Posted on

The Courage of a Different Conversation

 

This past week, six of my co-workers, each a courageous and awesome woman in her own right, stepped in with me to co-create an exploration that breathes life into print, that shifts my creation from energy to physical existence.  A pathway to connect, engage, evolve … for to have a different conversation with others,  we must first and always have it with ourselves.

Turning the lens inward can be shocking and confusing after decades of training to look upward and elsewhere for help and answers, separate from ourselves. Guided by divinity, trust and openness to the Mystery of it all we spent about 40 hours together over two nights, immersing in process and content and our own good company that will continue to percolate over the coming days and weeks.

The magic for me had begun a year or so before.  A passing comment about ‘just a conversation‘ grated against a whole lot of things I hold to be true. How dare they!  As a writer and CODE Model Coach™ I live and witness daily how conversations connect us, expand us,  bear witness for our own evolution and hold space for the evolution of those around us. As a Roman Catholic and diocesan communicator, I experienced the potential of transformation from the past three years of Synod conversations invited by Pope Francis in communities worldwide. ‘Just a conversation‘ ? When the fiery wall of indignation moved through and my body settled, I could see the person had a point. The conversations in which we are typically engaged are quite often to live out patterns of politeness or fill spaces we have come to hold as awkward … uncomfortable because – at least for me – I feel the pull to dive in and learn more about the amazing human in front of me, and by the time my impulse feeds through several decades of patterning ..Don’t be nosy, It’s rude to ask about such things, You ask too many questions, Stop bothering them, Don’t embarrass yourself, Don’t embarrass them … what finally squeaks out are the so-called ‘safe’ topics: Hot out today, isn’t it? (Or cold, or wet, or sunny … so beautifully adaptable in a blink). Or sports. Or food. Or, with more of us preferring the company of pets to humans, ‘What a cute dog!’  Even among family and friends, endless chatter about past events, memories, who did what to whom, passing the time and filling the silence. Keeping the peace. Keeping things the same. Minimal impact, no evolution. Not good or bad. But for me for as long as I can remember, not aligned.

What if there was more? And what if I allowed myself to go there?

The comment I perceived as a dismissal … I did that to invite that wall of flame to move … welcome to life as a quantum being! That wave of fire re-ignited my curiosity of What Else could a conversation become? Who would we become if we were invited to engage in A Different Conversation?

I asked the question of myself, felt the obstacles that at first I made about my reality ‘out there.’  In sitting with A Different Conversation, I felt a foot in two different paradigms: my Roman Catholicism, and my ongoing CODE Model™ explorations. Create something new from them both? How dare I !

And, the answer is always yes. To get there, I had to own how I live my life as separate pieces within a whole, rather than an entity in flow. Holding pieces as separate keeps things from moving ‘too fast’, minimizes disruption, keeps me ‘in my place’ … patterns set for survival of childhood and, left unattended on autopilot keep running with the outdated directive to ‘keep me safe.’  My call to A Different Conversation was not only a creation for others. It was first and foremost a conversation I was aching to have with myself, to own all aspects I was running separately and welcome them home into my chosen, created life. To own the divinity that was me and the creator that I was in my own life. A metaphor of my perception of God: the great infinity from which I came and to which I will return, all aspects as one.

I allowed the separation to drop and my idea to emerge. My CODE Model™ conversations enabled me to see, own, and choose whether to keep patterns running, or release them.  In doing that, I discovered these conversations were drawing me closer and deeper in understanding, desire and curiosity for my faith teachings and practices. Both Louise LeBrun who created the WEL-Systems® body of knowledge, and the bishop who employs me gave generously of their time, their wisdom, and their creations supporting my journey as I set down ideas to paper. My vision was not offensive or dangerous. It was time.

And so this past week here we were, a courageous group of seven in a lakeside cottage, with an expansive view of water and woods, and laden with bags and bags of food … so much food (and strategic drink as well … we were at least an hour from any kind of store, and we had two nights to fill … ) Creating physical abundance in the face of the unknown. Metaphors everywhere. That we were drawn to a lake is no surprise: the human body is 90% water, and all that goes on in our external world is a metaphor for something going on in our internal landscape. We came to explore A Different Conversation and in that, we craved space, movement, and flow, in a place distanced from the distracting ‘noise’ from the past, present, and predicted. We were immersed in space, movement, and flow of the fundamental kind: waves on the shore, wind in the trees, clouds across an expansive sky, lake extending beyond what our human eyes could see but what WE as divine beings knew before we arrived.

And as we relaxed into that space, movement, and flow in our perfect cottage we slowly replicated all in our internal landscapes. Conversation ebbed and flowed as new awareness emerged. Beliefs and patterns popped up like rocks in the lake, barely visible and charting the course of flow, dangerous until seen and presenting a choice point on where to go next.  Our gathering conversation that first evening had the feel of the first day of school: attentive and respectful listening, occasional offerings, and then, break time and with the peal of laughter racing to the kitchen for recess, chatter of the familiar flowing freely in the  comfort of good food and the abundance of everything, external and internal, we were creating moment by moment.

Allow it all as perfect, I breathed as my own rocky patterns popped up. What should this look like? Am I doing enough? Am I doing anything at all? 

In each hour of conversation, shift in energy was palpable: a little deeper, a little less formal, a bit more revealed, a melting divide between ‘in conversation’ and conversations themselves.

I knew it would happen. To be sure, like breadcrumbs from my all-knowing self to my doubting intellect, I brought to our cottage a bouquet of flowers from a local farm, and to put them in, a vase of red. First chakra, colour of safety, of grounding. The flowers were lilies. One was fully in bloom, the other blossoms were tightly  closed.  By the next morning, two others had begun to open. By the time of our checkout conversation the final morning, four blooms were wide open, others just starting. Not judging them for being lilies instead of roses. Not forcing open the blooms. Simply giving them space and encouragement – clean air and water, sturdy table, room to spread out – inviting them to emerge in their own good time. I didn’t see the metaphor until our second day. Trust the impulse, in the ‘I don’t know I know.’ 

True for all of us. Each different, each awakening and evolving in our own journey, with encouragement seen and unseen to guide us, if we trust and allow it.

What did we learn in our 40 or so hours together?

We learned that we on some level know a great deal of what think we do not know.  We are each divinity in a body for a unique human experience. We are perfect in the moment we are in. We have all we need to create that which we seek. These are not messages reinforced by the wider world in which we live. There is layered and relentless patterning and messaging to keep us confused, overwhelmed, and reliant on others for knowledge and choices that belong to us. Reminders and invitations in a safe space encouraged permission for each of us to relax into it all, know what we know, and choose our truth from who we are as the divine beings we are, rather than what we have been taught or conditioned to believe.

The body does not just house or transport our divine selves: the body is a miraculous and masterful processor of all energy we encounter and ingest. This energy comes from food and drink, and also experiences, knowledge, emotions, memories, and history. The body digests shame, for example, as it digests toast and coffee. Food digested provides physical nutrients and can then be eliminated from the body. Energy digested provides awareness and information,  and can then be released. As it needs to be fed breakfast to digest it, the body also needs to be fed the shame if it is to be digested. Our intellects, trying to be helpful, keeps us from remembering painful or embarrassing events … ‘just forget about them’… ‘sticks and stones‘ … but the body doesn’t forget. The energy attached to the memory remains embedded in the cells, even as conscious memory moves on. Over time, that embedded energy festers into pain, disease, or continued stories that drip with shame and keep us silent. Conversations, with ourselves in the presence of others, can help us retrieve and feed those festering memories, stories, or beliefs to our bodies for digestion and release.

