Giving Thanks in Chaotic Times

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday - and also, it kicks off the season that brings me the most anxiety. 

I was raised in a family that demanded performance at all times from me - so being at home required hiding emotions and feelings until they could be felt in safety - which evidently meant 30 years later.
I had catching up to do.

Safety at home is not something everyone experiences. 
I was loved, my family tended as well as they could, but also, they were not themselves well tended, so they were just okay at it.

They could hardly regulate their emotions, so helping me to find my way was not on their agenda. 
Rather, I was often the one who was trying to regulate everyone else's emotions instead of my own - so I as "extremely sensitive" and also completely numb to my own feelings. 

I still feel this way sometimes - that my emotions are kept behind a small door in the corner of the room, and I have to go "find the door" and allow myself to experience the emotions.  People can be shocked that I can be so attuned and insensitive all at once.  I can be confounded by it myself.  

That's what life with a dysregulated family can do - make you really attuned to everyone else and completely oblivious to your own feelings.

It was a WILD experience to figure it out, unravel it, and then change the patterns that created it. 

It has been isolating - when you heal in a broken family, you isolate yourself - you find rejection from those who do not want to heal, who do not believe the patterns can change, and they struggle to see a vision with blue skies in the future.

I found isolation and blame directed toward me on my own path to healing.

I was blamed for calling things out in my family that were not helpful for me, or that I found damaging.  The request for others to come with me on the journey was scorned, rejected, and villainized.  I find the holidays to be a complicated time for me - one that beckons to me to recreate the soft life I seek. Rejecting the siren song of my family's pain.

Overcoming the feeling of being disloyal when walking away from it because the choice is "stay rooted in the pain" and and I am here now for the healing.

So many choose to stay in the pain - truly believing there is nothing more.

Most changemakers will find they will not have many who seek to change the patterns with them in the family.  Some wills ay they want to, and they do want to, but they are not willing to do the work and be accountable for how they are perpetuating the dysfunction. Maybe the next generation is creating their own story - and it's written on top of this one - and without any pattern disruption?

It looks the same, with new characters. 
But it's not different. 
It's the cycle, in a new outfit. 
Ready to keep us trapped as long as we let it keep us there.

And it's got a powerful presence.   
A familiar rhythm. 
And if you're really slow to see it you've been there so long it just FEELS like HOME - which is simply comfortable and familiar.  

When the way you bond in a family is over disempowerment, finding your own strength changes everything in the family dynamic.

Those who found safety hiding in the shadows with you may feel betrayed and left behind.
Those who are not able or willing to see something different may be angry that they are still there and you are not. 
Those who came before you may reject you because your healing feels like rejecting them.

Healing is toxic to broken systems - and broken family systems fight healing like it's a disease.

Isn't it wild?

Can you imagine if we could have fought that hard against the dysfunction?

Isn't it crazy that we will eventually rise up to meet a challenge, and then choose the one that KEEPS US STUCK? 

It is wild to me to watch how fiercely people will fight to defend the thing that tried to destroy their light.  Because something else feels different, and different is scary, and scary rules all choices.

When you fear everything - even joy sounds dangerous.

Y'ALL.  Did you catch that?

When you fear everything?  Anything new sounds intense and intense is scary and unrewarding when you lived in a dysfunctional environment.  You shun the changemakers - who are almost always acting out of love.  For themselves, their future, the collective.

The power it takes to create change is real.

It requires a steadfastness of spirit and endurance that we are not taught - that we have to find and claim and then assert.  It takes a lot of momentum, desire, and energy to break patterns that aren't serving you.

It takes work.

The "work" everyone says we should do - and nobody really defines it?

The inner work that we all know we should do - but most of us choose not to - because?

What?  If the test isn't announced you don't think it's coming?

Oh, the test is coming, friends. 
Indeed, the test may be happening right now.
There's nobody to check your work and ensure you did it - but there are ways to tell how you're doing.

Have you done the work?

What is the work?  Do you know?  Are you lost? 

I am talking about the "inner work" of feeling the things we are here to feel because we signed up for this amazingly powerful human experience that can be both vast to hold and minute when considered in the "big picture".

Those paradoxes, friends.  They are everywhere.

Are you dreading the holidays this year AND still doing the same things you do every year?

Can you see what is happening around us?
Does this seem like business as usual?
We are witnessing change at such a fast clip most of our heads are spinning.

Have you tried to make logical sense of it  yet? 
Don't bother, this fails logic tests.

But what does it mean - "logic fails us"?

It means intuition becomes critical.
Inner knowing becomes our crucial navigation system. 

We must seek answers inside ourselves because the outside world, factors, and systems are failing - and no longer function the way we expected - we must trust OURSELVES.
But if you've not done enough healing?
Not yet integrated the lessons and found the wisdom?
Not yet chosen new frameworks and guides to help you navigate in what appears to be chaos and direct you to peace?

Then today is just another day that ends in "y" - and you are probably scared, frazzled, exhausted and have thousands of reasons why this work isn't a priority (though it's actually about priorities).
Life is full of little jokes like that - mis-prioritizing our priorities because we feel confused.

Jokes makes it feel a bit too trivial though.
Paradoxes.  Quagmires.  Labyrinths.

This isn't chaos - by the way. 

This is the change we've been calling in - it's our own magic, but we're still a bit freaked out to see that - YET. 

