Break-ups are hard...there is just no way around that fact. Oftentimes breaking up is hard, even when YOU are the one ending it! Even when you know breaking up is the best thing in the world that you could do for yourself, it can be painful and emotionally disorienting. Break-ups, of all kinds...from the agreeable friendly kind to the knock-down-breakdown kind...are likely to bring up our abandonment and belonging issues.
Regardless of how long the relationship lasted, it is likely that for a time you felt a sense of "belonging" with this person. A feeling of completion and connection that made you feel safe, known, and wanted...if only for a short time. If it's a longer relationship than these feelings of belonging were likely to be more deeply etched into your psyche. When that feeling is "taken" from us in a break-up or we decide to remove ourselves from it, then it is likely to trigger abandonment feelings both in the moment, but also any that we have experienced in the past.
So many people have experienced some form of abandonment in their childhood. It could have happened in the form of divorce, death, a parent leaving the family, traveling, work, war, addiction, abuse, adoption, etc. A lot of times relationships ending can be especially painful for people who have suffered a big abandonment in their childhood. When we are little, we often times will suppress our hurt, scared, angry, confused, betrayed, and sad feelings in relationship to the loss in order to survive and get through it.
Suppressed feelings don't go away. They just hang out in the places of our memory that go unnoticed by our conscious mind. This hiding place is what a lot of healers, therapists and mystics call the Shadow. When we experience difficult moments that take us out of our day to day stream of (and striving for) happiness...like a breakup...we begin to emotionally dip into the suppressed memories and feelings of the past, which makes the feelings in the "here and now" even more intense. It is normal and natural to do this, especially if you have experienced a trauma.
Abandonment is traumatizing to children because we are naturally attached to our parental figures because we have a primal need to have that bond...so it is nothing to be ashamed of, yet a lot of us do feel shame and may not even be aware of it. There can be a lot of shame associated with being abandoned because we lose our sense of belonging and that can make us feel unwanted and different than others and so, in order to cope, we learn to hide and minimize the feelings we have as kids all the way into adulthood.
This suppressed shame can explain why we so often feel a sense of shame when someone breaks up with us or we are unable to make a relationship work...we feel ashamed for being "unwanted" and we feel shame in not being able to make a relationship last or having made a poor choice in a mate. If you have never felt abandoned emotionally or physically in your past then you are rare and lucky! You may still have some abandonment and shame feelings come up though. For you it may be a different kind of intensity that is linked with the unfamiliar shock of someone choosing to not be in a relationship with you or you may worry that you are not living up to the potential of your families reputation/tradition for having solid and sound relationships.
Once we understand the full scope of why we feel the way we do, we can begin healing the core stuff that led us to this experience in the first place. Our suppressed and unconscious grief from past abandonment can attract to us similar experiences through relationships with people who will play out the previous drama with us. I believe this is orchestrated by our spirits so we can become conscious of what needs healing in us through the experience of pain. Pain causes us to grow when we would rather just stay the same.
No one wants to go through life with a conscious or unconscious feeling of abandonment, shame, and a sense of not belonging in the world. When a break-up triggers these feelings in us we have the choice to grow bitter or depressed and live as a victim, or we can feel our feelings and learn how to be there for ourselves. We can learn how to feel a sense of belonging from within. We can comfort the inner-child that still feels hurt and lost due to events of long ago. It is amazing what a little awareness and allowing of feelings can do for a person.
The process of healing from a past abandonment and a present break-up can feel and look messy, but it is fertile ground for personal and spiritual growth. As we heal our wounds and let go of shame we grow into whole adults who are conscious and ready to have relationships that last. The first step towards creating that is in mending your relationship with yourself through understanding what experiences and events have left behind a residue of grief that needs to be consciously felt, expressed, and let go of.
Be kind to yourself and thank you for reading :-)
Amanda
Please visit http://empathicamanda.com/ for more information on my services. You can call 1-888-MY-ETHER ext. 12345678 to speak with me directly (if I am available...if not, please email me for an appointment!)
