Today's blog is totally different from the one that I expected to deliver to you...
This week I want to share with you how a vacation caused me to travel to a place that I wasn't ready to go to…. a journey of finally showing up for myself through radical acceptance, the process of letting go of who I was thought I supposed to be and the story of my first heartbreak...
Finally! A vacation at the beach. There I was by the sea. Contentment. My happy place. Finally feeling the energy of summer. All was possible. On vacation alone with just my husband. It finally felt like summer time. I was by the water- relaxing a bit, writing a bit and doing a bit of research for my next blog series. I was exploring how to ride the waves of thoughts, feelings and emotions and working on tools to share on establishing healthy boundaries because I know it resonated with my readers and that was also really what is needed in my life currently. It was a blog filled with gratitude for allowing me to be vulnerable to share my transformational journey and to pass along all the lessons from my teachers and my gurus to you. My cup felt full. Thus, came the desire to receive not just for the self alone but for the sake of sharing. The blog I was going to write was planned out like so many of my others - filled with little nuggets of wisdom that I had found as I explored my own journey from heartbreak to happiness. It was a pretty good happiness blog post actually.
I was in the midst of journaling, writing and revealing my story on what I am currently doing to continue healing. Then, I had an epiphany. It was time to do a blog that really got to the nitty gritty of healing. It was going to be spectacular. I was going to lean in. A deep dive towards the land of forgiveness. I began my note taking on willingness, acceptance and what it truly meant to forgive. Yep, I was going to all those dark and scary places of feeling my feels and what it would really feel like if I really explored what it would be like to have the willingness to accept and (it still scares me to write this) forgive. Which of course, landed me flat on my back - sick in bed with nowhere to run but to face myself!
Yep, I ended up getting sick as a dog. I actually left my vacation early to go home. I was in bed for four days straight and it has taken the better part of a week to recover. So, what brought on this bout of bed rest? You know how I love to say that life is happening FOR YOU so of course the first thing I did once I started to feel better was to dissect the situation. I knew that being knocked flat on my back was to serve a higher purpose, but what was it? I wanted to find the life lesson and transform it into a blessing. I knew there was a message in there somewhere.
But, I am getting ahead of myself. My transformational journey began in 2012 after my mother passed away. It was a time in my life where I felt extremely lonely. I felt like I was the only one going through what I was going through. I was on the lonely island of heartbreak. Completely Heartbroken. My heart had shattered like glass. The ache of losing a parent was wide and deep.
Last week this deep dive coincided with my fathers birthday and the first Father’s Day I experienced since he passed away in January. So here I was, once again, at a place of what it would be like to let go. My relationship with my father is a complicated one. It is also tangled up with a difficult relationship with my oldest sister, I have years of stored up hurt and anger for them both. I had done the transformational work with my mother’s passing but here I was again at the very bottom of the deep and depressing grief hole. I had been resisting it all year but I know from experience, suffering is just pain multiplied by resistance.
However, I didn’t know if I was ready to go on a journey that was going to require me to take a good long hard look at myself. I wasn't sure if I even wanted to go to a place where there was willingness, acceptance and forgiveness. The death of my father is a completely different heartbreak than that of my mother’s. I am going to admit something that I am almost ashamed to admit. In his passing, there was even some relief. I will explore that in a minute.
Willingness. This past Sunday was the Summer Solstice. The longest day of sunlight of the year. We are at the halfway point. 2021 is halfway over. I started to panic! I knew I had been shoving my grief over the death of my father back because Covid seems to be finally over, I wanted to get my mojo back, I wanted to finally do things. Vaccines - hurray! I wanted to take off that mask and smile. What I didn’t want to do is go back to the land of the heartbroken. There was no willingness to be sad. There was no willingness to deal with death. There was no willingness to be transformational. Did I mention my relationship with my dad was complicated?
But lying in bed for 4 days - I knew - Time had run out on my willingness. It was time to face the situation I was in. I was at the beginning of a new journey. There was nowhere to go but towards acceptance. I knew that the only direction was to lean into the heartache and to use what I know now but didn’t know then I could take that first step in the journey towards forgiveness…..