Seeing and hearing information in new ways, in visual models, printed words and discussions provide various pathways to awakening, awareness and action … if those pathways feed an aligned higher intention and purpose. And to do that, we need to stay in that different conversation with ourselves, and in the company of others seeking that same awareness: connected both to the world ‘out there’ and their internal landscape. A Different Conversation is not about discarding the old and replacing it with ‘new’. It is about reframing our knowledge, beliefs, and choices to live from the divinity that we are and reflect our higher purpose and intention. Aligned, we each can be the full expression of ourselves: ease in the life we choose to create, extending into a calm and unstoppable creation as our evolution -our purpose for being here – unfolds.

A day after our lakeside creation, the flowers continue to open. Awareness continues to emerge. ‘What next’ continues to percolate. Life in flow with every mindful breath. ‘Just a conversation’ changed my world, and keeps changing my world.

What else can ‘just a conversation’ be for you?

Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com

 

Want to learn more?

As a CODE Model Coach™, I engage Quantum TLC ™ for my own discoveries and can guide you in learning how to engage it for yourself.

CODE Model™ or Creation Out of Deep Energy™,  and Quantum TLC ™ are part of the WEL-Systems® body of knowledge developed by Louise LeBrun.

Visit
https://wel-systems.com/self-directed-evolution/

This new space for exploration includes articles, audio files, and referrals to CODE Model Coaches™ who can support and guide your journey.

Contact me

I can offer:

  • 1 on 1 conversations/explorations/coaching to discuss your writing and the story behind the story of not writing
  • Whispers from Within ™, a 10-day email exchange that delves into limiting beliefs through daily writing and written conversation
  • Small group conversations, in person or virtual, among those of us called to explore what lights us up and what challenges us in living a fully authentic life.

If any of these options resonate or pique your curiosity, email me and we’ll set up a time to chat.

 

Posted on

Struggling with Words?

Check Your Privacy Settings …

Privacy is desired, protected, and promised … but do you know what it is for you, and what it means in your life? In my search to ease the flow of words in my life –  those I speak, those I write and ultimately those I share – I have come to learn a few things about how I hold privacy and how it holds me hostage in my own life.

Really? Can a construct like privacy influence my life when, as the awesome Louise LeBrun often says, you can’t put a pound of privacy (or relationship or money or whatever else image we hold as real ) in the trunk of your car? Indeed it can. Just like the privacy settings on your social media or web browser controls access and use of your data, privacy settings are wired into your body from before you were conceived and are absorbed like a sponge by your nervous system, especially in your first few years of life. Those settings are from your parents’ past, and their parents’ past, and so on, and become yours as you grow and move through the world. These settings are so deeply wired and rarely if ever discussed, they run on default underneath all we say and do, or don’t say and do,  while we forge on, completely unaware. The fascinating thing about working in words, especially writing, is that it reveals a deep double bind: a calling to write that at once lights up the system and brings up a deep resistance, you know the jokes, writers drinking, writers living on coffee, writers with the cleanest houses as deadlines loom. Folks unaware of this constant start-stop sensation don’t get it: how hard can it be to just sit down and type, especially when you say you want to do it? Note I say ‘unaware’ rather than ‘without’ … any human I’ve met has at least one kind of double bind running, often more. To the unaware, I ask this: how easy is it to drive a car pressing the gas and the brake at the same time? That’s a body locked in a double bind. The irony is that the very thing that can release the double bind – touching the story, writing it down, and choosing from mindful awareness – is the very thing that triggers the lockdown.

Is there a way out of this vicious loop? The answer is always yes.
What I discovered: I was confusing privacy with secrecy.

In that confusion, my ‘privacy settings’ were set so stringently that there was barely room for anything to get in or out, including myself. Words were compressed and stuffed into crevices and corners until pressure built to where they would erupt in a jumbled, erratic stream, spewing bits and pieces here and there. In the rare moment I allowed myself to sit down and write, out came chunks of three different books, a few short story sentences and some days, a grocery list, all words so tightly held their flow was squeezed into a concentrated ache of frustration. So, who chooses that? I did, day after day, year after year, for as long as I can remember. Now, after years of literally relearning everything, from how to breathe to how to work with my body rather than against it, I’m integrating things I’ve known all along but ‘wouldn’t go there’ or couldn’t bear to admit because … yep … my ‘privacy settings’ steered me off with the story of keeping me safe. The thing is, the only safety to be had in this world is internal alignment, knowing clearly who you are and choosing from that inner knowledge you often hear but too often dismiss in favour of thing ‘out there’ we have been taught to trust as smarter than us.  For the past decade, I’ve been relearning, releasing, reconnecting, and creating new at the same time within myself. To share what I’ve come to know, to share my journey in the moment, to share my words … well, that remains a journey in itself. Akin to a computer running slow or crashing during searches and projects, my body continued to resist sharing. A key to my evolution here has been to revisit how I hold ‘privacy’ … and that’s when the revelation came that I was holding privacy as secrecy, when they now appear to me as two very different things.

Here is my experience now:

Privacy is a boundary, clear and mindfully chosen. Just like clicking the boxes in my online privacy settings, I choose: what is meaningful for me to share, what is meaningful for me to keep to myself, or to share specifically with a person or people? I then engage with respect to those boundaries and in my engagement, my boundaries are clear with others who can then engage according to their boundaries. Information shared confidentially is kept confidential through mutual respect. Information shared to the wider world is done with an aligned desire to offer my view in the moment and the knowledge that the power is in the sharing. Reactions of others cannot be controlled. I, however, can choose my reaction to those reactions, and as easily as settings are changed, so are tools engaged to act on my choice.

Secrecy, however, is a whole other construct, a strategy for avoidance that encapsulates within shame and fear an action or memory held as too disruptive, unacceptable, or terrifying to face. Under the guise of safety a secret is swallowed like a bitter pill in an attempt to protect, control, or otherwise make the information within disappear.  In its protective coating of habit and shame, however, it persists in the memory of the body, generation after generation, accumulating and running patterns even though I may have no recollection of the secret … in fact, I may not even have been born when the original whatever-it-was took place. Nor does my body care what or when. It could have been me stealing a quarter from my brother’s piggy bank when I was six. It could be a great-great-grandfather having stolen money from his employer and his wife and children coerced into covering up the crime. All the body knows is the pattern of avoidance and it keeps running unless the body is rewired to stop.  In my body, secrecy weighs heavily in the lower back and abdomen, between where my safety sits and my power centre to engage on my own behalf. The mantra ‘what happens in this house stays in this house …’ was the overriding call to action in childhood.  I was raised on the cusp of the ‘children should be seen and not heard’ era … to share ‘secrets’, to repeat things overheard, to offer opinions, resulted in joking dismissal, a ‘go to your room’, or out-and-out punishment. Nothing was more important than keeping secrets. ‘It’s none of their business’ was the explanation. Being ‘private’ and being ‘secretive’ in my child brain became the same thing, and violating that ‘privacy’ became wired with danger and shame. The thing is, as a child, I had little experience to sort out what needed to be ‘private’ and what could be safely shared.  ‘Oh, what a pretty sweater,’ offered as a compliment set off a fireworks of patterns in my body.  Impulse would be to share I liked it, too, but was that a secret because it’s what I felt inside? Or who gave it to me, that might be okay but wait, would it be okay to name them, or say where they bought it? Wait, I might slip and say how much it cost and that’s not appropriate … in the end, managing a ‘thank you’, if the conversation hadn’t moved on by then. It was a polite response, externally acceptable, but not my entirety of expression and the shame of self-betrayal added to the fireworks of stress my nervous system was now absorbing and rewiring to match. It felt safer over time to simply not share anything.

