To a workshop on breaking obstacles to abundance???!!!! I certainly didn't, but I'm so glad it did!
Legs Malone, an internationally known burlesque performer from NYC, came to Boise to perform and lead her workshop on bringing abundance into her participants lives. From everything I had heard about it, it sounded like much of the same stuff I had learned in a James Ray seminar or at church at the Center for Spiritual Living. But I have been feeling all kinds of out of sorts and I thought I could use the refresher course. I have not really done much spiritually since I hit my head last year. Thankfully, being part of the Burlesque community here in Boise pointed me in the right direction to Legs' workshop.
It's been pretty evident in my blogs for the last year that I have been struggling with my weight and my food and even with getting back in the groove with exercising since my back injury at the new year. I have started and restarted so many times, only to stop again. Why? I remember back in 2011, when the "switch" flipped and doing Weight Watchers and running and taking care of myself was so easy. Then all of a sudden it was gone. Not only has taking care of myself gone by the way side, but in the last couple of months, other parts of my life that I had healed have started to slide too. And on Saturday night, as Tracy and I were laying in bed before sleeping, I found myself apologizing for being a bad wife. And I told him that I felt like I have lost myself and don't know where I went.
So Sunday's workshop could not have come at a better time.
I knew the workshop was about "abundance", which to most people, means money. But based on all the other workshops and seminars and classes I have taken, abundance comes in many forms, including health. And health was my focus. I was not prepared for what I realized in the workshops.
During the workshop, I found myself becoming very aware that this was going to be a very deep process for me and that I had actually NOT healed from something that happened Memorial Weekend 2013 and that when I stop and really think about it, that weekend is where I lost myself and the "switch" flipped itself the other direction and I have been spiraling ever since!
So what happened? My hubby was at dinner with one of our friends and her husband. This friend and I were intimate at one time and were very close. While the 3 of them were at dinner, my friend asked Tracy if he resented me for not working while he worked all day and all I did (in her eyes) was play in the mountains with my friends. She apparently thought we had money problems and that I should be working. This violated my trust on so many levels, but more than that, it did some really seriously deep rooted damage to the way that I think about myself.
So here is a major caveat. This is NOT about my friend and her motives. This is about me. I am a firm believer that people are our best teachers and mirrors. The things we see in other people that we do not like are the things we do not like about ourselves. So in this instance, my friend was just reflecting back to me what I did not like in myself.
Tracy and I do not have money problems at all, but having been a stay at home mom for the better part of 21 years, I do sometimes feel "I am worth less" as a human being. (That is the mirror she was reflecting back at me.) But still, what I learned this weekend went even deeper than that.
So here I was at this workshop with Legs and it dawns on me that I have not let this go. I had more questions than answers, and things from the last month started to make sense. I had been thinking about this woman for the last month. As I was packing to move, I kept finding gifts I had received from her that I had never let go of, and still I had a hard time and could not let go of them. And I wondered why.. after how deeply she had hurt me last. I just kept saying that there was still good things to remember, and we are still friends (though that dynamic has certainly changed). But now here she is smack dab in my healing process this weekend. I had to force myself to be present in the moment and stop questioning my own mind and listen to what Legs was saying. If there were answers, I would find them only if I was present.
We went through an exercise where Legs read us several sentences and we had to finish the sentences with our own thoughts. When it came down to it, when the exercise was complete, I had found my biggest road block to abundance. Though this seminar seemed deeply rooted in abundance=money, for me it meant health. But here is the sentence that really stuck me in the heart:
"The reason that I can not accept prosperity into my life is because........I am ashamed of not working for money and afraid of having too much and being judged for not shopping and spending it."
Those are 3 very different things; however those were the things that my friend had said back on Memorial Weekend 2013. "Do you resent Martha for not working? You say you can't play poker cause you are saving up money for vacation. Martha said she can't buy a purse because its not in the budget." (These things she translated as us having money problems....but in reality..that is so far from the truth. It's just that our value system is different than hers.) So yes, I was being judged for not working and for not spending money when we had plenty to spend. According to her all I ever did was "play in the mountains with my friends." When in actuality, that "playing" was training for an ultra marathon and taking care of myself and being healthy. That is how I got my exercise.
Anyway, during the workshop we created a new affirmation for me to work with, "I am free from the affects of other people's judgement." Time to let that stuff go.
I left the seminar feeling like a huge ah-ha moment had happened. But I was still processing things.... I was still processing why this still bugged me. I thought I had gotten over this. And more importantly, WHY did this have anything to do with my health?
As I was talking to another friend about my experience at the seminar, it all of a sudden hit me like a ton of bricks.
Memorial Weekend 2013, my brain was still on the "fast track" to healing from the brain injury. I do not know really how to explain this, other than to say, when my brain really started to heal, it was like a blank slate. Like a little bird imprinting on the first face it sees and understands it to be its mother, my brain was doing the same thing. It was taking first impressions, music, people I was surrounded by, words that I heard to describe me as fact and truth in my life. Before the concussion, something like what she said would have irritated me (because of her butting into my business) but I would not have taken her words so personally. But post concussion and in the heart of healing, these words sunk right into my psyche as truth.
It was in that time frame, that I stopped eating properly. I kept running because I was training for the Ultra Marathon in October, but everything else had started to crumble... little by little. My self-esteem took a huge nose dive. I struggled to find self-worth. Once I finished the ultra marathon, I could not stay focused on anything. And I started gaining weight that I could not stop. Then I injured my back and had to have surgery. And things just kept rolling down hill. I have cried and cried and could not figure out what had flipped that "switch" and was not sure how to go about reversing it. I found myself terrified of money again...something I had battled back in 2006 and healed from. But now, even though Tracy makes an amazing salary and we have more than enough, I still feel as though I am always on the verge of not having enough money. Which is crazy. I feel terrified of running out of money. And recently my sex drive has tanked and I feel terrified that it is going back to a time when things were really rough for me. These are ALL things that I USED to struggle with.. and these are all things that are centered around self-worth.
I told Tracy that I felt like I had lost myself and I didn't know where or how. And now I had the answer. My healing brain and imprinted on someone else's truth about me and it grabbed hold of that nonsense and believed it for itself. When the REAL truth is sooooo much different!
So here I am... "I am FREE from the affects of other people's judgement!" "I am worthy of all that I desire."
I have learned so much, and I continue to learn so much from the brain injury I sustained. It is crazy how much of my life has changed. I really did have a bit of a personality change with the healing of the brain injury. I like different music. I have different preferences in various things. Things I used to hate, I love. It is crazy. I never used to cuss and all of a sudden I start dropping F bombs like they are nothing. And now this....the realization that I have taken on someone elses belief about who I am.
I would love to see studies on people healing from brain injuries and "imprinting". After experiencing this, I am a firm believer that if someone has a brain injury, they should only be surrounded by positive people, affirmations about their limitless potential and greatness, amazing music and memories of things they love and make them feel good about themselves! When the brain is sooooo fragile, only the GOOD and AMAZING things should be brought into the brain's waves. Please keep that in mind, the next time someone you love sustains a concussion.
Here's to moving on and getting healthy again!
Oh.. one more thing. As I was sleeping last night, my old favorite Christian Hymn came to mind. "Amazing Grace." I started to sing it in my head... "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me......" I stopped. I am not a wretch! I re-wrote the song and started singing again... "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that awakened my sleeping soul. I once was lost and now I am found. Was blind and now I see."
Saturday, I told tracy I was lost. Sunday, at the end of an exercise, Legs asked us how we felt, and I said, "awakened". And last night was I was going to sleep, I knew I had found myself again and I could see MY truth.
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