healing
How to heal fully and properly.
Phoenix Rising
I have left the wolf of darkness, at least just for today, inside my heart back in the dusky hollows of my soul space. Today, if only just for today—I am the phoenix. I said 'falcon' aloud but it feels right, I am at least halfway certain, that my fiery wings have grown back. Like Lucifer, I took a hard fall from grace and was bathed in blackness; like Icarus, my wings melted when I flew too close to the sun and I caught fire. The wings that crease my shoulder blades are small, still spreading, testing plyometrics, pliability, buoyancy, air flow. Colorless, invisible to the naked eye. In the spirit realm I stretch one out, feeling the ache of disuse for far, far too long. The other swings out as I flex my latissimus dorsi, feeling the dual wingspan of the bat-wing, the angel-wing—both of my wings. Both sides of the same soul, returned to me. The muscles are ready to work on finding an updraft, playing with the pitch and yaw of how high I soar—and yet, it is not time for the flames to fully find my ignited spirit, Apache Mama and the other fire deities waiting anxiously for the coals to smolder, smolder to kindling catch, kindling catch to a slow controlled burn of past consequence, breathing my air, my oxygen, clean and mostly pure. Until finally, eventually, any day now—whoosh—I am engulfed in the fires that have cleansed my spirit, that have burnt away the oil-black sludge of the Dark Passenger's hold on me. My skin scorched by the desert sun but not yet burned. My eyes enlightened by the last light, the lusted-after stare into the sun that took my sight once, twice, thrice, before it made me blind to the truth. But now. But now I can see clearly, or at least in the light of the 'Real.' The phoenix is a burning cycle, as understood through mythology and the ancients. I have reached the end of my cycle, dove feet first into the inevitable crash, and now—and now, it is time to pick myself up and rise.
By Andy Reed6 years ago in Motivation
Pondering Existence
Recently, I have faced death. Not only in my family with the death of my beloved Nanna and then Aunt two weeks later, but also within friends’ lives as well—not necessarily being human; family can also be your pets or those close to you that you consider family. I have witnessed the death of two of my friends’ very loved and faithful companions this week. It appears death has begun to rampage our world. The pain I have felt in the last month, and the pain that I have seen in my friends’ lives has left me pondering how fleeting life really is. How short our life is in the span of the age of time itself. When a loved one passes, in our pain we begin to question life itself. What are we here for? What is the point of our existence if life itself is so very fleeting? As someone who suffers with PTSD and depression, these questions, and many similar, flow through my mind consistently. I remember quite recently toward the beginning of this year, I penned the following paragraph. I was in a dark place, having recently had a medical scare.
By Kip Garman6 years ago in Motivation
The Dust of Our Bones: Pt. 2
All of life was held within the stretching breath of a moment and there was no room for questions. It was all settled inside like sun rising every morning. This was life and all was as it should be. Childhood unraveled in the rhythm of long summer days and wondrous winter nights and abundance was found simply in what was before you.
By L M Anderson6 years ago in Motivation
The Event
When I talk about “the event,” my narrative sounds strangely like Kevin Spacey’s “there was a lawyer…” yarn in The Usual Suspects. Unlike Verbal Kint’s tale, my event was as real as a Kobayashi coffee mug. You see… there was an event in April of this year that changed me. The event’s catalyst doesn’t matter, or even where the event happened. What does matter is I was someplace on a Sunday afternoon, and I began to sob. We’re talking at the funeral of everyone you’ve ever known boohooing. Had I been a professional mourner, this performance would have gotten me callbacks for the next couple of years. Through the black tears that were leaching off my equally dark feeling soul, I concluded I had made some grave mistakes in my life.
By Brian Kannard6 years ago in Motivation
Lion's Gate
What a month! This past month has been enormously liberating in a most challenging and fabulous way. With solar and lunar eclipses, normal full and new moon cycles, Lion’s Gate, and half the planets in retrograde, the stories that we tell ourselves to understand and record our past have resurfaced and the energy beneath them has begged us to move it out. It’s a great time to release any stuck, still, or trapped energy and that also means that the brightest gold (triggers) has been more available to us too! Fortunately for me, I do not react to "triggers" anymore the way that I used to. It’s much easier now to respond to the energy that presents and decode the stories my Inner Child still thinks apply. With so many layers of dross surfacing all the time for me, I noted with glee that the energy around my Solar Plexus and Thymus is clearing this time so I am feeling more empowered than I have in a couple of years. The cycle that I have been in has been one of patience vs. shame for a while and with every step I have taken towards more patience, more shards of shame have flown up and off. I imagine I can literally see them flicking off me like nanobots charging away from my energy body to go and find something more sticky to attach to, and it’s a relief to see them go. Imagining this is much nicer than the old stories my Inner Child used to tell me about what a victim I have always been. Today I know full well that I am not a victim and never really have been one either. It has taken a lot of work and a lot of solitude to get to that point and change the ending to the old story of the persecuted damsel that I used to cling to. I had to learn to not only let go of that image of myself, but to love myself as a victim and damsel too, something I had not considered before. I had spent a long time trying to surrender those parts of myself as I and many others around me deemed them to not be powerful enough but once I surrendered the opinions and expectations of others instead, and reached down into my own being, I saw how I was still negating who I was at a very fundamental level. I would have once struggled to conceive why anyone would want to embrace or embody their Inner Victim, to bring back to life the energy of being persecuted in any way. I did embody it again though with complete awareness and a resolute determination to not attach to it this time, and it has been an incredible learning experience. I’m not sure whether to recommend it to anyone else but at the same time, in order to fully accept and love the totality of who I am, it was very necessary for me I must say.
