouldn’t it be great to live life this way, to snuggle with Love for hours?

Yet I rush through both, snuggles and life.

Why?

Have I forgotten all that matters?

Actually, I think that is precisely it.

Remember.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Love as a Phoenix

Have you ever loved someone so much that you would die for them?

I have done this for Pacer.

Not physically, of course.

Instead, I threw my fears, my ego, into the flames.
It was a slow, painful death.

She never asked me to do this.
In all my destruction and false identities, she would have kept loving me.
Even if I hurt her, as I did and almost did… she never took an ounce of love away.

You see, I could not give her the conditional love I offered myself.

I could only love her, unconditional love in physical form, back with unconditional love.

So out went the conditions of my ego-
And truly, I almost died.

She still loved me, even when I had no honor to my name. 

In fact, I felt shame.

For not being enough. I felt unworthy of love.
Still, she loved me all the same.

I tried to figure this out,
to sort through all the pain,
to find a reason why,
why was I still worth loving?

Of course, dogs don’t speak in words.
Dogs only speak the language of love and light. 
I received a snout sighing on my lap,
and felt message that said,
“My Love, you have always been worth loving,
anything else was a lie,
I am the only truth.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Expand

Love so much, that it hurts,
Let it hurt so much that you break open.
And find your freedom.

Understand that you had to break.
That fear was just a shell.
The love inside your heart was always beyond it too. 

In breaking, you expand. 


Posted on

Can You Love the Unlovable?

(I originally wrote this for my psych-soul counseling Insta page @wanderlustcounseling, but thought it was worth sharing here too.)

Can you love the unlovable?

Can you love the innocent, vulnerable, emotional, and soft part of you that doesn’t want to do hard things, that just wants to feel safe and loved? Can you love your inner child?

Can you love the part of you that oppresses your creativity and joy?  Your inner critic, you mean coach, your Judgy McJuderson. Can you love your abuser?

For some of us, it will be harder to love the inner child, because we have deemed her weak.  Or rather, the inner abuser has deemed her weak. We’ve learned that it’s better to be strong and tough in a “hard knock life” kind of world.  But is it?  Or is that the world we created from beliefs and stories of fear handed down to us, that creates comparison, hate, and war.  That is the belief of the inner abuser (yes, I am using this word intentionally). The inner abuser lives… feeds off of fear, believing the world is not safe and that he’s gotta look out for himself.  She doesnt just protect, she is protected…but not from anything bad, from everything good.  That part of us that shames us, that’s literally tried to obliterate the inner child inside of us…he’s just scared. He hides behind his defenses. And yea, she’s done some things he’s not proud of.  Can you forgive him? Knowing that he’s only abused, harmed, and killed out of fear? Can you see the scared child underneath the armor? The part of you that just wants to know he’s still loveable.  Can you love the unlovable?

*Did you know that Hitler actually wanted to be an artist. Something churns in my stomach when I read his biography: https://www.history.com/news/adolf-hitler-artist-paintings-vienna

**I used he/her for simplicity’s sake, partially having to do with energies, but please use the pronouns you see fit.  

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