When the World is Upside Down, When You're a little Lost...

I wrote this while in the bath, shown above, on my phone (the only thing sorta waterproof, thank goodness we’re past old-school scrolls and one can get down jumbled thoughts with one’s thumbs alone!!). Most of the time I write it's not because I have so much wonderfully to share, it’s because my own heart always seems to know exactly what I need to know and learn, and it tells me so when I write it out. It seems writing is the communication of choice between my often lost and confused self and the infinite wisdom of the higher Spirit within me. So, here we go…

Something I’ve slowly become to believe with all my heart came as a bit of a surprise to me, it’s something my counselor said, and one of my best friends and my own heart told me: you need to focus on you.

It wasn’t the answer I expected but the more I’ve sat with the idea, the more it’s resonated and I’ve come to see it as the most common sense thing to do - it’s a thought that just came dressed in seeming frivolity at first.

Take time for me, take time to find the things that give me life and joy. To give myself opportunities to see beauty. Take time for oneself care, to journal, to go to hot yoga, to make some goals, even simple little goals, things to get excited about for yourself. Take care of your health, put on a pretty outfit, take your vitamins, put on your make up.

Take time to be sad, yes, give yourself time when you are exhausted from the world to be upside down and your mind is desperate, cry, allow yourself to just be.

But then, you don’t need to figure it all out, not now. Just take your stand. Bit by bit, find a way to accept reality, and acknowledge what is, is. There is extreme power in this. Yes, what happened has happened. No, it could not have happened any other way, that would be impossible. Yes, I am a bit broken. No, I don’t see a way forward. Yes, I am confused, angry, anxious, deeply sad, and don’t trust a soul. No, I don’t have all the answers, or even just 1 answer at all. This IS how it is. This IS where I am.

You don’t have to think too much about it or find a way to organize it in your mind or know the way to sort through your heart can rest. Just let it all be and focus on you.

Find something to be interested in, or something that excites you just a little, or a thing that makes you feel a little beautiful, or a goal you can work on every day, find something you like. Find just a little way that you can be strong, a part inside you, it’s there. Find a bit of you that you like and push out each doubt and fear when you can, one at a time. Know you are up to the challenge. Find a thing you can be confident about - do you know for sure you have very pretty eyes or that the sun will always come up each morning, and you can watch it if you like?

Tell each little thought that makes you feel awful, no, this girl will not allow you to find a home inside my head. Out you go! And put it out. And if you can’t at first, try every time, and you will become stronger and more skilled at it. Your mind will grow to be your fortress from the negative thoughts that bombard you. Find a thing that makes you feel just a little vulnerable, such as learning something new. I believe the magic in life, the thing that makes us alive, is to find new interest and curiosity - that is what is so powerful about finding the beauty or learning something new: it causes the flame of life in your to burn brighter and stronger the further you go towards them.

Be gentle with yourself and try to be gentle with others. No one else can do this for you, and no one else can find the strength to move forward but you. So, when you find a little bit of strength, hold on, tight!! That’s a thing my love taught me - when you’re not quite sure what you can be happy about or about anything, any time you find something that brings you a seed of happiness you have to hold on tight to it! Even if it is just sushi or sunshine. Every time there is a thing you love or a thing that puts a sparkle in your eye, hold on to that! Take a moment to say, I just found a bit of strength! I just found a thing I do love in life! And rejoice over that as tiny as it is, savor it in your mind, write it down, give thanks over it.

You don’t need all the answers or to find how the future can possibly have any good in right now. Just focus on building and nurturing you. Allow the sunshine to shine on the things that hide in your mind, even if it hurts at first. Find them, address them, and know that you have the power to overcome them - even if just a little now, more and more as you conquer them. And you will! And you must believe that.

Read books that help you know how to find the strength. Be with friends that love you. Get help, no one ever doesn’t need help, it’s the brave thing to do. Pray, hard. Pray, a lot. Pray, with every thought. Be thankful that you will always have you, and you are strong and brave and beautiful.

I think the trick to healing is, it’s when you don’t want to do the thing to heal the most that it really counts to move forward in the process.

Why is it, I wonder, that moving forward by focusing and working on YOU this way is so good? I think it is because it gives us a small circle or control when it feels like the world is spinning through the universe like a wrecked spaceship, flying apart and catching on fire. Gaining control over just one thing gives one a grounding point. Why else? Because there is something about growing and nurturing yourself and conquering your goals that just feels so strong, and when you feel strong, you find more strength. It’s amazing how strong a good outfit and a pair of heels can make me feel, or doing really well with the way that I eat, can make me feel. Also, it gives you a bit of life, something to focus on rather than the fact that everything but your goal is going wrong, and sometimes it just nice to take a break from thinking about how awful it can all be.

There is this little mantra I like to hold onto and say in my head a lot - I’m not sure exactly how it goes but it’s something like: stronger than ever before. The idea that, you can actually use crisis to propel to the best you yet, that afterward there is hope you’ll be better off than if it didn’t happen, that you have the ability to be a strong person that rises up in adversity, and that as life slingshots you unwilling through the air, you actually have the ability to make a mid-air decision on where you’d like to land, maybe the best place you never knew you wanted to be, and land on your feet, right there. I’m going with this.