If we recognize our power - we also have to recognize our responsibility in how we wield it - and that makes folks run away.

Responsibility is something we find to be difficult - reckoning with things isn't easy.

Resilience and endurance are superpowers that our society does not reward.

We scorn unhoused people - like they aren't the most resilient among us - literally finding the strength to SURVIVE every day.  Taking the disgust from society on the chin, turning the other cheek, trying again even though the last person was cruel with their "no".

Resilience and endurance are the most important of our superpowers - right up there with the ability to HEAL.

We are AMAZING HEALERS.

Our bodies will self-heal when we tend to them properly.
Our broken bones, torn muscles and ligaments, broken hearts - they all go on - and they often need to rebuild while doing it: broken, tired, hurt - and? 

STILL HEALING.
Our bodies are amazing.

Our minds are even more amazing. 

Our mind and our bodies together? 
SO FUN to see what we can really do with them when we recognize our own talents, gifts, and abilities.  Even more fun when we share those gifts to the delight of others so they can delight in your gifts, too.
We just keep going.

EAT YOUR HEART OUT ENERGIZER BUNNY.

Turns out HUMANS are the fantastic creatures that keep going and going and going...

And we do it so effectively we have extended our human life time, literally.

Our abilities to extend our physical lives as we learn how to tend and care for these human containers that hold our SOULS continues to expand. 
We are only starting to explore our actual potential.
Our vastly eternal and sacred souls.

We keep going.
A lot of what encourages us is that we are finding more and better ways to heal ourselves, and bring out the best of the experience we are having. 

We learn how to endure, sure. 
But we also learn how to find joy after loss. 
We learn how to dance to music when it's been decades since the last time we recall doing it. 
We learn how to play as children - sometimes seemingly lifetimes after being children ourselves.
We declare our Selves worthy of even more healing, more joy, more happiness. 
More blessings.

It is a gift that we are here - even when heartbroken. 
And sometimes, holidays break our hearts.

But we are heartbroken because of love lost.
That means we had the love - it was a gift we treasure.

And we will find our way through.
Because we are all healers in our most foundational selves - it is what we are, innately:
Here to heal.

If your heart hurts right now, during this holiday, my love, I am so sorry.

I pray you find softness to hold you, tenderness to comfort you, love to remind you of your value. 
I pray that peace settles over your heart like a gentle snowfall, leaving you with a beautifully clean landscape - even just for a few hours, or a few days, or a few moments.
Whatever you can find - I pray you treasure it.

I pray you seek joy.  Love.  Healing.  Peace.

What would life be like for you if you felt TENDED now?

If you think it sounds crazy, foreign, unnecessary, or childish, even?
I would pose this question:

Have you spent any time in meditation?
Because for me, that's where the real test lies: 

Can you sit silently with yourself in peace?

If that sounds like your own personal version of a hell you want to escape?

I submit that I have a particular set of skills that could help you to relieve yourself of that feeling - and help you find an excitement and enthusiasm for living life that will make everything an adventure, empowering you to be the hero in your story, and seeing you through to the happy ending you seek - your version of abundance.

Be The Change You Wish To See In YOUR World

If what you seek this year is not something you can buy in a store?  I gotchu.
If what you seek this year is a feeling of safety and security that you can tap into any time? I gotchu.
If what you seek this year is a way to stabilize regardless of how untethering the changes are?
I SO got you.

You may want to explore working with me.
My work goes beyond the institutions and into our inner knowing.
Beyond therapy and discussions of the past and into the actual work of healing with joyful love and abundance and discussions of the future you want to build.

Practical, spiritual, sensible, magical - I believe in all of it.

What do you believe in?

Do you believe in yourself?
Your future?
Your joy?

I do!  I believe in your joy!

I invite you to  join me on this path - sure, I'd love the company.
It's always more fun with friends.

But the thing is, you see:
I am going regardless of who is coming with me because it's that rewarding of a journey. 

Worth every difficult and unwanted ending.
Worth every heartbreak.
Worth every moment so I could learn from them all.
Every one of them a treasure.

This?  This is an amazing experience.

So please do come along, if you want to know what it's like to be able to stand alone in your objectives, and still be content, to find your way forward regardless of the apparent chaos around you, and still feel confident that the future is so bright you gotta wear shades.

I have found things in myself that amaze me.
I don't say that to brag - I say it to stoke a fire in you.

What is inside you that is amazing and waiting for you to celebrate it?

What is ready to heal and move forward with love regardless of how daunting it may seem at first?
What is REALLY worth the effort in this lifetime for you?

What decisions do you want to make with intention?

You picking up what I'm putting down? 

If you want to explore together and find that place?
I'm your girl.

If not - that's okay, too.
This is a judgement free zone.
I accept that we are not all in the same place.

Timing is funny - we're all on our own journey, and at our own pace - ready when we are ready.
No sooner.

Enlightenment is not forced - it is uncovered, discovered, stoked, desired.

So it's cool if you're not ready now.
This invitation remains open.

Until then, my friend?

Seek joy. 
Seek kindness. 
Seek sweetness.

This life is worth living, even when memories are painful, and holidays bring with them the bittersweet.

"The highest task of a bruised heart is to seek the sunrise."

Let the majesty of the universe impress you. 
Remember to look up.
You may even glimpse an angel.

I love you.

I am so grateful for you.
Take excellent care of yourself, beloved.

XO,

Jax