Or get a FREE Reading using the Empathic Mystic Online Tarot by visiting http://empathicmystic.com/
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
Your Inner-Child Has A Lot To Say Right Now.
The "Inner-Child" is something you will find me writing a lot about in my blogs. I find that it's my inner playful child that makes the best artist and author when it comes to sharing about the Art of Self Love. She is pretty freakin' brilliant at it and she always wants to help other people's Inner-Children feel safe enough to talk and share or to come out and play. I believe that understanding who your Inner-Child is to you is a very helpful process when you are walking a path of Self-Love. My own introduction to my Inner-Child was kind of strange, yet life-altering. I have since turned it into an exercise that I often share with the people I read for when they are drowning in a whirlpool of regrettable choices and self-loathing.
At one point in my life I was a little wild. I liked to party and drink and I liked to get a lot of attention from men. It was a lifestyle that I think a lot of modern women find themselves dabbling in at least once in their life...usually after a break-up or when we feel the most confused about ourselves and most lonely and are hoping for an escape from our unfulfilling jobs or lack of real connection with a partner, friends, and family. I was in the midst of one of those challenging moments and I decided that I would just try and have as much fun as I could to keep my spirits up until I found a boyfriend to make me feel special and loveable.
One of the down-sides to this plan (I must admit there were many) was that my fun involved a lot of alcohol which would usually involve a lot of regrettable choices in regards to who's company I would keep and what kinds of things I would say and do while having all that fun I was determined to have. One morning I woke up feeling especially terrible about myself and what I could remember about the night before. I was also starting to panic because I realized that I was going to have to call in to work because I was way too hung-over and depressed feeling to interact with the world that day.
I was laying in bed on my side, hugging my pillow and calling myself stupid...stupid...stupid. I said things like, "You are such a desperate little slut...why did you make out with him...how are you going to pay your bills...you deserve to be fired for being so irresponsible...you didn't even look that good last night and you spent all that money on that outfit...you actually looked kinda fat and like you were trying too hard to be sexy..." and while this shame-based-smack-down was taking place inside my head, my eyes were wondering around my side table where I had a lamp and several framed pictures set up. Two of these images were of me when I was a baby and when I was 4 years old.
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So I was looking at these images of myself and I began to say out loud to them: "You are such a stupid slut...you should be fired...you are fat...you are an obnoxious drunk...no one is ever going to love you...you're not special...you are irresponsible" and I started to giggle uncomfortably and had to stop because this wave of guilt had come over me. It was different than other forms of guilt I had felt because it didn't involve offending, hurting, betraying, or annoying another person. It was pure guilt over being so mean and hateful towards those pictures...that baby and that girl version of myself.
Now at this point of my life, I had heard of the concept of an "Inner-Child" and how we all supposedly have one, but I just thought it was the part of ourselves that prefers to have fun rather than go to work. I also thought it was a little too sentimental of an idea for me and my sassy-n-fun girl ways. But in that moment of slinging mean thoughts at those pictures I could instantly feel the innocence and joy that radiated from them and I felt absolutely silly for saying such horrible and untrue things to them...I realized I would NEVER say anything so cruel to a child. I may have been in my 20's but that didn't make those children any less a part of me still and so I concluded that this must be what that whole "Inner-Child" thing was about.
I decided in that moment that I didn't want to feel ashamed and bad about myself so much. I knew I was going to have to stop doing the things I was doing if I wanted to truly be happier...and I'll be honest with you, it took me many years after that to truly awaken and grow into my potential. But I did decide that day that I would no longer say things to myself that would be abusive if I were to say it to a child. I wasn't going to verbally abuse my inner-child over something that my anxious and confused adult self did in a sad attempt to make herself feel better. It was my first solid step towards being more compassionate towards myself.