Jump ahead several decades, and deep within, those patterns still fire off except this time, it’s in conversation with a blank screen, words pressing and churning inside, emerging as a sodden shell of what unfolds behind my eyes. And it is just recently, in sitting with that sensation, icky as it was, that I could feel congruently the presence of ‘secrecy’ in my body. It was not just the sensations of shame and danger deep in my lower body, ‘keeper of secrets’ was also high in my third eye, the region around the middle of my forehead where identity lives, the deeply-embedded belief of who I am that influences all that I do. Secrecy had become part of my identity, the good girl who never told, the one who protected everything she knew from anyone who might see it. And protection of identity sets off a fierce battle in the body between the divine energy that is me and the intellect that has been trained to match the needs and wants of the external world. I came into the world with words as my superpower – the fuel of my existence – and over the years, outside of my conscious awareness, had crafted not only strategies to contain and control that superpower, but instituted that control as part of who I am. To violate that ‘secrecy’ was to violate my very being … or so the pattern went.  To hold everything I am, all I create as a secret, well, THAT was the violation. And I get to choose: keep running the default or step into the now that I know. That is the power of awareness and mindful choice. Becoming aware is like a mountaintop view of my life, able to rise up and look down on everything running, see the patterns, see the outcomes, and choose: let them keep running, or make some changes?

I choose change, and in that choice is the awareness that everything from beliefs to my nervous system are energy in flow, can be adapted, altered, rewired to align with my divine energy within rather than someone else’s landscape.

Easy? Absolutely not. It takes mindful action to back up that mindful choice, moment by moment, day by day, filling my days with words of others that encourage and enlighten my journey through books and blogs, audio files and conversations, then allowing space for my own words to flow, unjudged and welcomed as they are. I have chosen to relearn how to write, to engage from and for myself rather than engage solely for others. I have chosen to allow that after decades earning a living as a professional writer  I HAD to relearn how to write to be fully myself. Dropping the ‘stupid’ label and embracing the ‘infinite journey’ invitation has gotten me here, to where I can choose to see ‘secrecy’ in my identity and choose that it no longer belongs there. I am safe without it now, and I am constrained by it now in who I am. I could have – and was tempted through the years – to engage in time management, productivity training, confidence-building, and the myriad of other strategy programs designed to help you ‘write that book’ or ‘break that writer’s block’. For me, the resistance, the struggle, were signs of a need for me to learn about me, which no strategy can touch.

What does this mean? Let’s just say there are no floodgates in this moment. There are no fireworks, no grand AHA. There is space to breathe. There is ease in writing this. There is alignment. There is joy. For me in this moment, those are constructs that still won’t fill my trunk, but are definitely filling my life with purpose and the hunger for more. I know and value my privacy, and respect the privacy of those with whom I engage. Secrets? To me there is no more insidious poison in my life or in the world. To secrets I say no thank you. I carry way to many of them now, and as my journey of clarity and choice continues my invitation to self is to touch each one like a dusty ornament and decide what’s next.

In this crazy world, I am grateful for this emerging awareness, and for my words – and yours – to guide me.

 

Want to learn more?

As a CODE Model Coach™, I engage Quantum TLC ™ for my own discoveries and can guide you in learning how to engage it for yourself.

CODE Model™ or Creation Out of Deep Energy™,  and Quantum TLC ™ are part of the WEL-Systems® body of knowledge developed by Louise LeBrun.

Visit
https://wel-systems.com/self-directed-evolution/

This new space for exploration includes articles, audio files, and referrals to CODE Model Coaches™ who can support and guide your journey.

Contact me

I can offer:

  • 1 on 1 conversations/explorations/coaching to discuss your writing and the story behind the story of not writing
  • Whispers from Within ™, a 10-day email exchange that delves into writing and limiting beliefs through daily writing and written conversation
  • Small group conversations, in person or virtual, among those of us called to write, exploring what lights us up in writing and what challenges us.

If any of these options resonate or pique your curiosity, email me and we’ll set up a time to chat.

Thanks for reading and for showing up!

Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com

Posted on

A Writing Experience For You

Whispers from Within™:

Emerging clarity through freeflow writing

If you are called to write, or are curious about how writing may connect you to your creative self, then this experience is for you.
Avoidance is an art form and none know the form better than writers. Consider, however, the genius you are … behind that avoidance are great treasures of awareness, knowledge, and potential, all aching for words to reveal it all and set your creative energies free.  What might you discover, who might you become when you offer light to the darkened caverns within? It’s exciting and terrifying, all at the same time. Just like writing itself.

There is no better time than now to shed the fear and begin an exploration of you and your wisdom awaiting the written word.

Words are like lanterns on our journeys within, shedding light on things withheld or forgotten, guiding the way forward in discovery, in life.

Whispers from Within™
is about giving voice to You; by committing 10 consecutive days to a daily email exchange of reading, reflection, and writing your intellect and your body slowly drain of stories, thoughts, and fears. Relaxing into sensations, writing what emerges rather than planning, curating, and editing to an assignment or outcome gives voice to things stored within and gives inspiration for deeper insights into your writing, your choices, who you are, and who you are longing to become.

Summer,  with the warm weather and outdoors beckoning, is a prime time for avoidance of writing. It is also the perfect time for Whispers. Journals pack perfectly for the beach. When you come in for shade, sit for a few minutes and share in an email what you wrote with your toes in the sand. Sit with your morning coffee and the daily prompt, designated You time before your busy day gets under way. Ten days to great awareness of yourself, more space to breathe and create … moment by moment discoveries and releases, with your words as a lighted path for deeper discovery.

How does it work?

We start with an introductory Zoom conversation. Then I will begin Day 1 with an email to you, including an introduction to following your inner cues, inviting words to flow, a prompt word, and my discoveries in freeflow writing about that word. You sit with the email, click reply, freeflow write … ideally 30 minutes or more, or until you feel done … and send back to me by the end of the day.

On Day Two, I will send an email picking up on any threads emerging from Day 1, with a new prompt and my writing. You reflect, write, and reply by the end of the day.
This repeats for each day. The emails can be exchanged at any time during the days, but it is essential that an email is exchanged every day for the 10 days. This consistent daily writing practice enables momentum. shifting, and revelations of patterns, thoughts, beliefs, or awarenesses that may be slowing your writing or impacting other areas of your life.
Following our Day 10 email exchange, we will schedule a followup Zoom call to discuss discoveries, insights, and any loose threads coming up from the exchange.

Curious to know more? Check out this conversation:

Dates available through August 15.

Investment: $395.00 plus GST/HST
Contact: Jennifer Hatt, CMC (TM), jenniferhatt@gmail.com, ownyourstorynow.com
Posted on

Unleashing the Waterfall

Waterfalls are magic, pure and simple. These natural wonders carve their own paths, roar unapologetically, are powerful and are beautiful just by being what they are. To find one by surprise is finding treasure untethered. Even those we try to tame, like Niagara Falls with its splash-shrouded tourists and campy honeymoon suites, retain a majesty above a world sleepwalking past the awesome to get to the cheap t-shirts.  In nature or on gilded paths, we are drawn to these magnificent sources of power in flow. Why?

