liveapathofheart.blog

Tag: leantowardit

  • Beginning Death

    Beginning Death

    I’ve been building a relationship with death.

    I work as a clinical director at a local hospice. I am an RN.

    I began this work on the heels of a few colleagues and friends dying and also just after my father died in Sep 2023. In the years prior to my father dying I also underwent many personal mini deaths. Deaths of parts of my ego structure, belief systems and emotional pattering that I healed and integrated into myself, thus falling away. All of this set me up to come into this hospice work and begin to build this relationship I am evaluating and exploring with death. 

    There is a way I feel that I close off connection with others when its too taxing or doesn’t serve me. This is the result of recent exploration of boundaries, new boundaries, so they may be getting out of hand. So I am noticing that now that I know I can set boundaries, maybe I need to reengage with others try for more connection knowing I can hold boundaries in place if I need to and keep myself safe. 

    This is coming up right now because I’ve been building this conversation with death, which seems to be at the base of all my of fears and terror: that I’m going to die.

    I’ve also been watching this show called, “Dying for Sex” in which we watch a woman and her best friend navigate the woman’s death from cancer and her desire to self actualize using sex before she does so. It also shows the profound love between two friends. 

    There is an interesting scene where a hospice nurse explains death and dying to them in a really quirky and explicit way. 

    I don’t do this often in hospice with my clients. Even though I perceive myself as being able to hold a lot of vulnerability in my life and profession, maybe I am stunted a bit in my capacity to really support clients in the time before death but not being super open about what is going to happen to them and openly volunteering that information. It made me wonder, does my fear of engulfment from others strong emotions prevent me from going deep with people? Do other hospice nurses do this?

    I was on a date yesterday and the man was a wonderful human, but was physically not compatible for me. We elected to continue our day long date even though there was uncertainty about compatibility. I noticed that once I identified he wasn’t a fit for me I totally shut down and went numb. Severing energetically the connection. 

    He commented on his feelings in his body, and in response to this asked me to connect more. 

    I identified that I had trust issues about men not really wanting to be friends with me but only wanting to keep me around because they like my energy and maybe want to fuck me. So I just was planning on cutting this guy out of my life as extraneous and not being it as an opportunity to lean into the potential connection as friends or colleagues. Underlying this pattern is trust. And fear of engulfment, fear of doing the wrong thing, of moving too fast and of falling in love with someone that is not right for me. And thus having pain and suffering which under that is fear of abandonment and death. 

    When I identified all this and spoke about it with him, the numbness lifted. The weirdness lifted. He said he then was able to feel connected. And we had a really nice time despite not being the right fit as romantic partners. 

    So I am wondering, how do keep myself safe and dive deep into connection without it making me feel engulfed and exhausted and worrying I will die?

    Can I expand my capacity with my clients and hold more vulnerability with them and more openness such as the TV nurse?

    Can men and women be friends? 

    Can I ask the numbness to move aside to enable more connection and thus love in my life?

    Can I stop seeing romantic love as the only love that will fill the hole?

    I feel as if I am asking death to teach me this. I don’t know how to explain that connection but it’s there for me. 

  • Rebirthing 101 Part 1: Lean into Grief

    I have gone through a few large transitions involving varying deep levels of grief in the last 6 months.

    I have been watching my processing around it and wanted to share some about leaning towards our grief and transitioning into acceptance, what that can look like, or at least what it looks like for me from a standpoint of the tools I have been implementing around my own healing in this process.

    I want to start by saying that as with all things human there is a continuum, we have have greater or lesser levels of emotional pain, situations that cause grief, so it is not useful to compare our outward experiences, just take what works for you and leave the rest, we all can share in the inner feelings of pain, loss, loneliness, rage, darkness; as well as the light from our hearts that we can bring ourselves and each other in these hard situations; so let us meet there.

    When things fall apart my tendency is to insulate from the pain. If you think about it it’s a total natural way for our systems to handle things. When something punctures our skin, our natural barriers, thereby putting us on high alert for danger, our body sends blood cell warriors to the site of the puncture, and walls off or encapsulates the site in an effort to prevent system wide infection. 

    My initial tendency is to not experience the pain. To push away from it. Pretend it’s not happening. Use sex, shopping, social media addiction, running (I literally try to run away from it, god bless it!), work, and a new one in the last few years…. meditation, ceremony, spiritual practice. 

    But all these behaviors have in common a way that I am trying to change whatever feeling I am having rather than just being with the feeling and actually experiencing it so that it can naturally move through, transmute, and dissipate the emotions out of my body and field. 

    So what’s the answer?

    Lean towards it. Whatever it is. 

    Rage, sadness, even the excitement of love. 

    What I have found is that if I don’t lean towards the feelings , they lodge in my body and turn into stuck feelings. DEPRESSION. 

    I used to feel depression quite often as I was in the habit of never feeling my feelings, always pushing them away in an inability to experience any emotion. So they always settled into a stuckness I began to know well as depression. 

