A Little Early

It's Wordless Wednesday!

(I already put up the tree. Whee!)

I hope you and yours have a happy Thanksgiving.

Until next time, may you be blessed - and inspired to pass it on!

Getting Real

 

Belonging to a loving community of fellow survivors over the last couple of years has helped me see a lot of the painful patterns I repeat when I stop getting real about my own issues and start focusing on everyone else's problems. When I'm focused on what's "wrong" with someone else or what they can change in their lives to get better, when I'm so focused on helping other people that I lose sight of my own need to change, I end up sliding back to into old patterns and it usually takes a real kick in the butt for me to realize what I'm doing. I've seen this happen so many times it's not even funny... If I were to get real about what's going on in my head and my heart sometimes, this is what I'd say:

"I'm not happy with my life right now for some reason, so instead of dealing with what's going on with me and figuring that out, I'm just gonna stay so focused on how screwed up YOU are right now. I'm gonna let myself turn into a chaotic crazy mess of a person while I tell you how you should make all those changes you need to make, all the while ignoring the fact that I'm making a huge mess of my own life right now."

It's really easy to notice this "I'm-higher-up-than-you-on-the-healing-scale" behavior in others but how bad does it suck to get real and admit that sometimes I'm that person - the one meddling, controlling and doling out advice to others when I need to just stop and deal with my own issues?

We all have issues - every one of us - and to pretend like the healing journey has this magical rainbow of an ending is ridiculous and unreal. When things around me are spinning out-of-control, nine times out of ten I have a part in it somewhere, somehow. Traveling along this road for two years does not make me "healed" or perfect or above anyone else. The choice to acknowledge that I still screw up - regularly - is a painful one to make, but it's necessary to choose to be 100% honest with myself if I want to make progress.

Refusing to get real with ourselves can leave us trapped in a chaotic place we think we can't get out of. The reality is that if we would be brave enough to acknowledge our part in our mess we could more than likely do something about it, climb the mountain of conquering the "why" of our repeated behaviors, and move on to the next leg of the journey. It's so easy to lie to ourselves and say, "I can't help this situation." NEWS FLASH: Most of the time we CAN help it! True, there are situations we can't do a thing about, but let's get real here - those situations are very, very, very  few and far between. Getting real can get ugly (who really wants to admit that they're being a controlling, manipulative, chaos-creating person?) but I think it's necessary to get real with ourselves in order to have an authentic and progressive journey. We can't get over a mountain of piled-up, screwed-up thinking if we don't acknowledge that it's there, blocking our way to progress.

Here are some ways I've seen survivors in my own personal community lie to ourselves and keep ourselves trapped at the foot of the mountain:

We tell ourselves we're okay when we know we're not. We pretend we don't need to examine that nagging feeling we have that something we're doing is not working for us.

We tell ourselves that we have nothing to do with the trapped feeling, that we don't need to examine our own part in the mess.

We tell ourselves that we're doing the right thing when the choices we're making are obviously screwing up our lives physically, spiritually, financially.

We spend our time judging others, criticizing others, and trying to manipulate others into healing and making progress instead of focusing on what we can do to let go of what we think they "should" be doing.

We tell ourselves that the approval of others is more important than being honest with ourselves - and with them - about how we really feel.

We hold ourselves accountable to a standard that can never be lived up to, and it starts trickling into our relationships with others and cuts us off from the rest of the world.

This list could go on and on and on. Do you have anything to add to it? As a community, I feel like sometimes we need to stop talking about all the yee-haw healing moments and happy-go-lucky stuff to remind each other that we know we ALL have faults, that we don't have to be perfect, and that we need to take time to just get real. Lying to ourselves serves no good purpose on this journey. We all make mistakes and we all screw up. THAT'S real. What do you need to get real about today? Are you gonna climb that mountain or are you gonna let it keep you from seeing what's on the other side?

Until next time, may you be blessed - and inspired to pass it on!

Queen of Halloween

My mother-in-law is the Queen of Halloween around here. She decorates like mad and her collection of Halloween-themed stuff just keeps growing and growing. This year she asked me if I could take some pictures of her decorations. Taking pictures makes me happy. I was glad to help her out. These are my favorite shots from yesterday (notice the yellow in those cute flowers):

What made you happy this week?

Until next time, may you be blessed - and inspired to pass it on!