Compassion for yourself is so important for healing and growth. Sometimes it's hard to have compassion for ourselves when we feel like we have screwed up. If you feel like you are stuck in negative self-talk and the habit of punishing yourself with shaming thoughts and you want to stop, I suggest you try the following. Find 1-3 pictures of yourself from your early childhood. If you don't have any pictures of yourself then look through a magazine or go online and find pictures of kids that look like how you remember yourself looking as a child. Take these images and while looking at them begin saying out loud to them what you have been saying to yourself. Say it and really mean it. Mean it like you do when you say it to yourself. Look into their eyes and imagine how they would feel hearing your words. Would they feel hurt, betrayed, ashamed, afraid, or angry? That is how you make yourself feel with such statements.
I know for myself, I felt ridiculous and cruel for being so mean to those two cute and happy kids smiling back at me. I also felt protective and was beginning to realize that the light and confidence and joy that I could see in their faces must still live somewhere in me. I stopped speaking to myself in such a mean way, even when I did something I regretted and felt ashamed of. I would instead focus my attention on writing a poem, reading a self-help book, or vowing to not do it again. There have been times when I would catch myself in a negativity loop and I would bring out the pictures and say it to them for a little internal reality check...and then I would apologize and tell them that I love them. Everyone's reaction will be a little different depending on what messages you got about yourself as a child. I advise you to find pictures that connect you with positive memories about who you were at that time. Whatever your reaction to the exercise is, you will discover important information about who your Inner-Child is and how you are relating to your own innocence and light.
Be kind to yourself and thank you for reading :-)
Amanda
Please visit http://EmpathicAmanda.com for more information on my services. You can call 1-888-MY-ETHER ext. 12345678 to speak with me directly (if I am available...if not, please email me for an appointment!)
Or get a FREE Reading using the Empathic Mystic Online Tarot by visiting http://EmpathicMystic.com
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Work Should Feel Like Play!
Are you currently looking for work or considering a major career change, but just don't know which way to begin? Are you determined to not just have a job, but to live and create from a place of purpose? If so, here is a simple way of discovering what this might mean for you.
Think about when you were a kid and think about how you liked to spend your time when no one was telling you what to do. You may find that you had several different "play passions" and that they changes at different ages. Write down as many as you can think of.
Next, begin taking these seriously...don't just write them off as kid's stuff because they may hold some very important clues to both your passion and your purpose when it comes to your work. Spirit shines through very naturally with children because they have not been overly conditioned by family and society yet. You will want to start thinking in terms of how the play you did as kid translates into things your spirit wants you to be doing and working towards now.
For example, say you wanted to be a doctor when you were little. You may think, "so what? I can't start medical school now, I'm too old". Well, that is up to you to see it like that...you could begin medical school if you let go of the belief about age being important, but let's say that even when you do that it doesn't sound appealing. What this early desire could be telling you is that you have a desire to heal. So maybe it is about learning alternative healing techniques or understanding medicine or maybe working with people who are sick and living life as a "patient". Or perhaps it is about writing about doctors and patients, or promoting medical ideas. The skies the limit...the important thing is to let your mind think outside of the box, while using your childhood playtime as an inspiration for what is truly possible for you.
For myself, I always loved playing the game Memory and I would often times play cards with my sister and grandma...I loved to shuffle cards! As it turns out, I am now a tarot card reader and am co-creating my own tarot deck with my partner. The images I am creating for the cards are square and colorful just like the squared images on the memory game. I feel very much in my passion when I read the cards for others and when I work on and promote my tarot deck.
Oftentimes, in our play as kids, we were trying to learn and prepare our older selves for what will support us financially and stimulate us mentally and emotionally...so if you are currently confused about your career and purpose, begin by visiting the past and looking at what your younger-self was naturally drawn to when it came time to play!
Be kind to yourself and thank you for reading :-)
Amanda
Think about when you were a kid and think about how you liked to spend your time when no one was telling you what to do. You may find that you had several different "play passions" and that they changes at different ages. Write down as many as you can think of.
