Go Where You Grow Life

06/01/2024

Here’s what I’ve learned, it’s not the feelings we experience that we are trying to control or eliminate, it’s our CHOSEN behavioral response to those feelings that we want to master and consciously choose. It’s how we want to show up in those challenging moments. We want to show up in a way that is most in alignment with who we want to be, a better version of ourselves perhaps even in a moment of frustration or anger, we get to decide how we show up even with those challenging emotions being present!

And just as equally important, we need to give ourselves appropriate ways and times to still experience what truly comes up for us emotionally, love and honor those feelings, hear what they’re trying to communicate to us, so that we can move through them. I once heard someone say emotions are energy, and that energy needs to be expressed in some way or else it gets stuck within our bodies and later comes out in other unhealthier ways like anxiety or depression. Emotions will always find ways to be heard, they bubble to the surface and hijack the system so they can no longer be ignored! We have to expel that energy so that it doesn’t get stuck within our bodies and keep us dysregulated.

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02/23/2024

PARENT SHAME-Do you need to hear this today??

First off, this feels lengthy to someone who hasn’t been taught the higher level executive skills, so if this is triggering to watch for you, or you feel like this is an adult jumping through too many hoops for the child, that may be why you relate to it that way, perhaps you didn’t have parents modeling those skills for you growing up and that is why they feels like “so much work” for you now. If those skills seem like a waste of time or too much work…it’s ok, I get it…and I’ll remind you that you’re human and perfectly imperfect too 💕🙏🏼

There’s a lot of “unintentional” and ambiguous parenting shame that comes from the expectations that the “healing society” and the healing movement of today places on adults now a days.

Because we’re the adults we should have it all figured out and be perfect every time 🙌🏼 ! We should be calm, stay emotionally regulated, and at any given moment possess the ability to put our needs and wants to the side like a robot because damn it, we’re the adults! Am I right!?! 😅

In order for the healthy version of this to happen the adults have to be regulated first, and when we get triggered guess what!?! We become the toddler versions 🤣😂 of ourselves, this thrusts us into the power struggle, where we try to exert our dominance over the child because we have the autonomy and they do not.

I love how MrChazz doesn’t just explain what NOT to do, but he also gave examples of what healthier interactions CAN look like!! (His channel is a gold resource by the way)

But here’s my reminder for the parents, it’s ok not to be perfect, not to always nail this, not to always get it right, you’re healing ❤️‍🩹 , you’re unlearning generational disfunction, so give yourself grace as you learn to reparent your own inner child, and rest in the fact that for the times when you DO nail it 🎯 you are repairing the relationship by creating a safe space for your child, making room for connection and understanding (all while experiencing the pressures of being judged by small minds) at the same time (which is something you probably didn’t often get when you were a child) you are a champion 🏆a superhero🦸🏻‍♀️

So give yourself grace when you’re unlearning and you don’t quite nail it and find peace in the idea that when you do get it right, you are giving your children that gift 💝 from that change!

Who needed to hear this today?? What ways do you feel or have you experienced shame or guilt as a parent??

11/29/2023

🌱 🪶✨equivocal transformations

“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before.

Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.”

Author: Alice Walker

Artwork:

10/13/2023

🧦 🧺 Every laundry day is a chance to solve mysteries 🕵🏻‍♀️
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10/10/2023

Loss of freedom in Motherhood is challenging, right? 😩🤱🏻 I used to feel so frustrated when people would tell me to "surrender." 🙅‍♀️ It seemed like they were implying I should give up, even though there were still dishes and laundry to be done. ✔️

But over time, my understanding of surrender evolved. Motherhood taught me about the delicate balance between surrender and resistance. 🌸 Surrendering doesn't mean giving up or failing; it means embracing the unpredictable, finding strength in vulnerability, and trusting the journey. It's about letting go of the desire to control while never letting go of love. ❤️

There's a certain personal grace needed when finding equilibrium between these opposing forces in motherhood. 🌟 The more fluid you become in transitioning between these states, the more peace you will cultivate. ✨

09/21/2023

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How does this make you feel?

09/20/2023

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09/14/2023

Snake chasers remain perpetual victims 🐍the best gift 🎁 you can give to yourself is to focus on you, nourish yourself in the ways you needed to be nourished, love yourself in ways you needed to be loved, do the work to peel back the complex layers for healing

09/14/2023

07/27/2023

We are so much more than any one thing the brain can assign us to, or define us by, so many layers of complexity. Things are not just black and white, good or bad, right or wrong. There is all kinds of gray area in between

In relationships often we are not just one attachment style, different situations with different contexts can mean we show up in a variety of ways with our partners…we are multifaceted

Perhaps we should be asking ourselves more open-ended questions and avoid categorizing or labeling ourselves definitively as something. When we label ourselves singularly as something it becomes a part of how we identify with ourselves and with others. When we do not identify with something the opposite can happen and it creates opportunity for us to have blind spots with ourselves if we don’t readily identify as something.

“I am not really seen as a perfectionist so that must mean I do not have any perfectionistic tendencies”

These generalizations are over simplifications and can cause us to either over identify as something or the opposite, which is to not see it’s effects in our lives at all, it’s an all or nothing approach.

So instead of asking blanket questions that assume a singular definitive answer,

Am I _(a perfectionist)_or (depressed)_

let's explore how a particular topic may present itself in our lives not as our identity, or something we either are or are not (black and white)

More like….when are the times (gray area) where I may be more inclined/prone to ________?

🔹Am I depressed? ⏩️When are the times when I feel depression creep into my life? What are the situations or triggers that seem to worsen my symptoms? What are the symptoms when it shows up?

🔹 Am I codependent? ⏩️What are the ways my codependency shows up in my relationships? When does a healthy level of dependence become unhealthy codependency in my relationships? What is the break over point?

🔹Am I a perfectionist? ⏩️ What are the ways my perfectionism (desire to do well) may be getting in the way of my productivity? What are the areas of my life where my perfectionism shows up the most?

This approach works for anything even in relationships, it’s the gatekeeper of the self reflection realm!