Healing and Self-Speak

 

 

 

I was listening to a podcast on generational healing, environmental healing and self-care to heal Self of everyday events.  We cannot do anything about our future except heal ourselves to right now.

We have heard, over and over again, of those who feel, right to their guts, that I am not ready, I am not good enough, and we are too empathetic, too compassionate, and life and the world is so hard.  We speak about being ‘woke’ or being an empath.  We gulp in the energy of others until we have physical, intellectual, emotional and/or spiritual reactions and being overloaded. We make ourselves sick on energy that does not belong to us.  We can begin to feel self-doubt, barraged by trash-talk, negativity, woundedness, until we become the victim of the energy we have sucked up from others.

Brené Brown, Ph.D., research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, says” negative self-talk (shame) relies on you buying into it.” We buy into media that tells us we are not enough.  We buy into believing we are not perfect just as we are.  Advertising thrives on us not being set in our own reality; physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.  Self-healing gurus thrive/ become wealthy on us being assured that we are somehow unworthy, guilty, sick.  Health products are worth millions because we are told, if we use their natural (?) products, that we are not well enough.  If we stay connected to media, we begin to believe the sop that sells us new age/new ideas of products that will heal us.  I know, for a fact, these things are placebos.  And we do not change unless we choose to.    

Every time you procrastinate, every time you think negative thoughts about self, trace the origins.  What was your birth mother’s sense of self?  What were your grandmother’s sense of self.   You were an embryo in your grandmother’s body, and, then in your mother’s, being carried down to YOU.  Perfectly, wonderful, you!  How much of their trauma have to picked up, genetically? 

One cure is to take a nature walk every morning.  Start your day with it.  Listen, feel, taste, hear, see the perfect world in nature.  You are perfectly you there.  When you hear yourself doing negative self talk, stop it! 

Find your true purpose.  What Are you good at.  What brings you peace?  What give you a sense of oneness?  What gives you joy? 

No nitpicking.  No buts, and, ors.  You are only as broken as you feel.  Yes, we have coped (barely, sometimes) with things.  Yes, we have functioned (barely, some times).  And, in spite of it all…. WE HAVE SURVIVED. 

I was dumbstruck by two of the things talked about:  One, I do fall into the trap of sucking in others energy.  I am always one who seems to intuit and believed I might be an empath because of how I can immediately sense things about others.  I am a “fixer” and learned some hard lessons about “fixing”.  It took many decades for me to care for myself rather than always caring for someone else because it gave me a false sense of purpose.  I am one who immediately falls into compassion, no matter what.  I have always looked for the ‘why’ of actions, etc. of other people.  I never did that for myself.

I am now, in my eightieth year, taking care of me.  I am learned to shut off the negative self-talk.  I am giving myself kudos for things I dd right, and making things I did not do right, right.  I had already forgiven my birth mother, before I met her.  I know my birth mother’s mother did the same to her that mother did with us kids.  Huge abandonment issues…generational abandonment issues:  rejection issues; hard work to try to find the roots of my sense of fear of abandonment and rejection.  It was easy work once I knew to look back at some of my reasoning and follow it back, like breadcrumbs, to where I have ‘picked up’ some of the inherited issues. 

In my mornings, I wake up grateful to have been saved for another night and , at night, I tell of my gratitude for having been worth saving for another day. 

Next blog post, I am going to go into this more.  I will think on these things, and am sure more will come. 

©Carol Desjarlais 05.08.26

 

Hope: The Inevitable Quest

 

 

 

“Hope”     [ is the thing with feathers]

By Emily Dickinson

 

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

 

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

 

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

 

Oh, in the way the world is today, we see purpose.  We seek fulfillment.  We seek well-being.  We seek authenticity in relationships.  Funny thing “HOPE”:  It is something beyond our actual real ken; It is a way we try to remain open, in case something better might happen; It is some kind of high-leveled trust; It is not in our control but is our mental action (and sometimes, spiritual) that makes things bearable.  It something belonging to the family of FAITH.  Yes, I think that’s what I think. 

Elpis was a Greek Goddess of Hope.  (according to 8^th Century myth-maker/poet, Hesiod).   I am sure you have heard of Pandora’s Box.  Well, it wasn’t a box, although we have been told that as stories warp.  It was a Jar.  See, there were a bunch of negative emotions and experiences all put into a jar:  death, old age, plague, sorrow, toil, war, etc.  But one positive was put in the jar:  Hope.  Well, Pandora, who was like First Woman, opened that jar and all escaped…except HOPE/Elpis, who remained.  She chose to stay in the jar and be a comfort to mankind.  Pandora had been told not to open that jar.  This is said to be how divine grace is not lost in all the chaos that can occur...things of fate...things we choose to find or finds us.  Elpis/HOPE is an enduring spark within us.

Hope is what causes us to be humble, to be open, no matter what comes in our life.  It gets us going on through hard things.  We refuse to give up, when hope is there.  Things will get better…there is a light at the end of dark tunnels, end of darkness as dawn approaches.  And sometimes, we think things don’t get better and they may not, but there is available, a change in us to bear it, to surrender to it, to walk step by step through tough things, uncertain though we may be. 

Oh, there are lots of professional and non-professional fixes.  I think Hope is something about endurance.  It is about, somehow, sometimes in spite of ourselves, that gets us through.  Perhaps it is a spiritual kind of trust.  Perhaps it is a silent but significant force, beyond reality.  Perhaps it is part of healing.  Perhaps it is a bit of all. 

I figure, if we think we do not have it, it can be learned.  Perhaps we need to be patience in the dark nights of our soul.  And, it has something to do with fierce courage.  WE reclaim it, sometimes at the last moment. It is a determined, perhaps, stubborn, stance, part of ego.    It is there when we confront our fears.   When we are attune to our HOPE, it helps us get on with things.  We change.  We transform.

Hope is what comes before action.  It is a sacred gift.  It is optimism wrought from the fires being human can bring.  It withstands outer and inner chaos and tough things.   We are surely complex beings. We want purpose, significance, to achieve, to contribute, to nurture, to seek and have meaning.  These things are under the umbrella of hope. 

This is what keeps us going.  This is what keeps me going.  Sometimes Hope has been a whisper.  Sometimes Hope has yelled at me.  And again…I hope in spite of myself, betimes.

Be attuned to HOPE, sisterfriends. 

 

©Carol Desjarlais 21.07.26