Next, begin taking these seriously...don't just write them off as kid's stuff because they may hold some very important clues to both your passion and your purpose when it comes to your work. Spirit shines through very naturally with children because they have not been overly conditioned by family and society yet. You will want to start thinking in terms of how the play you did as kid translates into things your spirit wants you to be doing and working towards now.
For example, say you wanted to be a doctor when you were little. You may think, "so what? I can't start medical school now, I'm too old". Well, that is up to you to see it like that...you could begin medical school if you let go of the belief about age being important, but let's say that even when you do that it doesn't sound appealing. What this early desire could be telling you is that you have a desire to heal. So maybe it is about learning alternative healing techniques or understanding medicine or maybe working with people who are sick and living life as a "patient". Or perhaps it is about writing about doctors and patients, or promoting medical ideas. The skies the limit...the important thing is to let your mind think outside of the box, while using your childhood playtime as an inspiration for what is truly possible for you.
For myself, I always loved playing the game Memory and I would often times play cards with my sister and grandma...I loved to shuffle cards! As it turns out, I am now a tarot card reader and am co-creating my own tarot deck with my partner. The images I am creating for the cards are square and colorful just like the squared images on the memory game. I feel very much in my passion when I read the cards for others and when I work on and promote my tarot deck.
Oftentimes, in our play as kids, we were trying to learn and prepare our older selves for what will support us financially and stimulate us mentally and emotionally...so if you are currently confused about your career and purpose, begin by visiting the past and looking at what your younger-self was naturally drawn to when it came time to play!
Be kind to yourself and thank you for reading :-)
Amanda
Please visit http://empathicamanda.com/ for more information on my services. You can call 1-888-MY-ETHER ext. 12345678 to speak with me directl (if I am available...if not, please email me for an appointment!)
Or get a FREE Reading using the Empathic Mystic Online Tarot by visiting http://EmpathicMystic.com
Sunday, April 5, 2009
"I Need You"
Often times people confuse deep feelings of need with feelings of love. They believe that because they have this deep longing, craving, and need for another person that it must be love...why else would they feel so strongly? A lot of times the intensity of our need for another person does not come from love, although we may genuinely have love feelings for them. Often times, it is actually old feelings that are being triggered and Spirit is using the relationship as a way of getting us to look at ourselves through the experience of painful emotions when our needs go unmet.
When we are little, we are truly needy. We need our parents to feed us, clothe us, shelter us, love us and provide for us just about everything a human needs in order to survive. Some of us are lucky and our needs get met in a way that creates a sense of safety, balance, and comfort within our mind, heart, and body. When we have this sense of well-being, we are free to grow and learn how to meet our own emotional and physical needs and we end up living as integrated and whole adults who attract other integrated and whole adults into our relationship experiences.
Unfortunately, with the world being the way it often is and with families being the way they often are, many of us did not get all of our needs met and did not have the luxury of growing up feeling safe and supported to grow into a fully integrated and whole adult. Many of us actually learned to suppress our needs in order to survive. If a child has a naturally deep need for love and affection, but grows up in a home that is cold and lacking in that department, that child has two choices...to seek out love and affection and get rejected over and over again or to suppress the need, make it not all that important and focus on getting whatever is being provided. This is a way of coping that can get us through the tough years, but a suppressed need does not mean that it goes away...it is just dormant until a situation comes a long to revive the feeling of the unmet need, which is often times what love relationships do. When we have vital needs go unmet in childhood, we end up having parts and pieces missing within our psyches and emotional body and so that is what we are often times searching for in a romantic partner...someone who we unconsciously believe possesses and will give us what we are lacking inside. All the natural longings and needs that went unmet as a child get transferred onto our lovers and potential lovers.