I want this blog to be transformative. Look, a heartbreak is heartbreak no matter the source - loss of a loved one, the end of a relationship, the end of a career, an empty nest, grieving that you thought your life would look different than it currently does. So I created Girlfriends Guru to help us all on this healing journey back to self. I believe that we're shards of glass broken from the same vessel. It is in sifting through and looking at our own pieces of shattered glass that we seek to unify these pieces that we connect to ourselves and only then can we recognize that same light in others.
One of the things that I did while bed ridden was to listen to my podcast episode #3 - My Mountains, My Mission, and My Metamorphosis. I love the girl I was in that episode. I unpacked with my Girlfriend Miranda how I created my butterfly logo and set up Girlfriends Guru. I was so optimistic, if not even just a little bit naive. But I do love my butterfly analogy. I invite you to listen to Girlfriends Guru Podcast Episode #3 but to recap the messages, and I am quoting- “You might feel like you are at the caterpillar stage - like I was. So overwhelmed and didn’t know where to go to find what you needed. For me - I dove head first into that “finding your purpose, finding happiness” bunny hole and there were plenty of wrong turns, one step forwards two steps back. Many times, I was just out there in the darkness by myself with only what felt like a flashlight - actually it felt more like a candle at times - to find my way. As I began my own transformational journey, I wished that there was someone out there that would just decode all of this for me. Heart break in and of itself is exhausting.”
A decade ago right after my mom passed, I didn’t know it at the time but looking back I was a mess. I had chased after and obtained a highly successful career, then I stayed at home to raise my 2 young children and took on the role of super mom, happily married wife, good daughter and I was living the life you were always told you should aspire to have- an amazing partner, awesome friends. I lived in a beautiful place.
I was living the life of a type A people pleaser and I was doing what was expected of me. Why am I telling you this? Well -----as you are suspecting, it wasn't nearly all that it was cracked up to be. Again, my life shattered when my mom passed away. I was burned out, I was exhausted, and stressed out all the time. I was left depressed. My mom, my mirror, was gone. I was left feeling empty. I was caught up in the hamster wheel of hustling for my worth and using exhaustion as a status symbol.
I was so, so incredibly busy - I couldn't find a second for myself in a day. Are you there too? Honestly, I was actually bored. I had all these feelings rising up inside me and what was really left was me feeling really, really angry and pissed off all the time!
Can you relate? So, back then I was still operating very much from my childhood programming that good girls don’t wallow. So, I put my big girl panties on and decided to “quote unquote” work on myself. Get my MOJO back. Find out what makes me, well me! It was time that I looked at myself in the mirror to see my own true reflection.
To climb out of the grief hole of my mom’s death, I started studying yoga and reading and studying and then read and studied some more. (I am an avid researcher!) I tried everything from transcendental meditation to sensory deprivation and everything in between. Again, it’s all these experiences, these bits and pieces on my journey inwards, that I found my own reflection again and that is what I am having so much fun sharing with you each blog post.
This is why, if you have noticed, my posts can sometimes be a bit all over the place ranging from project declutter (outer order - inner peace) to astrology, because learning the inherent traits of other people has given me more compassion and understanding for others. Some of my posts were about my self care lifeboats - sound healing blog because sound healing was one of the first things I did for myself that truly gave me more compassion for myself and yoga nidra because I was so broken and exhausted that what I needed was deep and complete rest. My blog is a share of my cocoon time. I want to be that person there for you because my journey was so disjointed.
Community is what I needed as I trained over the last decade going back and forth to the mountains to obtain my 500 hour teacher training certificate. This was a time of self empowerment. You know I am really proud to have earned my E-RYT 500 hours accreditation with yoga alliance because it has meant showing up for myself for over 500 hours of training and 2,000 hours of teaching. I share this because for me this is where my butterfly stage came in. I had to go outside my comfort zone. I had to do the work. No one could do it for me. Finally, I was showing up for myself.
You know my tag line by now: “if you peel back a butterfly’s wings for them, they cannot fly on their own.” I can’t do this work for you but I promise I will be that person like I say in my tagline - “there next to you, guiding you through your caterpillar stage to your cocoon stage and finally to your butterfly stage where you can be inspired to find your wings and fly.” I really mean this.
