guidance

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Oh, Ralph. Or do you want me to call you Waldo?
How did you get so smart? So enlightened? After all, you lived during the nineteenth century, a time of immense intellectual and industrial expansion; yet it was also the time of corsets, slavery, the horse and buggy, The Civil War, and before the use of the electric light bulb.

You went around espousing and developing certain cutting-edge ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for humankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Holy cow R.W.!

With this quote you give those of us in the twenty-first century, an era whose technological advances you could scarcely have imagined in your wildest dreams—permission.

Permission to make mistakes;
Permission to get over ourselves;
Permission to be high-spirited, unencumbered;
Permission to start the fuck over!

Thank you Ralph, Waldo, Wally? We really needed it, because in that respect—humanity hasn’t changed a bit since you walked the earth.

Nearly two centuries later we have yet to master the art of forgiving ourselves and employing The Start Over.

“Blunders and absurdities” not only creep in, they set up camp and ruin our sleep as they set fire to our lives; and after we clean up the mess and re-group, we have a hard time letting go of the past, the old nonsense—and an almost impossible time forgiving ourselves.

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.”

I don’t know about you guys but you may as well be asking me to get into a shark cage in infested waters, or eat just one Lays Potato Chip—it’s simply not going to happen.

Then I remembered this, something I haven’t thought about in eons:

Years ago a friend posed this amazing question to me after too much wine and not enough cheese. (Remember the Sheryl Crowe song My favorite Mistake? It was playing in the back round),
What would you say is your favorite mistake?
I watched as her IQ rose several points just in the contemplation of such a thing.

Me: A Favorite Mistake? Really? I, I, uh, I don’t know. (tens of IQ points evaporating by the second.)

I suppose it was the word favorite that initially hung me up, but the more I thought about it, the more I LOVED the concept.

If we could deem a mistake our favorite, it would release the charge, the tug in our gut.
It would become the path on which we could meet up with “high-spirited and unencumbered”.
It could become old nonsense and jumpstart THE START OVER.

I was willing to give it a try.

“I suppose my favorite mistake was my marriage at twenty. We were way too young and not a good match, and after the divorce we both went on to live happy lives with other people—and we’re still friends” I admitted, feeling lighter by the minute.

Hers was an unplanned pregnancy, a son she had at nineteen. A favorite for obvious reasons.

Thinking about this again, all these years later, my heart started racing as I ran through twenty plus years of memories and they started to look less like a Tela Novela and more like a situation comedy.

Starting my business, my store, is quickly becoming my latest favorite mistake due to all of the internal growth it’s caused. I can finally be done with it. It has become old nonsense, and now I have this (the writing) and SO MUCH MORE. I can say that now.

As I lay in bed the other night it dawned on me that since the beginning of time, humans have tortured themselves over their mistakes to the point where perfectly lovely people lead lives of quiet disappointment trying to avoid another.

What is your favorite mistake? This needs to be a mandatory question on any employment or dating application.
The answer changes people.
It changed me.

Okay, you knew it was coming, Tell me, What’s your favorite mistake?

Then you can Carry on,
xox

SERIOUS SCIENTIFIC DATA ABOVE^

This has been a week, and not one that I will look back on fondly.
Not to get all doom and gloomy on ya, but last week sucked. Big time.

There were so many things thwarted, such despicable levels of mis-communication,
so. many. clusterfucks. that I suspect they were being trucked in from the mouth of hell.
And I don’t even believe in hell!

Undiagnosable illnesses, lab results………………………………………………pending.
Crazy unexplainable accidents and money missing. Gone!
Appointments missed with no explanation and traffic for no reason. At seven-thirty in the morning; noon; three-fifteen; and midnight.
Traffic! For no good reason!

Fights.
Texts gone bad.
I want to write a book someday on the dangers of texting.
DO NOT TEXT IMPORTANT SHIT. Pick up the phone and make the two-minute call. I can’t garner the nuance, your tone of voice or your sarcasm, FROM A TEXT!
No emoticon is sufficient.
Just so you know, everything you texted made you sound like a douche last week.