This is not a very sexy or romantic way of looking at love, but it can be incredibly helpful if you find yourself feeling way more needy of another than you would like. Our unconscious neediness will often times do the opposite of what we want and push away love or attract to us the people who will go out of their way to not meet our needs. The more we understand what is happening the more we can show up for ourselves and meet our own needs...and ultimately attract someone who is capable and willing to give and receive in a balanced way. Nurturing and healing within ourselves what went unmet in childhood allows us to grow into our full potential as individuals. It is much easier to attract and sustain a healthy loving partnership when we are actively working on becoming a complete human being on our own. If we don't then we will only attract people who will reflect back to us what is still missing through the pain and drama of our needs going unmet in the relationship.
So the next time you feel a wave of neediness sweep over you towards a new love or a long-time partner...perhaps they are unavailable to be with you or give you what you want emotionally or physically, take a moment to ask yourself where this need went unmet when you were a kid. 9 times out of 10, that unmet need is at the core of the intensity you are feeling and experiencing today. Once you are conscious of it, you can begin giving yourself the love, safety, comfort, encouragement, or attention that you missed out on as a child...and soon enough your relationships will begin reflecting back the fullness you will feel inside.
Be kind to yourself and thank you for reading :-)
Amanda
When we are little, we are truly needy. We need our parents to feed us, clothe us, shelter us, love us and provide for us just about everything a human needs in order to survive. Some of us are lucky and our needs get met in a way that creates a sense of safety, balance, and comfort within our mind, heart, and body. When we have this sense of well-being, we are free to grow and learn how to meet our own emotional and physical needs and we end up living as integrated and whole adults who attract other integrated and whole adults into our relationship experiences.
Unfortunately, with the world being the way it often is and with families being the way they often are, many of us did not get all of our needs met and did not have the luxury of growing up feeling safe and supported to grow into a fully integrated and whole adult. Many of us actually learned to suppress our needs in order to survive. If a child has a naturally deep need for love and affection, but grows up in a home that is cold and lacking in that department, that child has two choices...to seek out love and affection and get rejected over and over again or to suppress the need, make it not all that important and focus on getting whatever is being provided. This is a way of coping that can get us through the tough years, but a suppressed need does not mean that it goes away...it is just dormant until a situation comes a long to revive the feeling of the unmet need, which is often times what love relationships do. When we have vital needs go unmet in childhood, we end up having parts and pieces missing within our psyches and emotional body and so that is what we are often times searching for in a romantic partner...someone who we unconsciously believe possesses and will give us what we are lacking inside. All the natural longings and needs that went unmet as a child get transferred onto our lovers and potential lovers.
This is not a very sexy or romantic way of looking at love, but it can be incredibly helpful if you find yourself feeling way more needy of another than you would like. Our unconscious neediness will often times do the opposite of what we want and push away love or attract to us the people who will go out of their way to not meet our needs. The more we understand what is happening the more we can show up for ourselves and meet our own needs...and ultimately attract someone who is capable and willing to give and receive in a balanced way. Nurturing and healing within ourselves what went unmet in childhood allows us to grow into our full potential as individuals. It is much easier to attract and sustain a healthy loving partnership when we are actively working on becoming a complete human being on our own. If we don't then we will only attract people who will reflect back to us what is still missing through the pain and drama of our needs going unmet in the relationship.
So the next time you feel a wave of neediness sweep over you towards a new love or a long-time partner...perhaps they are unavailable to be with you or give you what you want emotionally or physically, take a moment to ask yourself where this need went unmet when you were a kid. 9 times out of 10, that unmet need is at the core of the intensity you are feeling and experiencing today. Once you are conscious of it, you can begin giving yourself the love, safety, comfort, encouragement, or attention that you missed out on as a child...and soon enough your relationships will begin reflecting back the fullness you will feel inside.
Be kind to yourself and thank you for reading :-)
Amanda
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Why Does Love Feel So Hard?
When we are born, we are born able and willing to give and receive love...we ARE love. Because we are born loving, we naturally want to love and be loved by our parents because they are in our presence and it is the natural thing for us to do. This attempt by us to love and be loved by our parents is where we learn "what love is".
