Month: May 2016

Days move fast. Details are plenty. Head feels full. To slow the motion, shake this frenzy, I freeze the memories into picture frames, and still my beating heart with love for each essential second. I jump off this merry-go-round, sit in a field of stillness, and breathe in the glory of being. Time ticks faster, my motherhood role elevates to chauffeur, and I yearn for the smallest of genuine conversations and connections as we speed to the next ballgame, the next year-end activity, the next juncture of their lives exiting and commencing before me without acknowledgment. I no longer connect with others; frenzy stays with me. Yet, she releases herself long enough to let go and free me from captivity.

My son’s passion shines with a hit to left field, a single stretched into a double, and a slide into home plate. The play to first, the line drive caught on the fly, and a short pick-up to tag and close an inning out, are the joys that fill his heart beyond measure. A horse’s canter and jumping the two-footers with my daughter atop sets a glow this ride ignites within her. She rides with bliss, filled with love for this graceful creature, and feels more exhilarated than any other event can foster. As I sit on the sidelines, I feel my breath wave in and out, easing into stillness that recently escaped me. Frenzy is gone and I am one with the moment, grateful for the breath, experience, and elation of beauty within and around me.

When frenzy returns, I filter it out with a breath. There I pause to listen, see, and feel a glimpse of freedom as frenzy fades away into the stillness of an idyllic event. Frenzy files down its edges to smooth contours when the wind whistles, the crack of the bat declares a hit, and the hooves beat the ground with rhythm. I then experience happiness blended with harmony as the moment envelops me. These days as time moves faster and memories collide into a blur, releasing frenzy from my life offers the gift of joy, the thrill of freedom, and the stillness a good life requires. When I feel frenzy beckon, I release its hold, still my heart, and feel life’s bliss.

My world is spinning, my body standing still as the room moves around me. Bracing the walls, holding back nausea, I pray for mercy. Feeling physically well escapes me, the earth spinning without my ability to climb aboard. I ask the hard questions that correlate with my impending doom. Have I lived a complete life? Has my life purpose left its mark on the world? Can I elongate my stay, enhance my health, and serve people surrounding me? With a vertigo diagnosis, I remain horizontal letting silence and stillness illuminate hard truths left dangling without direction, a voice, or a space to make a difference.

My reality seems dismal. Yet my unrelenting spirit wants to alter my actions to wellness and prioritize life’s bigger picture into focus. Intend my next move, settle the earth from turning too fast, and live my life with purpose. When I was young, with every gift my grandparents uttered in some variation, “Wear it in good health, use it in good health, enjoy it in good health.” Since then, I feel compelled to live in good health. With a sudden shift of imbalanced bearings, I need a hand, faithfully supporting me. Healing requires belief, actions that support my health, and gratitude for the experience cast upon me.

Fascinating is that my vertigo originated within the inner ear where the body’s balance is maintained, called the labyrinth system. Within this maze, three semicircular canals contain fluid and act like a gyroscope, communicating where the body is in relation to gravity. Tiny crystals called cupuloliths dislodge from their place on top of the nerves, causing irritation to the fluid within the canals, causing vertigo. Researchers also believe particles free-floating within the labyrinth apply force causing vertigo symptoms as well. Imagining my gems free-floating, needing to rest in their origin and find their way home upon my nerves, is an interesting metaphor. Perhaps fear resides where my gifts to the world live. Symbolically my writing needs to exist where my courage lives. Disconnected currently, my gems (crystals) require a return to their rightful home, situated upon my nerves. Without this, I find myself disoriented.

Although connecting these dots an implausible truth, the timing of completing the second draft of my book, further than I have reached toward publishing thus far, is serendipitous. The completion feels dizzying, a disorientation of what comes next leaves an imbalance and uncertainty of my next action step. Yet guidance and intuition can cause this labyrinth to jar the gem within me back into its place of origin upon my nerves. Courage lives within me and fosters this journey to publishing my first book. Perhaps the world will stop spinning, vertigo depleted from its awakening purpose, and my book will find its way to the publisher and your bookshelf.

My body feels renewed as spring has sprung, leading to the end of emotional and physical hibernation. Buried beneath snow, cold, and parkas, sun, warmth, and tank tops reunite to highlight the day. With this new season comes outdoor activity, walking with friends for miles, baseball at big-league parks and little league on sandlots, and natural vitamin D dispensing into my body from rays of sunshine. While spectacular buds birth and grow upon branches, I enter the world a replenished, transformed woman. My goal weight reached, walking where few amble, out of an old version into my new body, proud, and comfortable in my skin, emotionally, physically, and internally reborn, seeing what is impossible when self-love ignites and weight releases.