Let me continue the story. For me, the transformational journey of healing through the acceptance of my mother’s death was all about a journey about radical acceptance and letting go of the illusion of who I thought I was supposed to be. It was about gluing all those mirrored pieces of shattered glass back together and finally seeing the reflection of me.
We are all transforming all the time. Nothing in life stays the same or is ever really permanent. You are either growing or in the state of collapsing. It is hard to stay stagnant. My post on boundaries ripped open the band aid of a wound that underneath wasn't really healed. Researching the post on forgiveness gave me a huge pit in my stomach. But as I say in my yoga classes - the issues are in the tissues - I can ignore this pain and it will surely show up as an imbalance in my physical, emotional and mental bodies or I can say I am ready. (Remember suffering is just pain multiplied by resistance.)
So, I am finally ready to say what I have tip-toed around for years. I hope you will stay with me on this journey as I share what I really wanted to share with you from the beginning of this blog… my first heartbreak...
This is a story that was buried deep within me and only remembered until more recently….
It was “The Divorce Fight”. My mom and dad were fighting and the splitting of the family was happening. I was about 5ish years old. I know I hadn’t really gone off to school yet. My nuclear family of mother, father, and 3 sisters were my entire universe. And now my world, the 4 daughters, were being divided into “Team Mom'' and “Team Dad.” The decision to make me a part of Team Dad was not made by me but by my oldest sister violently grabbing me by the arm and folding me into Team Dad on one side of the room. It was a long dark night. I remember the pain and longing of wanting to run over to the side of the room where my other older sister, baby sister and mom were but I couldn’t move my body. I was paralyzed. I remember feeling like I was floating in the middle somewhere and recognized that I actually didn’t really belong in either camp. It was desperately lonely. I promise to share more but for now let's just say that in the light of the morning my mother stayed with my father but the family was never whole again.
The night's impact: I unconsciously spent the entire first part of my life trying to prove that I deserved and was worthy to be with and with “Team Mom.” You see, I was not "seen" for "being me," for “just being Kelly” in my family. I was not really like my mother and the fact is I was not really like my father. But Team Mom was more introverted and Team Dad was more extroverted. I was/am outgoing so I was thrown in with Dad. After that, I was never seen past this introvert/extrovert label.
But here is the thing… My father and oldest sister are narcissists. I say this not to put a negative label on them but more fully appreciate and understand their limitations with the understanding that their brain is wired in a way which lacks a certain amount of empathy, a certain inability to put themselves in someone else's shoes or to truly see other’s perspectives.
I am still actively learning and incorporating appropriate boundaries. Because if I am being honest, I need to own up to my 50 % of the relationship with my oldest sister and my father. I tried for so many years in vain for “Team Dad” to see me. I am accepting just now that “Team Dad” has never been able to see me, well for just me, and that my oldest sister may never be able to see me as an adult person and not a 10 years younger baby sister.
Yes, it is very freeing to own up to my half of the relationship. I spent an inordinate amount of energy being an empath and a reflector for my nuclear family. Remember what we learned in the boundary post? The object of my perfection is my reflection. My oldest sister and father for me were very much emotional vampires sucking my energy in order to get a reflection of themselves. But I also need to own that I also mirrored for “Team Mom,'' showing them what they wanted to see, hoping that I could morph myself into their “good traits” instead of showing them who I truly was. (I think you can guess by now that in my mind I labeled Team Mom as good and Team Dad as bad. )
Why am I sharing all of this? I have a confession...
With my dad's death, I have spent the days oscillating between having it all together (Team Mom), to rebelling, self sabotaging and "being like my Team Dad,” a place I had always resisted going fully. My father was larger than life, indulgent. Yep, I have been doing a little bit of rebelling. So of course my body says “ enough is enough,” you can't keep doing this. I was not taking care of myself with all the tools that I had learned to keep my energy in balance. Of course, I got physically sick, but moreover, I knew this behavior isn't really me either! I am also just sick and tired of this old story, this heartbreak hanging around my neck. Once again, I am tired of wallowing in self pity once. I am tired of the suffering. Again, suffering is pain multiplied by resistance. By assuming responsibility for my half of the relationship, everything changes. I know that I need to have a willingness to accept the pain and all the emotional separation stories that that fateful night in my childhood caused in my psyche.
