To Thine Own Self be True

“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to truth
that is in us….the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Let me start by saying thank you for visiting my blog. The above quote is one that I ran across recently which really spoke to my heart.

I have for a very long time felt that I was here to do more and be more then I currently am. That is not to say that I am unhappy with what I do in my life only that I have always had this deep seeded feeling that writing was something that I was meant to do. I have always really enjoyed writing and have found it to be very therapeutic. It is also something that comes fairly easily for me. Almost as if my pen is being divinely lead.

Lately I have been feeling really drawn to writing my thoughts down and sometimes I am surprised by the profoundness of what is inside of me. When I write I feel as if my heart is opening and I experience a radiating warmth from that place deep inside of me that holds all my answers.

2010 has been a very interesting year for me. It is my 40th year on this planet and I have achieved some wonderful things this year, like becoming an fully certified and recognized yoga teacher. Yet I have always felt that there was something missing. That sounds so vague I know and I know that it may not make any sense to you. That is o.k. because each one of us is here in this life time to live our own truth. This blog is about me following my heart and honouring the truth that is in me. I have always known my answers long before I had the courage to act upon them. You too may have had similar experiences in your own lives. My hope for this blog is that it is inspiring and uplifting and a place that we all come to as we all journey the winding roads to our hearts – home.

This blog for me is going to help me connect the missing links and give me the courage to follow my path home.

Over the years I have found that courage is fairly easy to come by in a group of people. It helps people to recover from addictions, leave abusive relationships and deal with various others challenges that life throws our way. On the other hand having the courage to do things that others may not approve of or understand is a whole lot harder to come by. Being real and dealing with the possible disapproval of others is a scary proposition for most of us – me in particular. I do know though that I came into this world to be me and live my journey not what others feel my journey should be.

I have always struggled with wanting the approval of others and yet I have always been very vocal and had strong opinions on many things. In my life this has worked both for and against me over the years. As a young child my parents separated when I was 7 and at the time I believe that I was so filled with fear and sadness that I took on certain roles in different situations to help me to deal with things that I didn’t understand. Living with my mother and younger sister I tried to put on a very brave face and took on a masculine role in the house. With my father I felt the need to be more of a caregiver as I felt that was what he needed. Nobody told me that these were now my roles. I took them on willingly. This from the mind of a seven year old child who was very afraid. Afraid of what I was feeling and what everyone else was feeling. Taking on those roles as I did caused me to suppress a lot of my fears and sadness and in turn build walls that kept me from being in situations that could hurt me.

This suppression of my own grieve over the years became a coping mechanism for me. I built up walls around my heart that have taken me years and years to break down. I am still working on this and these days I feel like I have a lot of support and guidance from the universe showing me the way which is one of the reasons that this new blog exists.

My roles and my inability to really express my emotions led a lot of people to view me a nasty and just not a very nice person sometimes – I mean one of my nicknames was Nellie – as in Nellie Olsen from Little House on the Prairie. Seriously folks, how nice was Nellie? The thing is that although I may have acted like a Nellie on the outside, my inside was full of pain and sadness that I just didn’t know what to do with. It was easier for me to express my emotions in a negative way, so I was mean and nasty a lot of the time and spent years with a chip on my shoulder feeling like the world and most people in it had done me wrong.

Entering high school was a time of total uneasiness for me as I really didn’t have a large circle of friends and the ones that I had were either going to different schools or still in elementary school. So to say that I was totally out of my element entering grade 9 would be an understatement. I never really felt comfortable anywhere least of all my own skin. By the spring of 1985 halfway through grade 9 I found alcohol. The first time I drank and got drunk I shared a 6 pack with a friend of mine and wow what a feeling of being o.k. For the first time in a long time I felt o.k. It was a feeling that I chased for along time. Alcohol allowed me to act in ways that never really felt right for me but were acceptable under the influence of that which filled a void in me. Or did it really fill a void or create more of one? Hindsight which is 20/20 would lead me to believe it created more of a void and created a lot more issues for me that would need to be cleaned up before I could find my way back to my heart.

I won’t detail all the sordid adventures or all of the mishaps that I found myself in thanks to my use and abuse of alcohol. I will tell you that high school is a blur for me and that I spend most of my years from 14 – 24 in an alcohol induced blackout. During which time I got married, divorced and was financially as well as spiritually bankrupt by the time I was 24.

At the age of 24 years old I made my way to Alcoholics Anonymous a fellowship which I was very familiar with thanks to some courageous people in my family who lead the way for me. I feel very grateful to AA and the people who where there for me as I made my way through the doors frightened, angry and full of dread that my life was now going to be over!! For me the thoughts of being 24 and divorced and never drinking again were almost too much for me to bear. What kind of a life was I going to have? Little did I know back in February of 1995 that the decision I made to stop drinking was going to be the one that allowed me to find out who I really was and to stop looking to the outside world and substance for my answers. AA was for me the beginning of my spiritual journey and for that I am eternally grateful.

My answers are and have always been buried deep in my heart waiting for me to find them. There have been lots of times along the way when I have heard that small still voice within me gently coaxing me in the right direction only to have me say NO WAY – I don’t want to do that I want this. Time and again I have been shown that when I don’t listen to and honour that wise place within, I often take a detour along my path. I am not saying that detours are wrong or shouldn’t be taken. What I am saying though is that we are often brought back to the same place we began and once again we will have a choice to make. Either we follow our truth or we wander again for a while. Wandering has been wonderful for me as it has taught me so much about myself and how I relate to others. It has also taught me that I am not Nellie Olsen. She was only a mask that I wore so that I could survive without being hurt. I am a loving and lovable person and I always have been even though I was somewhat misguided at times.

Our truth never changes. It is always there waiting to be found. That brings me back to the beginning of this post. I am here in this lifetime to live and honour my truth and 2010 is the year that I am actually going to be courageous enough to listen to that place deep inside of me that has all of my answers.

I am so excited about this journey I am on and trust that as long as I stay true to my heart all will be right in my world. I will live a life that I have only dreamed of. It may not look exactly what I thought my life would look like in my 40th year but it feels better that anything before it. I feel peaceful and content. I finally feel like I am living the life that I was born to live, One that is lead by my heart. We are all here to live a life in which all we do is lead by our feeling hearts and not our thinking heads. To thine own self be true.

Thank you for allowing me to share my heart with you. I feel honored to be able to touch your life in some small way.