Ideally, we would all have parents who know how to love a child and how to receive the love of a child...that way we could all grow up to be adults who knew how to be loved and how to love another. If this were so, then we would all naturally know how to create happy, healthy, and LOVING relationships. But for many of us, our parents did not really give us these kinds of experiences...not because we are unlovable or they are incapable of love, but because they never experienced it from their parents and so they didn't know how to and their parents never experienced it from their parents, and so on. There are numerous reasons why this has happened all over the world...the challenges of basic human survival, war, poverty, abuse, etc...I won't go into them all here, but the end result has had a powerful influence on why romantic relationships can be so difficult and painful for so many people.
Because so many people on this planet have grown up as children who once tried to love and receive love from wounded adults that were hurt in their own life, there has been a deterioration in what we collectively think love should look and feel like...we end up playing out the family dramas of our past...trying to get our un-met love needs fulfilled by people who treat us similarly to how our parents did...rather than experiencing and exchanging the love that is hidden away in each of our cores. Basically, our parents may not have been the best sources of knowing or teaching how to give and receive love, so we would be wise to question if we have picked up any beliefs about love from them that don't really serve us.
The love I'm speaking of is fairly simple...it's an energy exchange between people that is about seeing, respecting and investing time and energy into another person, while also being available to receive the eyes, respect, and loving time and energy of the other. Life, being what it is at this point in time...as far as the amount people have to work in order to survive...has made it so that most of us, even under fairly healthy family circumstances, did not received nearly enough of this kind of loving experience in our life. This "lack of love" has gotten us away from our pure sense and ability to love and be loved.
A big helper in having healthier and happier love relationships is to connect more with your spirit or your higher self. Part of the path to becoming spiritual or "conscious" has to do with understanding how your family and community either supported you or distracted you from who you really are and who you came here to be...and most importantly when it comes to human relationships...what they taught you or didn't teach you about giving and receiving love. When you really see and understand how this past experience of love connects you with your present experience of love, you will become more free to begin having the kinds of relationships that your soul or "inner child" always wanted and was capable of having all along...had the world and the family been willing and able to support it.There are lots of reasons why people have avoided doing the work of seeing what was missing in the love department growing up. In many ways we had to ignore the whole topic of it altogether if we were going to survive comfortably within the family systems we were born into without an ongoing feeling of dissatisfaction. The idea that children are allowed to question or challenge their parents is even a relatively new concept in Western society due to patriarchal/Christian dogma being passed on in families for so long. This is starting to change, but the residue still lingers within many people, so it can be difficult, even as an adult, to question within our own minds and hearts the quality of love given to us by our parents or their ability to receive our love as a child. That is not to say that they are bad people if they didn't give us that, but if you don't allow yourself to recognize and grieve what was missing then it will likely continue to go unrecognized in your present-day romantic relationships. This will leave you always with a feeling of dissatisfaction and longing or you won't allow love in for very long at all because it will feel too foreign and overwhelming and you won't understand why.
It is the fear and unwillingness to understand what is happening on the unconscious, inner-child level that makes love so hard for many people. But one way of looking at it all, that I have found helpful, is that the challenges and difficulties are simply trying to wake us up to what has been missing for a long time, so we can begin to give it to ourselves now through our relationship with spirit and through healing relationships with others who also recognize that, with a little self-work and practice, love can and should be a whole lot easier...after all, it is our natural state.
Be kind to yourself and thank you for reading :-)
Amanda
Please visit http://empathicamanda.com/ for more information on my services. You can call 1-888-MY-ETHER ext. 12345678 to speak with me directly (if I am available...if not, please email me for an appointment!)