Here is a thought. All we desire externally mirrors that which we crave internally. Waterfalls are the permission, the proof, the evidence of the great power in roaring, creating, shining, simply by allowing unimpeded flow. We as beings of divine energy are that energetic flow within a body for the human experience. We as writers express that flow in words, we as creators express that flow moment by moment, choice by choice, in the authentic lives we manifest. Yet rarely do we allow our waterfalls within. We choke them, dam them, sometimes even forget them altogether. Hearing the roar, feeling the splash on our cheeks, watching the cascades hurl over the precipice to  fearlessly transform the riverbed below is the closest we dare come to feeling the awesome power that is our own internal flow. Myths, fears, and outdated beliefs keep us safely behind the fence witnessing the world out there as our own waterfalls struggle, gurgle, gasp for survival.

The world is a better place with waterfalls, externally and internally. Energy in flow is what will heal, transform, and expand a dying world. Our words, our creations, our lives in flow are all in our control, and our choice.

What’s in the way? For each of us, the stories are different. Think of the river flowing toward the waterfall, the path of water diverted by currents and eddies, around boulders and fallen trees. Consider that river a metaphor for your internal landscape impeding energy flow. Currents and eddies are manic energy diverted into work that appears necessary and appropriate according to others, external referencing that does not align with your internal knowledge of self:  ‘keeping up appearances’ or ‘fulfilling the dream’ of others while sacrificing your own dreams and desires. Boulders are memories layered, buried and fiercely protected into hardened immoveable nodules that run and ruin your life beyond your conscious knowledge because the memory is too painful or to early for words to touch and release. Fallen trees are those beliefs and strategies that worked well to survive childhood, and have outgrown their usefulness in adulthood yet know no other pattern but to cling and slow down anything in their path. And consider the source of the river, our own internal flow of water energy in motion. Cry? No way, crying is for babies, it makes people worry, it’s messy, it’s wrong. Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.  Our divine energy navigating this obstacle course often has little left to roar, or even speak, and this becomes normal, and over time desired. Too much flow is felt as uncomfortable, inappropriate, dangerous. We can’t handle it. Better slow down, They can’t handle who we are or what we want to say. Better dial it back.  Those beliefs may feel like safety, but they are strangulation, and a death knell for creation. As a writer, words consigned to a meandering shrinking river will rarely reach the precipice of the light of the day.  The words themselves will join the obstacles, stuck and impeding what little flow remains, until there is nothing left to flow, to say, to feel.

What to do in such dire circumstances? Step one is awareness. Own your existence as an energetic being for which full energetic flow is life itself. Spend time cruising your internal river, sitting in the presence of your internal waterfall. What do you notice? Feeling avoidances, slowdowns, changes in mood? Do you breathe and allow space for what you feel, or do you push it down and get busy doing something, anything, to take the attention out and away from you. There is no right or wrong, only information. Notice what you notice, breathe, and keep noticing. That is all you need to begin a great adventure of exploration into an inner landscape longing to see you.

Waterfalls in nature are unmatched in providing information and solace. Our inner waterfalls are unmatched in connecting us with ourselves and in enabling us to share our unique selves with the world. So grab a box of tissues and have a grand old cry. Touch those boulders, invite yourself to crack them open and take a peek, clean up some soggy trees, play in the current and eddies, get to know and appreciate your river for what it has done for you, then step in and create it the way you want it now. invite the flow. Know it’s all you, you’re capable and worthy of whatever you choose to create, and like the waterfalls out there,  pure magic.

Want to learn more?

As a CODE Model Coach™, I engage Quantum TLC ™ for my own discoveries and can guide you in learning how to engage it for yourself.

CODE Model™ or Creation Out of Deep Energy™,  and Quantum TLC ™ are part of the WEL-Systems® body of knowledge developed by Louise LeBrun.

Visit
https://wel-systems.com/self-directed-evolution/

This new space for exploration includes articles, audio files, and referrals to CODE Model Coaches™ who can support and guide your journey.

Contact me

I can offer:

  • 1 on 1 conversations/explorations/coaching to discuss your writing and the story behind the story of not writing
  • Whispers from Within ™, a 10-day email exchange that delves into writing and limiting beliefs through daily writing and written conversation
  • Small group conversations, in person or virtual, among those of us called to write, exploring what lights us up in writing and what challenges us.

If any of these options resonate or pique your curiosity, email me and we’ll set up a time to chat.

Thanks for reading and for showing up!

Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com

Posted on

Lifting the Fog of Shame

Writer’s Block. Inner Critic. Projects start with enthusiasm, then slide into oblivion. Writers know these stories well. We call ourselves lazy, disorganized, silly. There are a million programs and courses claiming to help or cure these afflictions. In my world, the struggle to write is a cue. The root of the issue is shame.

Shame. It is the most insidious of our emotions, a slippery hybrid of rage and grief, replicating quicker than any virus, penetrating more deeply than the sharpest arrow, bearing the weight of a thousand elephants and as hard to pin down as smoke. I feel my shame as fog, maybe because I grew up on Canada’s East Coast, where both shame and fog are part of the landscape and have been for generations: low-lying billows of cloudy moisture that chill summer days into darkened dampness, obscure vision, hide landmarks, and threaten navigation while ruining our hair and our mood.  We learn to live with it. Ah, it’ll burn off by noon, we console ourselves as we don sweaters and wait it out. Over time we learn strategies to navigate when we can barely see the road, and over time, we don’t notice it at all. Can’t change the weather, we shrug. Life goes on.

Like fog over a town, shame roiling through our inner landscape penetrates everywhere and everything, obscures our vision, slows movement to a crawl, dampens desire to do anything except stay warm and dry and wait it out. Unlike fog, though, shame won’t just burn off, lift, or otherwise vanish on its own. We can’t control the weather. We can, however, choose to own the foggy apparitions of shame we carry. Owning the shame as our creation, and a genius one at that, is what invites the fog to lift and WOW, there it is:  a life of warm, sunny clarity, with visibility infinite and energy focused on who we are and can become, rather than creeping around obstacles and reinforcing patterns that keep us swirling in circles, searching and grasping for what is there if we only choose to see it.

What is shame?

To me shame is many things, wears many disguises, is multifunctional and multitasking, as slippery as it is wispy and, like an early morning on a spring ocean, is blinding and chilling to the core. Shame within me is a wailing wilful child, face streaked with tears of frustration, screaming at a world that punishes rather than listens to the knowledge of the universe she embodies and longs to share. Shame is also a lithe seductress, gliding in and around heart and lungs and gut, tingling and inviting, then clenching and wringing the very air and desire from body and mind, blocking the energy that is life, diverting it slightly, connivingly, with whispered stories of  ‘you’re not good enough’, ‘don’t waste your time’ and  ‘how dare you…who do you think you are?’ And shame is a decaying sticky blanket of undigested thoughts and dreams, half-chewed projects, and regurgitated memories, coating and polluting clear quantum energy into halting spurts of festering ooze. In the moment, shame blinds us to our words, our desires, our purpose, diverting or disconnecting our bodies and intellect from the divine signal that we are. In its grip, in any and all of its forms, we forget the divine and infinite being that we are and come to embrace the shame as ‘just who we are,’ if we notice it at all. And that is its most powerful venom: that of becoming normal and unnoticed in our existence, convincing us to shrink and twist ourselves to fit the stories shame continually hisses in our awareness.

Where does shame come from?