By Gabriella Grace6 years ago in Motivation
A Mile in My Armor
I have spent the last few years of my life afraid of something undefinable and because of my irrational fear, I have restrained myself from the experiences that are necessary in order to for me grow as a person. It took a long time for me to see that there are some things that we simply can not learn by just watching others or through listening to stories, we must experience them ourselves and to put what I've been going through into better terms, I feel as if I’ve been fighting a never ending battle and regardless of how brutally I fight and how long my stamina holds me up for, I always end the day feeling as though I lost and missed out on everything that I was supposed to be experiencing. I understand that we all have to fight our own battles and that some are worse than others, but mine has gotten to the point where the armor that I force myself to strap on every day is breaking my back and I am just tired and ready to rid myself of all of the negativity that wraps itself around me. I spent a lot of time trying to point my finger at something or someone to blame but that just ends up creating an unwanted batch of bitterness inside of me that brews and steeps until it comes out; a hot cup of misery with a side of frustration served fresh for anyone who happens to catch me on that particular day. At times I find myself struggling to be a part of the world because I have yet to learn my place here and it's confusing because the fear that I have for that undefinable something always holds me back from discovering the parts of me that I have to discover.
By JC .6 years ago in Motivation
"Here Lies"—Finding Closure, Forgiveness, and Peace
Imagine you're at a funeral, gazing at an open casket surrounded by overly scented flowers and wreaths with one-word labels. A low, strong strand of music whispers through the air. You hear the soft sobs, the pull of tissues from their cardboard box, the too-light steps of the people in mourning. It all seems to happen around you, without you, as you search yourself for the last words you'll offer to the deceased before they are whisked underground, forever out of sight and occasionally out of mind. You find the will to pull yourself up, walk to the casket, and speak. Out of your mouth spills every word you always wanted to, but never could, say out loud.
By L. Ronan6 years ago in Motivation
Homeless but Hopeful: A Tale of Endurance
Sometimes I wish there was an easy fix, or I wish I was person that could just be happy with less. But life doesn't work that way, and I'm not that person. I've always had enormous dreams. Even as a foster kid when I was surrounded by people that ended up shocked I even graduated high school, I still believed I would do something great. I cannot even tell you how many times I wondered if I was just naive. I would consider that maybe I really wasn't anything special. Maybe I really was just some kid no one wanted and the best I could do is a minimum wage job flipping burgers. But the thought of this made me like I was betraying myself. Over the years, I learned that I was made to be out-of-step with everyone else. I was made to be different. To have different ideas. To create something different. At 29 years old, I finally figured out what I wanted out of life. I wanted to be a writer. But I didn't want to just write books or freelance articles. I wanted to create something more. Something that I could pass down to my son. A real business. So, I started a blog. It began as an attempt at writing about my own life. Unfortunately, my life sucked at that moment. My son's dad who we will call Justin (because he hates that name) and I had just broken up but we were still living together. Fun tip: don't even try that experiment. We were miserable. I was miserable because he thought our son was solely my responsibility because I have a vagina. He was miserable because I disagreed. I just wanted time to work on this blog I was trying to start. This was my life. Who wants to read about that? I didn't even like writing about it. It was nothing but a bunch of nonsense every single day. The same arguments over and over again. Blah blah blah. Boring. So, I did a little bit (a lot) of introspection. I would ask myself, what is it that makes me different? What is it that set me apart? The answer became so clear it was comical.
By Amanda Washburn6 years ago in Motivation
It's More Than a Movement
The first time I was on stage with a group of people I was in second grade. We put on a Christmas pageant at the school with all the older grades. I had done small recitals for small groups in ballet, but this, seemed like every person in the world was in that audience. I was so nervous I begged my mom and dad to take me home. My mom almost let me, but her and my dad decided to make me stick it out. My mother and papa never let me quit anything. I have never been more grateful to anyone. When I was up there it was like butterflies were in my belly, I was shaky and fiddling with my fingers. The music started and the words and moves just flowed out of me like rainbows. I felt like another person up there. My wacky personality came with a wacky attitude and wacky movements that usually got me in trouble but that night, they were getting me smiles and cheers!
By Carmen Spiteri6 years ago in Motivation