Or get a FREE Reading using the Empathic Mystic Online Tarot by visiting http://empathicmystic.com/
Ideally, we would all have parents who know how to love a child and how to receive the love of a child...that way we could all grow up to be adults who knew how to be loved and how to love another. If this were so, then we would all naturally know how to create happy, healthy, and LOVING relationships. But for many of us, our parents did not really give us these kinds of experiences...not because we are unlovable or they are incapable of love, but because they never experienced it from their parents and so they didn't know how to and their parents never experienced it from their parents, and so on. There are numerous reasons why this has happened all over the world...the challenges of basic human survival, war, poverty, abuse, etc...I won't go into them all here, but the end result has had a powerful influence on why romantic relationships can be so difficult and painful for so many people.
Because so many people on this planet have grown up as children who once tried to love and receive love from wounded adults that were hurt in their own life, there has been a deterioration in what we collectively think love should look and feel like...we end up playing out the family dramas of our past...trying to get our un-met love needs fulfilled by people who treat us similarly to how our parents did...rather than experiencing and exchanging the love that is hidden away in each of our cores. Basically, our parents may not have been the best sources of knowing or teaching how to give and receive love, so we would be wise to question if we have picked up any beliefs about love from them that don't really serve us.
The love I'm speaking of is fairly simple...it's an energy exchange between people that is about seeing, respecting and investing time and energy into another person, while also being available to receive the eyes, respect, and loving time and energy of the other. Life, being what it is at this point in time...as far as the amount people have to work in order to survive...has made it so that most of us, even under fairly healthy family circumstances, did not received nearly enough of this kind of loving experience in our life. This "lack of love" has gotten us away from our pure sense and ability to love and be loved.
A big helper in having healthier and happier love relationships is to connect more with your spirit or your higher self. Part of the path to becoming spiritual or "conscious" has to do with understanding how your family and community either supported you or distracted you from who you really are and who you came here to be...and most importantly when it comes to human relationships...what they taught you or didn't teach you about giving and receiving love. When you really see and understand how this past experience of love connects you with your present experience of love, you will become more free to begin having the kinds of relationships that your soul or "inner child" always wanted and was capable of having all along...had the world and the family been willing and able to support it.There are lots of reasons why people have avoided doing the work of seeing what was missing in the love department growing up. In many ways we had to ignore the whole topic of it altogether if we were going to survive comfortably within the family systems we were born into without an ongoing feeling of dissatisfaction. The idea that children are allowed to question or challenge their parents is even a relatively new concept in Western society due to patriarchal/Christian dogma being passed on in families for so long. This is starting to change, but the residue still lingers within many people, so it can be difficult, even as an adult, to question within our own minds and hearts the quality of love given to us by our parents or their ability to receive our love as a child. That is not to say that they are bad people if they didn't give us that, but if you don't allow yourself to recognize and grieve what was missing then it will likely continue to go unrecognized in your present-day romantic relationships. This will leave you always with a feeling of dissatisfaction and longing or you won't allow love in for very long at all because it will feel too foreign and overwhelming and you won't understand why.
It is the fear and unwillingness to understand what is happening on the unconscious, inner-child level that makes love so hard for many people. But one way of looking at it all, that I have found helpful, is that the challenges and difficulties are simply trying to wake us up to what has been missing for a long time, so we can begin to give it to ourselves now through our relationship with spirit and through healing relationships with others who also recognize that, with a little self-work and practice, love can and should be a whole lot easier...after all, it is our natural state.
Be kind to yourself and thank you for reading :-)
Amanda
Please visit http://empathicamanda.com/ for more information on my services. You can call 1-888-MY-ETHER ext. 12345678 to speak with me directly (if I am available...if not, please email me for an appointment!)
Or get a FREE Reading using the Empathic Mystic Online Tarot by visiting http://empathicmystic.com/
Friday, April 3, 2009
The Woman and The Child - A Story
Once upon a time a time...
In a land not too different from our own, there was a little vibrant girl. Oh, she was charming and bold and had eyes as blue and expressive as stardust and hair with a yellow shine that could only be created by the sun. The same sun that watered the freckles that sprang upon her nose and cheeks once a year.