Everywhere, starting with the DNA from the parents who conceived you. Their shame, accumulated from their lives and the DNA of their parents, is all handed to you at the moment of conception. Your nervous system grows to it, and collects its own patterns and stories from what you hear in utero, and what you experience at birth and in childhood, all without your awareness or language to express it. As children, we experienced shame as a tool to ensure our compliance. Public scoldings, placed in corners or in hallways to be humiliated, being criticized or called out for missing a question, stepping out of line, being late … in other words, being human. Dare to feel it, to cry at the sadness, to rage at the unfairness, and more shame: what a sissy, big baby, until at some point, there is no more feeling. Numb, detached, hidden. As an adult, we are legally our own person yet internally, we continue to run the patterns of childhood, our training effective, our detachment complete, with reminders to keep us in line. Get over it already. It was in the past. Just move on. And all the while, shame keeps pumping out its poison. No compassion for anyone, especially yourself, who feels, who want to explore the roots of their agony, who want to choose different, do different, and make amends for the damage done by unjust, controlling, narrow-minded regimes. Pick a cause, any cause. Look at the anger, the sadness, the fierceness with which varied and opposing paradigms are ‘right’ and those in disagreement are ‘wrong.’ Oh, not cuddled enough as a child, someone sneers. Dismiss the sheer power of what is running our world into the ground. Shame. Yes, on us as children. Reinforced in us as adults, by us as adults. No clear way forward, no ownership of the internal blinding, festering fog of deceit running our lives.

We all want to be seen, heard, and acknowledged, yet we cannot if we do not first see, hear, and acknowledge ourselves and the truth of our experience. Lacking awareness, or bracing against the slimy blanket of shame, we give over our wants to others, raging for the attention we so rightly deserve, and so wrongly try to wring what we seek from ‘out there’ rather than allowing it to flow from within.

Is there a way out?
Absolutely.

Shame is energy, patterned to stories that, as mentioned, we are born with or acquire through our lives. Processing that energy is owning that we ourselves are divine energy, within and moving through our bodies for the human experience, bodies that are designed to be efficient processors of all energy, including food, thoughts, memories and emotions like shame. Allowing the stories and sensations to move and be digested, rather than avoid or shut them down, is the equivalent of the sun burning off the fog. Within all energy is information, and allowing that information to be processed and integrated both lifts the fog and expands our awareness, our knowledge, our lives as a result. And we create it all.

How do we invite the energy to move?

Generations of information is embedded in a human body. Much of the information is layered with shame, and from a time before we had language to speak it. Quantum TLC ™ (TLC meaning Triggering Life Choices, although Tender Loving Care is also in order for the awesome beings we are!) uses breath, relaxation and awareness of internal cues to engage the body’s natural ability to process energy. QTLC ™ in fact is the only way to digest information stored in the body. The brain cannot move memories stored in the body, so talking it out may help somewhat but in itself is not enough. My awareness, in my body, relaxed into the sensation, breathing and inviting the energy to move…

That screaming child: I listen to her. Acknowledge her. Cuddle her. Tell her she’s safe and smart and it’s OK. She has nothing to be ashamed of. She knew more than the people tasked to train her. And she’s reminding me that I still know more about me than any external system possibly can.

That slinky temptress, whispering promises of safety and contentment that only serve to keep me silent and isolated and on the fast track to an early death from toxic buildup of the energy that I am … I hold her, I thank her, for there was a time when those beliefs helped me survive until I could reconnect with my life. I acknowledge her, and remind her that I need that protection no longer. Internal safety is a superpower. No external force can touch it. Choosing from internal reference is choosing aligned with divine signal. No need to hate them ‘out there’ for who and what they are. Be who I am. Lead and invite by example, not by rage or coercion or manipulation. Be my divine energy in flow.

That decaying, sticky blanket … I pick it up. Examine it inch by inch. Shake it out. Hang it to air in the fresh breeze of awareness. Touch the beliefs deeply embedded in its wisps, hold them, feel them, choose if they continue to serve. There is the chilling dampness of a shameful moment relived, then a release … warmth and tingles, lightness, and a sensation of space … energy and place once filled with blocked energy now open for new, the tightness or sadness or rage also gone, digested as a quantum snack and absorbed for me to use as I choose, rather than mindlessly engaged in a pattern that no longer serves.

I do this now. I will do it again, and again, and again, as layers melt and more layers present, an infinite spiral in the infinite playground that is my life. Shame will always be on my playground. It will no longer be the playground bully. Given the attention it craves without a fight, it is my friend, telling me secrets I keep from myself, showing me shortcuts through the woods and abandoned lots within to where I want to be, giving me a shove or a smack when I need to notice something and in my mindful embrace, shares what it knows and drifts off like fog rising to the sky, revealing a clear path forward.

We can’t change the weather, or anything in the external world. There will always be fog. There will always be shame. We can choose how to use it: to maintain our stories and spin in circles, or to engage the spiral of evolution and plunge in, trusting we know the way. Choice, like internal safety, is also a superpower, along with the knowledge that we cannot get our own life wrong. There is no wrong or right. There just is. Like fog and shame and all we create, including our writing and the process we use to find our words, is both beautiful and genius.

How do I Learn About Quantum TLC ™?

As a CODE Model Coach™, I engage Quantum TLC ™ for my own discoveries and can guide you in learning how to engage it for yourself.

CODE Model™ or Creation Out of Deep Energy™,  and Quantum TLC ™ are part of the WEL-Systems® body of knowledge developed by Louise LeBrun.

Interested in learning more?

Visit
https://wel-systems.com/self-directed-evolution/

This new space for exploration includes articles, audio files, and referrals to CODE Model Coaches™ who can support and guide your journey.

Contact me

I can offer:

  • 1 on 1 conversations/explorations/coaching to discuss your writing and the story behind the story of not writing
  • Whispers from Within ™, a 10-day email exchange that delves into writing and limiting beliefs through daily writing and written conversation
  • Small group conversations, in person or virtual, among those of us called to write, exploring what lights us up in writing and what challenges us.

If any of these options resonate or pique your curiosity, email me and we’ll set up a time to chat.

Thanks for reading and for showing up!

Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com

Posted on

Pen and Punishment: Revisiting history with the power of choice

We are writers. We long to be writers. We wish we had time to write. I’ve been in all categories, and continue to meet folks who share in the joyful angst that is the call of the written word. The unspoken question: if we all want to write so damn badly, why is it so hard to just sit and do it?

Consider this.

When were you first introduced to writing? Was it a kindly teacher who encouraged you to use your imagination, gave you constructive feedback and ample time to finish? If so, you’re probably not even reading this. You are fluently writing your 57th manuscript and wondering why so many writers you know complain and drink so much. For me, writing emerged from me early, too early according to my first public school teacher, who expressly forbid me from writing because five year olds shouldn’t know how to read or write.  I couldn’t help who I was, but I learned very quickly if I didn’t want to be punished, to put down my pencil and do what I was told. Over time, what I was told became who I was. Follow the rules, avoid the punishment.

Ironically, punishment in early schooling often involved writing. Who remembers writing lines? I will not talk in class, written 50 or 100 times. And the drudgery of cursive writing class, getting criticised or even smacked on the hand for Os not properly shaped, As not pointed enough. Grammar class: endless drills on rules (and their gazillion exceptions in the English language) or the classic: write me 500 words on why you should not use the word ‘stupid’ in class, or whatever else transgression warranted punishment.

And punishment was not limited to the classroom. Did you have a diary? Did anyone read that diary, or a journal or letter or note, without your permission? It may have been a bratty sibling, a probing parent, or a nosy friend who entered your private world uninvited and used your words to shame, humiliate or otherwise kill your confidence and your joy.  We learn quickly in moments like that to find safety in hiding one’s words deep inside, especially things intimate and important to you. The thing is, the best writing to read is that which is intimate and authentic. Hard if not impossible to protect and share at the same time.