Remember in the beginning of the blog I mentioned relief with my dad’s death? In my heart, I know that that just isn’t true. It is time once again to be vulnerable enough to let my heart break all the way. Yes, all the way wide open. To rage. To cry. To grieve. To really feel the pain, so that I can heal once more. I am scared but I've done it once before, I know I can do it again.
I am going to explore what Kelly needs. It is a journey to see myself. To be the seer, the seen and do the seeing, in an honest way, taking it all in, no labels, no judgment. Assuming responsibility for my half of every relationship that I am in.
So, I invite you, if you have been in a place where you were living your life not as authentically as you would like, need to set some healthy boundaries, if you are on a journey to self towards willingness and want to move to a place of acceptance and forgiveness, if you are on a journey just to remember who you are, if you are at a place where you want to move from heartbreak to happiness then I hope you will subscribe and show up with me each episode. Please go to my website, girlfriends guru.com to sign up for my bimonthly newsletter that includes lots of links to health, wellness and happiness.
I will continue to connect through my storytelling and sharing my heartaches and heartbreaks. This past Sunday was the summer solstice the halfway point of 2021. How is this year going for you? I know in my heart I am ready to see myself again. Are you? Are you ready to get your mojo back? I know I am!
Let’s continue to sort through the pieces of shattered glass and find tools for transformation and share them with one another. You can find me most weekends now through the end of Fall teaching Yoga in the Mountains of Western North Carolina at Eagles Nest where I am leading two types of getaways - women only Seasonal Energy Retreats and Wellness Weekends meant for individuals, family and friends for a more a la cart experience on the schedule at Eagles Nest this year. For more information visit: https://www.girlfriendsguru.com/retreats
No yoga experience necessary - This isn’t your typical yoga retreat. It is a wellness retreat. I use yoga as a work in and not as a work out. There is also plenty of fun. Sometimes we just need an adventure. I think an adventure is just the best way to learn. The mountains are calling…. Time to take an eagle view … Are you ready to elevate? Are you ready to tap into your inner purpose, find your inner voice and emerge deeper and more powerfully onto your path? Dream Big! The Universe is generous!
Summer is all about transformation at our very heart center. It is about unlocking our inner ability to manifest everything we want in life. Using tools for transformation such as yoga nidra and sound healing sessions alongside guided yoga and meditation, we identify areas for growth and change, and bring the energy of fall to them and finally let go! It is an opportunity to transform by building positive habits and using self care to explore ways in which we can create more meaningful conversations in our lives!
Now is the perfect time to embrace the Art of Deep Relaxation. In my retreat experiences we process at the physical and emotional level through yoga postures, breathwork, intention setting, lecture and journaling prompts all designed to Reduce Sensory Overload, Learn to Let Go of What No Longer Is Serving You and To Develop Positive Attitudes. By letting go of who we are… we become what we might be.
I bring forward these retreat experiences because I have found that the happiness that we all seek comes from the ability to channel our life experiences - our joys, our tears, our sweat and toil and our desires and inspirations - towards the journey and perspective of growth. It is this mindset that we can tap into our internal wisdom and we can discover what our life's purpose and the journey is all about.
Where are you on your journey? Do you need guidance? Do you need someone there to help you dive deep? Do you need a tribe to connect to and keep you motivated? I hope my blog is serving you. If you need more of an in person experience, I have a few limited slots for one-on-one mentoring and this is why I do wellness retreats. It’s an amazing opportunity to connect back to self with the support of a community.
Let’s stay together on the butterfly path and work towards the themes of Willingness, Acceptance and Forgiveness. Subscribe to my blog to get release alerts. I am going to keep showing up and I hope you will too because I am not asking you to tune into me as much as I am asking you to tune into yourself.
Let's continue to find our wings and fly, connect through our storytelling and share our heartaches and heartbreaks. Let’s continue to sort through and find tools for transformation and share them with one another. Sending you all my love 💞 and my light✨ Until next time🦋 - Namaste friends!