As much as I tried to OMMMM my way above the fray, I got dragged down into it where it bloodied my nose and ruined my favorite shoes.

At three o’clock on Friday morning I found myself violently ill. (It’s not what you’re thinking.)
There I lay, alternating between sweating and chills, nausea and diarrhea, lunacy and sanity. I actually watched myself from a much more comfortable vantage point somewhere outside my body, Lamaze breathing my way through wave after wave of energy the strength of which I’ve seldom felt before. (See, I told you.)

“Full Moon” were the only two words I was able to croak to my husband who was in the midst of his own dark energy, awefulizing, 3 a.m. marathon. It wasn’t that the energy was actually dark. It just felt relentless and oppressive as it built all week (Who am I kidding? It was all month and most likely all year), and the release looked a lot like a Mento wafer in a bottle of Coke.

It felt like the mother of all detoxes. Because it was you guys!
It was that kind of Blue Moon. Purging, letting go of the past and all of its pent-up anger, frustration, resentment, fear, lack of sleep and just the general angst and malaise that’s been building up.

Oh shit, I thought, I just wrote about this. You can’t run clear water through gucked up pipes.
You want to be a clear channel for clarity, creativity, intuition, inspiration, ideas, luck, fun and love—you’ve gotta clean out the pipes occasionally.

Fuck. Sometimes I hate being right. I make ME mad.

As I sat on the bathroom floor the next morning still in the throes of it all, waiting to see if my body could actually produce more vomit, I began to see the pattern, or I became delusional, your call. I can admit to getting philosophical with no sleep on bathroom floors.

Oh…I’m finally getting how this works now. Clean the pipes (literally). One step (day) backward, before I lunge forward. Get rid of the accumulated gunk, so the energy can flow clearer and faster.

UGH.

I had a brief glimmer of insight, which, for a moment had me feeling better and then I was back to hurling. So much for knowing what’s going on—you still have to get through it.

Eventually it passed, just like it always does, and I was able to salvage the remainder of my Friday, and fit into my skinny jeans (yeah).

When I mentioned what happened to a couple of my friends, they told me that they too had been clearing up their gunk. Not necessarily in the same way as I had, but effective for them just the same, and we all agreed to chalk this week up as a sucking vortex of everything that could go wrong. In other words—a Universal shitastrophe.

One of them admitted to coming home feeling like a jacked-up pressure cooker; so he buried his face in a pillow and banchee-screamed—something he hasn’t done in decades. He was so hoarse afterwards he had a hard time speaking. But he felt much better.

Oh, that’s good. I like that. I’m gonna steal that one.

I’d be curious to know, what’s your process?

I for one, after all my…purging, feel cleaner (duh) clearer and lighter and I’m looking forward with great anticipation to the lunge forward. How about you?

Carry on,
xox

*HAPPY SUMMER SUNDAY YOU GUYS!
After the week many of us have had, I felt like I needed to show you this recent post from Danielle LaPort. I need the reminder. Shit storm, followed by a miracle. The natural order of things. Good reminder. Whew!
Carry on,
xox

You’re on the verge of a miracle. #Truthbomb elaborations

A Course In Miracles defines a miracle as “a shift in perception.” I love that, because that definition covers a lot of bases. You can choose to believe in spontaneous healing and create a physiological miracle. Or you can simply decide to forgive someone you thought you’d never, ever forgive. “It’ll take a miracle,” you might have thought. But often, the miracle comes from within. And you can create that miracle anytime by changing your mind about something. Let it be easy. Let it be grand. Let it be now. Let it be so.

~Danielle LaPort

ELEGANT
el·e·gant
ˈeləgənt/
adjective: elegant
1.pleasingly graceful and stylish in appearance or manner.
“she will look elegant in black” (a reason why I always wear black, ha!)
synonyms: stylish, graceful, tasteful, sophisticated, classic, chic, smart.
antonyms: messy, unwieldy (hot mess)!

Oh yeah, I’ve talked about this. I cautioned you in the previous post.
We can aspire to it, aim for it, even pray for it, but enlightenment, spiritual awakening, whatever you want to name it, is rarely elegant.