Then, enter high school and literature and writing become a literal requirement for a high school diploma. Pressure to perform, with zero choice in the topics, titles, or creative output.  Read this book, submit this essay, write this exam or fail, all with the timer ticking, regardless of whether you liked the book or had anything to say about it. I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve met who said they haven’t picked up a book since high school, read little and write even less … people I feel would have much to share with us and the reading world if such an ingrained hatred of the craft wasn’t so deeply embedded.

What about those of us who insist on writing, then harbour the hope like an aching, unresolved, unrequited love?

We are living in a horribly delightful thing called a double bind. Taught that something is wrong when we know in the very cells of our being it is right for us. Trying to live by someone else’s rules when we know congruently in ourselves those rules are best for them, not for us.  Double binds run silently, buried with memories forgotten and feelings dismissed, dampening efforts forward with squirts of negativity that slow us down, make us feel like we’re pushing against something, raise doubts, shake our confidence, and plant the stories that we are wasting time, that it’s too much work, that you’re not any good at this anyway. So, given the opportunity to write, you tell yourself the house needs vacuuming. Maybe you’ll write after the kids go to bed. Or go to college. Or get married. Then there’s grandchildren, so the cycle repeats …

The fact is, the body remembers everything and has no ability to judge what serves and what doesn’t. Only we can do that, we as the divine signal that is us, the essence that is who we are and knows why we are here can take ownership of our lives and choose what we want. If writing emerges as a desire, yet is met with resistance, consider a new pattern of thought. Rather than labelling yourself lazy and trying to push through, consider yourself a genius and allow the resistance. Mindful pause yields wisdom; pushing through yields words on paper and even more resistance as the pattern is repeated.

The good news is, we as writers and as human beings have two important tools at our disposal: awareness and choice.  With these tools, we can create the life we want. It starts with a breath, mindful and relaxed to the base of the spine, inviting and allowing the inner space for whatever surfaces. Chances are, the words you’re searching for are there, under a shameful sticky blanket of memories and feelings from a time past, a person long gone. And you have the choice to stay stuck or to invite the release. It’s more fun than vacuuming. Plus it serves you longer and further, for your writing and anything you want in your life.

And you don’t have to do it alone. The CODE Model™, or Creation Out of Deep Energy™, is something we each can learn and live from, and we live and learn best in connection with others on the journey.

For example, I can offer:

  • 1 on 1 conversations/explorations/coaching to discuss your writing and the story behind the story of not writing
  • Whispers from Within ™, a 10-day email exchange that delves into writing and limiting beliefs through daily writing and written conversation
  • Small group conversations, in person or virtual, among those of us called to write, exploring what lights us up in writing and what challenges us.

If any of these options resonate or pique your curiosity, email me and we’ll set up a time to chat.

Want to know more about The CODE Model ™?
Read the offerings or reach out to me or any of these awesome women listed below.

Thanks for reading and for showing up!

Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com

To learn more about The Code Model ™ and the WEL-Systems® body of knowledge, visit:

Posted on

Cleaning out the Toolbox

We are resourceful creatures … from the time we are born we develop strategies, patterns, and habits to get what we need and want. Somewhere between the dependence of childhood and the independence of adulthood, we too often drop or lose the most important tool for our growth: choice. And in the loss of choice, those strategies, patterns and habits take on lives of their own. What once worked for us, now has us working for them.

My recent NaNoWriMo experience smacked me in the face with this. Halfway into the 30-day challenge, I was frustrated, frantic, and writing gibberish in a feverish  pursuit of what? Online badges and a word count that matched the daily charted average. ACK! and Yuck … I had turned an invitation to embrace the joy of daily writing into a punished pursuit of virtual baubles and praise. An ingrained strategy to write only when necessary, when there was tangible reward, was running me ragged and in the frenzy I forgot my ability to just STOP for God’s sake, breathe, and choose.

Do I benefit from a daily writing practice?
Yes, I do. Sort of. I’ve come to realize I benefit from daily writing PLAY. Practice to me speaks of needing to rely on routine and repetition to improve. In this moment, what I need is space to allow my words to flow, invited and embraced, with a sense of curiosity rather than an eye on the clock and the word count. My strategy of writing when needed: for school, for editors, for assignments earned me a living for years, gave my life purpose and money, the two things I thought were essential to life.  That strategy, however, was developed when I was a child, to get through a world I found baffling because long before I had lost touch of the essence through which it made sense: I had lost touch with ME as divine energy, and the body that processed all I encountered and created. The essence that is ME embraces creation; strategy relies on repetition to succeed. To survive, strategies generate fear of the unknown that, if we are detached and unaware, keep them running long after their serve their purpose. My strategies don’t know or care that I am an adult, that I am no longer five years old in need of the care and praise of adults charting my life. These strategies believe they ARE my life until I stop, breathe, and choose: am I in this moment living MY life?

That said, strategies remain useful tools. Once I’ve chosen MY life, I can employ strategies to build, grow, connect, develop … whatever … to create my chosen life. When the choice is from ME, there is no wrong. When I’m running strategies,  on automatic or avoiding a choice, then I get the same old same old that after a while feels constricting, heavy, frustrating … because I’m no longer creating my life, but seeking to fulfill a pattern that in the absence of choice is running me.

I’ve spent years awakening to the numbness, feeling like I needed to fight it, then feeling like it was too hard, so I allowed the pattern to run. Now, I know thinking it’s hard, that it’s requiring a fight, are strategies on top of the strategy to keep things from moving. Yep, layers upon layers of stories, like patches upon patches to contain a flow straining to dance in the infinite space to which it belongs. Constricting, heavy, frustrating. STOP, pause, breathe, choose … its that easy to release the strategies, one by one. This does require embracing the unknown … allowing movement into the newfound space and not dashing back to the familiar … for in that unknown is where we creatives truly shine, thrive, live.

So while NaNoWriMo for me was a bust from the awards point of view … a few badges, no certificate, no 50,000 words … it was a gleaming success in terms of my awareness, and my appreciation of how I choose to spend my time and how I choose to write this book in progress. It will not be through discipline and practice and word counts and deadlines. I am done with being run by strategy. It will be through mindfully choosing to spend time with my writing, as I would a loved one or a friend, not out of obligation, out of joy.

Space to breathe. The everything else follows. YES to all of that.

Thanks for being here.

Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com

To learn more about Decloaking and Living Authentically and other offerings in the WEL-Systems® body of knowledge,
visit https://wel-systems.com/
the brilliant website of its founder, Louise LeBrun, https://louiselebrun.ca/)
and the powerful offerings of CODE Model Coaches™ Stela Murrizi, https://sparkingthesacred.com/
and Sheila Winter Wallace, http://bodygateways.com/

Posted on

The Power of Salty Surrender

Swimming is one of the few actions that makes my body happy. Swimming in mid-September in northern Nova Scotia takes a special devotion to aquatic bliss. As I stood on the shore in a waning day of summer, one of the few days not boiling or drowning its visitors, waves lapping in a rhythm of dare-ya dare-ya, I pondered how badly I really wanted to swim. Perhaps just savour the sea air, turquoise sky and gently-warmed sand? Maybe wade in, just to my knees? But the body knows what the body knows, that the bright ball of energy that is ME at the base of my spine WANTS TO SWIM … NOW. And with that clarity of thought came the brilliant awareness of how all of this is a metaphor for the process that allowed me to reclaim that clarity in the first place.