This young thing was in search of a woman. An older and wiser woman that reminded the girl of herself only, well only different. You see, this woman had hair of red and all of her freckles had fallen off. Oh, she had lines on her face where there were none on the little ones and the woman’s teeth were straighter than the ones that smiled back at the girl’s reflection. But somehow the little girl knew, knew in her tummy, that the woman was in search of her too.
And the woman was.
She wanted to find this young thing who knew that she was right and knew that she could make beauty and art out of toilet paper, a marker, and a play-dough can.
The girl who knew how to make her mother happy and didn’t mind that she never really knew her father.
This small one who felt so big and believed in God and prayed for everyone’s souls.
The blonde child who had lungs as pink as carnations, teeth as white as snow, and skin as smooth as her bottom.
The girl who had never heard that her singing was bad or that she was irresponsible and knew that crying was okay and should never be stifled.
The child who had an imagination worthy of an Oscar, who never regretted being the best at kissing catchers, and who napped often because well, that’s what you do when you need a break from picking up your toys.
This woman needed to find this girl and she needed to find her desperately for this girl had wisdom in her that the woman long forgot. Not a wisdom stemmed in experience, but one rooted in ignorance.
The little girl was ignorant. She didn’t know what loss or loneliness was. She didn’t know how it felt to be fatigued, rejected, or frightened. She had no idea what a bitter thought was or a cynical joke or how to create a façade or inhale a cigarette or dye her hair or … well the little girl just didn’t know much of anything and the woman knew more than she wanted to.
So the two decided that they must seek the other out. And in their journeys of searching, they happened upon each other. And they took a good long look at each other and they talked. Now not how you and I would talk, but a quiet understanding and pretty soon a likeness grew between the two and they decided it was time to start expanding.
And together, the woman and child, began expanding more and more everyday and in every way and they knew, knew in their tummies, that come what may... together, they would be okay.
The End
In a land not too different from our own, there was a little vibrant girl. Oh, she was charming and bold and had eyes as blue and expressive as stardust and hair with a yellow shine that could only be created by the sun. The same sun that watered the freckles that sprang upon her nose and cheeks once a year.
This young thing was in search of a woman. An older and wiser woman that reminded the girl of herself only, well only different. You see, this woman had hair of red and all of her freckles had fallen off. Oh, she had lines on her face where there were none on the little ones and the woman’s teeth were straighter than the ones that smiled back at the girl’s reflection. But somehow the little girl knew, knew in her tummy, that the woman was in search of her too.
And the woman was.
She wanted to find this young thing who knew that she was right and knew that she could make beauty and art out of toilet paper, a marker, and a play-dough can.
The girl who knew how to make her mother happy and didn’t mind that she never really knew her father.
This small one who felt so big and believed in God and prayed for everyone’s souls.
The blonde child who had lungs as pink as carnations, teeth as white as snow, and skin as smooth as her bottom.
The girl who had never heard that her singing was bad or that she was irresponsible and knew that crying was okay and should never be stifled.
The child who had an imagination worthy of an Oscar, who never regretted being the best at kissing catchers, and who napped often because well, that’s what you do when you need a break from picking up your toys.
This woman needed to find this girl and she needed to find her desperately for this girl had wisdom in her that the woman long forgot. Not a wisdom stemmed in experience, but one rooted in ignorance.
The little girl was ignorant. She didn’t know what loss or loneliness was. She didn’t know how it felt to be fatigued, rejected, or frightened. She had no idea what a bitter thought was or a cynical joke or how to create a façade or inhale a cigarette or dye her hair or … well the little girl just didn’t know much of anything and the woman knew more than she wanted to.
So the two decided that they must seek the other out. And in their journeys of searching, they happened upon each other. And they took a good long look at each other and they talked. Now not how you and I would talk, but a quiet understanding and pretty soon a likeness grew between the two and they decided it was time to start expanding.
And together, the woman and child, began expanding more and more everyday and in every way and they knew, knew in their tummies, that come what may... together, they would be okay.
The End
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