And by rarely…I mean never.

There is a mine field of inelegance that surrounds becoming conscious.
You can side step the big stuff, like disaster and dis-ease, but you’ll still get your shoes dirty.
It’s kinda the name of the game.
If it was pretty; clean and easy, everyone would do it.

Take meditation for instance.
I can’t tell you how many friends have said this to me: When I started meditation, all hell broke loose.
It starts out all zen and blissful, with the breath and the inner peace. You will have that in your back pocket for life; but ask anyone who’s seriously meditated for a while.
Shit can hit the fan!
If you meditate every day, you literally change your brain…and your body.
You put the monkey mind in its place, and make your connection with source.

But source likes a clean link. It doesn’t like an old plugged up infrastructure, so it cleans and clears things out. When that happens, all your bad habits, your sabotaging self talk, your anger, hate, rage, lack of forgiveness, selfishness, greed, and jealousy, to name a few, are chased out of the shadows and into the light.

Get the fan.

This will set you free, but these guys won’t be graceful, chic or elegant.
They will give you the middle finger on their way out.
Meditation shook their cage, and they’re pissed.

Yoga is right up there too. A great practice, amazing for the mind and body, but it’s not just exercise, there is a spiritual aspect to Yoga that you can’t get around.
Yoga in Sanskrit means “the Divine Union”. Using the physical postures to bring the mind under control and join with the Higher Self or Source.

Uh oh.
Get the fan.

A regular Yoga practice will unleash all the usual suspects.
Anger will be released from your hip joints, sadness from your shoulders.
There will be heart openings, epic realizations, even tears.
It will free YOU as well…it just won’t be elegant.

Choosing the path less traveled.
Operating outside your comfort zone.
Mindful living.
Being of Service.
All call for making the tough choices, lots of “no’s” = Fast track to a more enlightened life.
Elegance…not so much.

The path may not seem the most elegantat first, but don’t loose faith you guys, elegance comes later. Trust me.
Choose wisely.

XoxJanet

So…
I found this handy-dandy chart online and then I immediately lost the next two hours looking at the different energy centers—and self diagnosing.

Oh… anger is stored there…interesting…that explains SO much.

That old pit in the stomach. Fear. I knew that.

Shoulder and neck pain? Yeah, me too, like every day of my life. Carrying the weight of the world?
Hey! Me too! Wait a minute, If I’m carrying the world’s weight—and you are too—why does mine feel so freaking heavy?

I remember certain Yoga classes where a pose or a stretch would send me into an emotional tailspin, unleashing the Kraken and freeing up all the pent-up junk that had taken up residence inside my hips, torso and thighs. I would always feel a hundred percent better after class, a good cry, and an Epsom salt bath.

Yoga is great if you’re looking to release stored emotions. So is exercise. And dance. Anything that moves the body.

Rolfing is good too. Rolfing is a very deep tissue massage, you know, the kind that hurts so good. I don’t ever think I’ve left a Rolfing session without crying—partly from the pain, and partly due to the deep emotional release it triggers.

And that’s the thing you guys. You WANT to release those stored emotions, otherwise there’s a very good chance they’ll make you sick.

So get out there! Dance! Do some yoga! Walk in nature! Release! Release! Release!

Okay, I’m off to get a shoulder massage. I need to set the weight of the world down, just for a little while.

Carry on,
xox

*Okay you guys!
I’m reading a lot about the energy coming in surrounding this rare “blue moon” on Friday and this article by Tania Gabrielle says it the best.
Big, positive changes!
Can I get a Hip, Hip, Hurrah!?
xox

A rare “Blue Moon” on July 31 is an invitation to welcome blessings into your life.

“Blue Moon” is the term for a second Full Moon in the SAME month. This rare phenomenon will not appear again until 2018.
The first Full Moon was in Capricorn on July 1. Now we’re saying farewell to July with a special blue moon.
As if that’s not enough, the energy of this Blue Moon is being magnified by Venus which turned retrograde on July 25 – one of five planets retrograding in a span of a week.