Emotionally euphoric, full of joy and illuminated light, fog, depression, and darkness of faded energy, disappeared. A roller coaster of sugar highs and lows bringing tears, excess weight, and searches for sustainable solutions became my past, never to return. The beacon of light finally lit itself where initially obscurity loomed. I trusted the clean eating process, a lever raised to show me the way. Hearing hope, direction, and possibility, and feeling love, support, and gratitude, I ventured slowly along the journey. Prior to physical transformation, acceptance, a white flag, and self-love lead my path.

Physically my energy restored, replenished, and recharged. Years of lethargy, ultimate exhaustion by three in the afternoon, and a weakened core caused lower back pain and deteriorating strength. Alleviated ailments, push-ups, planks, and boot camps restored my energy, core, and posture, rehabilitating my physical strength. Walking tall, carrying heavy items with ease, and rejuvenated, my physical prowess is undisputed. Rebirthing atrophied muscles into dense matter alters my mood; I reach for and strengthen all facets of my life. The physical aspects connect with the emotional elements, fueling my body, brightening my core, mind, and heart.

Enhanced by physical power and emotional stamina, rebirthing my spirit has replenished my soul. When writing, words pour out of me like a watering can, enhancing the soil, soaking the seeds, and sprouting the part of me blessed with this gift. As strength rises within me, my essential purpose stirs to send the words from my heart to paper, sharing my journey, enlightening lives though the magic of letters upon a page. This rebirth aligns me with a higher power that had escaped connection when the blues, weakness, and darkness surrounded me. Freed from my own shackles, words sprout daily, flowering thoughts to feed my soul. No longer a void to fill, or an emotion to numb, internally these new beginnings connect me to something greater than myself. Life purpose appears present and set in motion.

To ride the rails of change and personally grow, rebirth is a steady process of patience. An emotional, physical, and mental transformation primes itself for a lifetime. Yet strengthening all avenues, releasing the “old”, and birthing a new body, energy, and heartfelt connection, engage my senses, empowers, and changes my life. Self-worth, the mighty mountain at the core of emotional, physical, and spiritual growth is paramount. Comfortable and confident in my skin and freeing myself from fear, rebirth began. Formerly falling deeper into an abyss, I clawed my way out as rays of hope and lightness of being led me out of misery, darkness, and desperation. Years of turmoil fed hidden emotions, weakened me physically and mentally, then seeds sowed, spring sprung, and self-love created my rebirth, strengthening my mind, body, and spirit.

A shaming, destructive, and painful memory from the past flew into view recently with an immediate surprise; it triggered nothing. I felt nothing, no judgment, no opinion, no emotion wrapped around the memory. Peace suddenly arose and surrounded the thought normally met with anger, resentment, and sadness. Instead of grabbing the nearest Oreo®, I sat peacefully, aware of transition, healing, and a nothingness I thought impossible. This newly occupied space of past hurt, regret, and pain, simply nullified into letting go, transitioning into a “knowing” of surrender, peace, and non-reaction. Relieved from this non-triggered emotional response, unaware of how this would materialize, today a “knowing” of my healing arrived and I let go.

Changing, healing, and mending of the heart happen sometimes silently. Does transformation require consciousness to process healing into being? My current experience concludes healing hovers, infiltrates, and assembles wordlessly, invisibly, and undetected, until thoughts, emotions, and actions accustomed to pulling a lever no longer generate an explosion of pain, worry, or divisiveness. When what would normally be reactive nullifies into silence, a letting go with acceptance occupies the space. Peace, self-respect, and self-love replace the self-loathing, outward hatred, and stored, hoarded anger. Great supply of resentment releases, the heart softens, and healing commences.

With compassion, inward and outward, I let go. Lacking judgment, resentment, and anger, I let go. Without control, tightening, and fear, I let go. Insight, consciousness, and introspection occupy my mind, I let go. Transformation in silence, simply being, and undisturbed, I let go. Releasing the weight, the emotional baggage, and the past, I let go. Cleansing the closet, the old, and the ancient, I let go. Losing shame, yet acquiring resilience, I let go. Allowing, opening, and soothing the heart, I let go. Through peace, healing, and stillness, I let go. The “knowing” is living open heartedly and letting go while feeling a sense of belonging, self-worth, and peace.

A healed and wholehearted existence translates to living authentically. Knowing what others think of me no longer mattering, encompasses my life. Cultivating self‐compassion releases perfection, engages my vulnerability to connect with others, and eliminates numbing of emotions and feelings of powerlessness. I foster gratitude, joy, and peace, enabling this release. Self-love, respect, and acceptance, while letting go, replace uncertainty. By simply being my authentic self, the nothingness suddenly existed, stillness presided, and I let go. Broken pieces of me, the shards of emotional glass that cut deeply, tarnished my past and present, curiously disappeared. The void filled where emptiness resided, a foundation formed, as if already there without me knowing it, and I let go. Time, process, and digging, healed deep wounds, yet “letting go” set me free.