    I really had no idea this was not normal until very recently when I experienced on a body-feeling level the difference in letting emotions process through and also watching what happens when I don’t and the subsequent feelings of stuckness and depressed feelings that follow. 

    How do we lean towards our feelings?

    When we are having big feelings that feel overwhelming or constant, or cyclical/repetitive: 

    ~Focus in on the sensations in your body when you are having the emotions. 

    ~Where is the sensation located in your body, what’s the quality? 

    ~Are there colors, temperatures, visual representation or auditory accompaniment that go along with the emotions? 

    ~Focus and describe these to yourself or if working with a therapist describe them to them.

    Practice this until you can get familiar with this practice, don’t try to change the emotion! Just BE with it. Be with the sensations and whatever is coming up. Try sending some curiosity, some compassion and kindness. 

    Treat yourself and your emotions you would someone you cherish.

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    July 22nd-25th 2021 in Taos Ski Valley!Rebirthing in Nature in is 4 days/3 nights

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    This retreat is all about working with your fear, befriending it and moving through it. We will be glamping in the forest above the base of Taos Ski Valley. Expand yourself through rock climbing on the Via-Ferratta, hike into the high mountains to our basecamp for 2 nights, and jump deeper into nature’s healing. Explore mindfulness practices, deep process, silence, and powerful ceremonies for women moving through major life transition and change.

    Rebirthing in Nature in Taos – July 22-25, 2021

    This retreat will help you break through your fear and onto releasing grief and pain–rebirthing you onto your path to the Transformed New You.

    Experience the IFS Toolbox and self-compassion practices you can take home too. Co-facilitated by Donna Roe Daniell, MSW, LCSW, RYT of Women in Transformation and Jennifer Johnson, RN

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  • Being Near to it

    Sometimes the greatest challenge for me has been either living my life in the fear of past traumas or living my life in fear of failure or of incoming reinforcement of my wounds, my negative belief systems and patterns.

    I believe we all have an impetus to heal. There lies a desire within each soul to reach a balance and expression of our soul’s purpose or service to humanity. 

    As we come into these human forms we come into a structured system that layers us with belief systems and wounding, defenses/protectors to cover over our often little child parts or traumatized parts so that we can keep functioning, keep living, survive until we can adult at level that we can heal ourselves, reparent ourselves. 

    It’s a simple beginning to acknowledge that there are layers upon us that need to be known. It’s another step further to learn what is needed to begin to move forward into healing. 

    Our upcoming retreat will help you begin the unraveling, help you get closer to being able to stay in your body and witness your wounds and your fear with compassion in a mindful way.

    Whenever we face confusion, fear, the aftermath of trauma, transitions in our lives, it’s easy to let our habitual fears and patterns take us over and for us to react from those parts of ourselves. And by doing so possibly causing further entrenchment into the very patterns we want to heal. 

    I have been going through a few super distressing things for me and my family recently, so have been watching this process unfold inside me. Feelings of confusion, terror, ungroundedness, not being wanted…super painful sensations in my body related to these emotions.

    Here are some simple things to practice when we have terror, sadness, anger, any big deal emotion really, even LOVE; come up and we find ourselves overcome or almost overcome with the feelings. 

    Stop.

    Take a deep breath, breathe down into your hips, expanding your lower belly,

    Feel your feet on the ground, imagine the grounding resource under your feet and feel roots shooting down as you breathe, feel your sitz bones in your chair, notice your fingertips, feel your breath coming in and out of the tip of your nose whether it is warm or cool. 

    If you can inquire inside, or close your eyes and send your attention and your curiosity inward do so and identify where in your body this big emotion lives. 

    For me it is usually in the solar plexus or heart and it can be a very painful or burning sensation, or it can make me breathe faster, have severe anxiety…

    So just be curious about the sensations, put your two hands on the area of your body you feel the emotions or sensations and just gently hold. 

    I always think about and tell my clients, these are our sweet little wounded parts, how would you treat your children if they were feeling this way? You would hold them, right? Tell them it’s alright, send general care in their direction? 

    So do that for yourselves. Be with the pain or the sadness or anger or the overwhelming loving feelings. Stay right next to them witnessing with compassion and mindfulness. If you hear or see yourself going into the story of the wounding, stay with your breath, just stay with the feelings, allow the feelings to be energy passing through and as you witness them they are allowed to go. Save the processing of the story, which can be valuable to do for sure, for a session with your therapist. 

    Imagine your own sweet heart sending love and compassion, holding and a beingness with the pain or powerful emotion.

    This practice is to keep you present with what is, help you to keep doing the next right thing for your highest good and to help you not be overcome by the past or future. Just let the feelings be what they are; feelings, energy in need of compassionate witnessing. 

    Please join Donna and I on a wonderful wilderness transformation retreat in the mountains of northern New Mexico in Taos Ski Valley, July 22nd-25th 2021! Where we will use our bodies in nature to practice some of these tools and move you into your souls full expression! Lets blow 2020 out of water bring ourselves into life in 2021!

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    Rebirthing in Nature in Taos – July 22-25, 2021