The answer is always YES in a quantum energy life.

My beach outing follows my fresh emergence from Decloaking and Living Authentically, a five-day intensive gathering of women seeking to reclaim their essence, reconnect with their bodies, and live their lives as creators of every moment, awareness by awareness, and choice by choice.  A week ago, I may have dipped my toe in the surf, shivered and backed away. I should read, I should enjoy the view, and my standby favourite, I should write, the stories would run.

Today I feel the pull of habits versus truth, habits formed from a childhood of avoiding danger, risk, and mistakes that no longer serve the life of an adult yearning to create, do and be all that is possible, and then some. And today, I allowed the chance to choose differently.

I have spent much of my life standing on the shore of the great expanse that is life itself, admiring it, loving it, longing to float and splash and travel through it, curious about what it held in the depths and beyond the horizon. And, I had made myself content to build sand castles and beach art with whatever drifted to shore, telling myself it was a great life of my choosing while underneath the truth of my experience, compressed and overlooked, slowly turned my skin to stone and my energy to rage. It’s too cold, too dangerous, too much work, too risky, the stories ran as I numbly gathered sand and scavenged the shore for supplies, you’re just fine here, doing what your ancestors did, what everyone around you is doing, proud traditions, hang in there, discipline and dedication will gain you great rewards. As a writer I began to wear thin from all the chatter within. Spinning stories endlessly in life left little energy or enthusiasm for creation of any kind, including those of words. The few pieces I managed to write were squeezed and silenced by an increasing number of stories and habits using everything from deception to outright bullying to ‘protect’ me and the life I had come to know as mine. Until one day, my divine signal within that is actually me shouted ENOUGH and I began to remember parts of me long buried in the sand, started to excavate, dust off, own and release the stories that, out of my awareness, had grabbed the wheel and were running my life.

Conversations like Decloaking put you back in the driver’s seat of your life, and in fact, insist you stay there, minute by minute, choice by choice. No handing off responsibility to a therapist or drug or trusted friend. You are the expert of you. I am the expert of me. Empowering? Absolutely! But in this moment when I’m about to plunge into freezing cold water, well, what the hell do I do now?

I stared at the water, knowing what I know. I braced against it. I’ll freeze. There will be other days. Curl up in the sand with a book and be done with it. I breathe,  feel the warmth of me at the base of my spine, the tingling of anticipation as I imagine the cool caress of the salt water, floating weightless, nowhere to be except in this moment. I wanted it. And I allowed that I could have it. Uncomfortable, maybe. Trust that it’s worth it.

Wading in to my knees was easy. Water creeping up to my waist, hoo boy that’s chilly. I stop, breathe, let the sun warm my back, swirl my hands through the surf to slowly acclimatize. A choice point: go back to the warm sand and embrace half-hearted joy in getting half wet, or breathe, surrender, and invite the full experience I want to unfold.

I breathe, relax into the gentle rocking of the waves, lean back and let the water take me. A brief gasp as the northern surf engulfed me … then an absolute peace. As I swam, I cooled to the water and it warmed to me. I floated, bobbed, felt its strength in supporting me, gave thanks that I live where this expansive and beautiful vista is mine to visit any time.  After a few minutes of bliss, a new truth emerged: it was indeed bloody freakin’ cold. So I  swam to shore, towelled off and lounged on the sand for an hour watching seals bob for lunch and seagulls dot the sky. I was also making connections, feeling how the sensation of surrendering to the momentary shock of the water was very much like surrendering to a new or different story arc, one that may seem to be more work or too risque or headed in an unknown direction. I’m mindful now of how often I brace against writing into the ‘unknown’, where I don’t have deadline and outline and word count clearly laid out, how unwilling I am to feel the momentary darkness of the unknown even though I know that it will lead to something awesome.

It was a perfect afternoon, perfect moment by moment, and a perfection I would not have experienced if I hadn’t trusted what I wanted, surrendered, and opened to whatever happened next.

How many times do we rob ourselves of what we want, of what energizes or inspires or fuels us, because we tell ourselves no, we’re better off without it, that’s weird, no one else is, that’s selfish, it’s scary … Paul Simon sang of 50 ways to leave a lover, while each of us know at least 537 ways to deny ourselves of anything and everything from an extra cookie to the trip of a lifetime because, oh well, this and that, blah blah blah. It’s a life and a choice. Life is swimming in September, relying on my body to know the temperature and conditions rather than a calendar and childhood admonishment that you’ll catch your death ... Trusting yourself is life, every time. There is no more powerful space to write from, or live from.

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com

To learn more about Decloaking and Living Authentically and other offerings in the WEL-Systems® body of knowledge,
visit https://wel-systems.com/
the brilliant website of its founder, Louise LeBrun, https://louiselebrun.ca/)
and the powerful offerings of CODE Model Coaches™ Stela Murrizi, https://sparkingthesacred.com/
and Sheila Winter Wallace, http://bodygateways.com/

Posted on

When ‘it’s too soon’ becomes “it’s time”

My labour this long weekend was in my basil patch, surrounded by my most favourite aroma in the world harvesting glossy emerald leaves for pesto and fresh basil lemonade. In the moment there was glorious peace and flow of creation.

Just behind it, though, was the energy straining to move, that would not be denied despite my best efforts to avoid it.  Back to school, back to work, back to autumn …  such sadness it evokes, yet to be grieving, angry, hopeless on such an abundant day seems wrong.  ‘Back to …’anything feels constricting, counterintuitive to me, to anyone knowing they were born to evolve, yet there is a sense of comfort, an image of safety, in returning to what was, even if only in the mind. An avoidance of loss, of danger of death.

And there it is. The pressure in my body, telling me it’s exactly the right time to pause, breathe, and dive straight in to how I hold death.

Labour Day weekend this year doesn’t just bring up my perennial grief at the end of a summer gone too soon. It also marks the 10th anniversary of our purchase of the cottage, a family play space with the ulterior motive of serving as a second address, heralding the slow dissolution of our marriage about to begin. It’s the first weekend of this ‘second address’ being mine, and an ongoing reminder that the card games and beach walks and rainy days spent building Lego are gone in a flurry of children evolving into young adults, with university and careers and their own relationships to play in. Who am I if I am not the mom with a houseful of kids, or even a house?

It’s also been a week of grieving other people’s children, sudden deaths of young adults in their 20s and 30s. There was a time when I would have felt the sadness just enough to fuel a prayer and condolences and a slight curiosity as to how these things happen. Now I find myself on a teeter totter of energy intense and active, on one side grief and fury that rages against a world claiming evolution yet killing our children before it is time, on the other the complete absence of feeling, numb and mutely watching all going on around me as a movie, not engaging, separate from it all.

It’s a choice point of separation that exists only in my mind, that my body says ‘no more.’

Who am I, and who do I become when I get off the teeter totter, the merry-go-round, out of the hellish playground altogether and own all that I feel, everything, nothing, and all in between, to drop the labels and live from what I know rather than what I ‘should’ do, or what is the norm?

I become someone comfortable with death as a part of life, life as a part of death, knowing that life, death and everything in between are labels for the experiences we as divine energy have in human bodies. I become someone who sees life and death becoming currency in the hands of those wanting our trust and our cash for their own selfish uses, terrifying us with stories to sell us products to defy aging, protect us from evil, or earn us a place in eternal life. We come from infinite energy into a human body for an experience on Earth, we return to infinite energy when time on Earth is done. Who would each of us become, what would our world become, if we owned and trusted that there is nothing to earn, no space to buy, no need to measure up, no fears to push down? All we have and all we need is breath, awareness, and the moment we are in to choose, create, and own our creation.

Death is all around us, when I choose to see it. My basil plants, harvested of their leaves, will die, their stalks and roots and the soil that sustained them composted back to the earth. My children will leave this Earth someday. For generations we have been taught how wrong it is, how devastating that children die before their parents. Absolutely it is. But at what age and what stage does loss of a loved one from Earth feel okay? My grandmother was 96 when she died; her death did not feel easy because ‘she lived a good long life’ and it was the ‘natural order of things.’ I miss her keenly, memories slicing like the edge of a knife, until I choose to open to another way to hold death. Not loss, but transition. Her essence returned to the infinity of the divine, still with me and a part of me, as energy rather than her voice and body tangible in front of me. So comforting, soothing as one of her crocheted blankets.

Who wouldn’t choose a blanket to curl up with rather than a knife? Or the scent of basil?

When I forget who I am, a divine signal able to create safety within myself, the only safety there is, I choose the knife, keeping the hurts fresh and the rage on standby. I tell myself stories and cling to memories for fear of allowing energy to move, light to shine, joy to enter, life to expand, for expansion brings me closer to my signal, myself, something I and generations before me was taught to hide, lest we behave dangerously, destroy something or be destroyed.

In the sunshine of awareness, grounded in the moment we’re in, the choice is clear.

Our power is in the moment, in ourselves, lived in the choices we make. I choose to allow the moments of sadness, the moments of fear, knowing that they cannot hurt me, and allowing them to move will free me. I choose to set down the knife and allow the world to shift, to change around me. To smell the basil and smile, not because it grew, but because of what I learn in the letting go.

Posted on

Tap Dancing in the Minefield of the Heart

It’s a conversation that’s been a long time coming.  On the outside things look fine; on the inside something is missing, feels off, irritates or just plain hurts. For years, explaining things away, rationalizing that things are great, good enough, okay, as much as we deserve since others have it a lot worse. Until either the body gives out or refuses to carry the lies any more. We have been taught to tell the truth, that the truth will set you free. We have also been taught that the truth can topple carefully-constructed lives and cause pain and chaos, that some truths are better kept as secrets. How others feel, keeping their secrets and lies, is more important than our own health and well-being.  That betrayal of self is okay, celebrated, even, in the preservation of a system, institution, or life crafted to maintain or control rather than evolve and grow.

Well, in plain language, time to call bullshit on all of that.

Be yourself and tell the truth. How simple and rich an existence would we each have, how powerful and awesome the lives we would create,  adhering to that clear and natural law of engagement.  Never has this been more obvious and more unsettling. Knowing clearly who we are, owning clearly our truth, enables us to weather storms of confusion and create our path to the life we want for us and for the people we love. It begins with honouring our own knowledge and instincts, listening and learning when something feels off or catches our attention. It begins with choosing different for yourself, choosing authenticity every time, even when it hurts.

It means examining what we consider healthy relationships, and owning how we may sell ourselves – and by extension those we care about – short, claiming to be honest when we are hiding secrets and spinning stories to ‘keep the peace’ or to remain okay with ‘good enough.’

It means having that conversation that’s been a long time coming.

Many people will refuse to believe in their own power to transform the world because their own created world is ‘okay the way it is.’ Everything is a choice, and I get this one. I lived this way for years, until it was time that I couldn’t any more. Years after I awakened to new possibilities, I fought like hell to keep everything balanced and smooth, the world I had created based on what I learned as a child and young adult, and the new emerging world that I knew in my cells was my present and future. The thing is, the two worlds were in direct opposition. What I created I based on what I knew, my history, my need to be productive according to the standards of others and protected from the outside, a protection that manifested as isolation and that really never works. My emerging world is based on who I am, the divine signal here on Earth with a purpose, emerging choice by choice and moment by moment, safety  and referencing internal, being and living my authentic self and giving space for that to change as I learn more and choose differently, a constant flow of energy within and without, creating rather than replicating, evolving rather than protecting. Running both scenarios is akin to driving while stomping the gas and the brake at the same time. It’s a choice that seems safe in the moment, but will kill you over time, and it very nearly did, a couple of times. If disease or body wear doesn’t get you, the suppressed rage does.

The more I awaken the more I know that an inauthentic life will kill me, that spinning stories based on beliefs of others that hold little meaning or sense for me will only keep me churning in circles and detached from my life, and from those in it. Keeping secrets and telling lies, especially to myself, keeps no peace – it creates a barrier to a deeper more fulfilling relationship, creates an illusion that can never grow or be enjoyed. When is the last time an illusion hugged you warmly, wrapping you in scent and heartbeats and the soft warmness of someone you love? Those choosing illusion may not know what they choose, or that there is another way, but the body knows when the warmth it feels is authentic and when it is a story spun by a mind too invested in control to allow the truth.

Then there is the R word: risk. Better to have an illusion than nothing at all. Better to have ‘okay’ than zero. How long, though, can an awakening evolving infinite spirit survive on ‘okay’? When you love someone, feel the depth of connection, know there is so much more to experience and create and live, how long can ‘okay’ sustain the excitement, the promise, the joy?

Exactly. Which is why I chose to have a conversation, the toughest I have had to date, to look into those trusting blue eyes and speak my truth, which was to own that I was  being lied to because he was lying to himself, and that was no longer okay with me. I know his stories, I know they lie in wait as his source of protection against a world that has demonstrated over and over his heart and feelings are not safe unless he hides and controls the arena where they are revealed in tiny glimpses. For years I skirted the mines as my way of loving him, protecting him, conveniently protecting my stories and strategies as well. Getting close but not too close. Controlling access through clever wordplay. But skirting the mines gradually reduced my playing field to a space too small, no room for words or imagination or hope. I was lying to myself and my world of expansion was in limbo. I had to stand up for me, stop playing the victim in my own story and the peacemaker in his. It hurt. It was frustrating to feel him in the moment choosing strategy over truth. It felt, well, shitty, which makes sense. I was calling bullshit on stories that have run for decades, his and mine. Of course there is pushback, denial, defence. From both of us.

There is also promise and space that didn’t exist before. When the stench of manure drifted away, we were still standing, still talking, his eyes still held mine and were still that gorgeous shade of blue which told me I was seeing him – not his stories or that arrogant veneer of a soldier that runs the minefield – but his authentic self. A separate and equally powerful godforce that deserves space and time to own and make his choices, the space and time granted to me over the years by my awesome tribe of enlightened women who ensure I don’t have to navigate my minefield alone. It is time for me to be that presence for another, without expectation or demand. A few of my mines have just disappeared.

Conversations are like potato chips – you can’t have just one.  Reclamation is in layers, evolution is ongoing. My conversation was like removing the topsoil from the minefield.  We see the stories now. We can avoid them. We can take agonizing painstaking hours to diffuse them. Or we can simply choose in the moment to let go of the story and the mine disappears. Choice by choice. Conversation by conversation. Each authentic to self, creating something authentic and awesome when combined. That’s the life that creates, that we were born to lead. In my world, anyway.

—

The unique and comprehensive WEL-Systems® body of knowledge offers a powerful new context for personal evolution and change, including articles and audio clips available free of charge to pique your curiosity and invite your exploration of self.

Decloaking and Living Authentically is a conversation that will take you into the much deeper dive of who you are, as the thinker behind it all.
Listen to a free sample here.

As a CODE Model Coach™ I welcome your comments, inquiries and conversations: contact me for an introductory chat

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, story doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com