IT’S TRULY A MAJOR MOMENT OF TRANSITION!

We’ve all been asked to slow down – and reflect.
We’re on the edge of something wonderful…

With Venus retrograding one week prior to the full moon, the emphasis on romantic relationships is strong right now and moving all the way through August into September.
You’ll start to understand your intimate relationships, including recognizing who your soul-mate is, if you haven’t already.

What’s more, you’ll see the importance of moving out of your comfort zone.
NO BREAKTHROUGHS EVER HAPPEN WHILE YOU’RE COMFORTABLE!

Sometimes we choose to experience hardships. We unconsciously do this in order to see what is good and right for us.
Now is one of those moments you have come to the threshold.
You’re on the verge of a big, conscious AHA moment.
But … YOU have to initiate the change. Remember, you have the power to resist what’s good for you – a resistance that stems from fear.

KEEP IN MIND, THE UNIVERSE BRINGS YOU WHAT YOU’RE READY FOR.

And now more than ever it’s getting harder to deny JOY!

http://numerologist.com/portal/numerology/july-31-full-moon-forecast-why-this-rare-blue-moon-in-aquarius-is-going-to-let-your-blessings-flow/?utm_medium=email&utm_content=Blue-Moon&utm_campaign=Blue-Moon-Forecast&utm_source=fbfnr&vtid=fbfnr00LABuyer&email=atikhome@me.com&a=9410641-cc4360&lifepath=6&expression=6&soulurge=6&dob=

On Sunday mornings one of my best friends since…well, forever, comes over after her hike, for coffee and a donut (the coffee is for her, the donut is for me).
Don’t laugh, it’s our thing. She’s the healthy hiker and I’m the slug who sits waiting patiently for a donut. We used to hike together, but that’s a long story about sore feet, with way too much whining (mine) for today.

Anyhow, even though she’s exhausted and I’m a donut scarfing Jabba The Hut on Sundays, we still get together for a few hours to offer each other advice on life (which if you knew us would be laughable), and we do. Laugh—a lot that is.

Lately we’ve been pondering that old idiom: Getting to the bottom of things.
Why do people say that?
Why did we do that? Why, as human beings is that something we do enough to warrant its own idiom?
We needed answers.

If you look it up here’s what you get: Getting to the bottom of things—
To discover the real but sometimes hidden reason that something exists or happens.

And therein lies the rub.
In the history of human relationships when have we EVER had a clue as to why anyone does anything?

Why does someone go out to get cigarettes…and never return?
Why do the Republicans give Donald Trump ANY airtime?
Why are some people liars?
Why are most landlords idiots?
Why didn’t he call for another date when he said he would?
Why do bad things happen to good people?

I used to believe the reason would reveal itself, like the missing piece of the puzzle, if I would just give it my undivided attention.

So I would chew on the dilemma, like a dog with a bone. I’d obsess about it, call my friends to talk about it, worry myself sick about it and cry myself to sleep over it.
Then I’d start over again the next day.
I was relentless in my pursuit of the truth, and like one of those competitive, deep water free divers, I’d put on my two hundred pound weight, hold my breath and hope not to die on my way to the bottom.

But with every trip to rock-bottom I left a little bit of myself down there.
You know, lack of oxygen, lost brain cells, and stolen time. I can never get those days, months, years back.

My friend agreed. She had done the same thing after her divorce. She was determined to discover the real and hidden reason her husband had left she and her two young sons. And just like me, (and probably you too) she was dragged to the bottom. The depths of her despair. Unable to surface, her lungs bursting, gasping for the fresh, clean air of truth.

Here’s the thing we eventually came to realize you guys.

Don’t fucking look for the bottom!

You will never find the truth, the hidden meaning as to why something happened. So don’t go there.
What you want to know doesn’t reside there, not even close. It’s not even in the same zip code.

As you dig and chew and dive below the surface with the weight of the world around your neck, you get further and further away from where you need to be:
1) Making peace with the situation;
2) Accepting the fact that you may never know all the reasons;
3) Making your way back to the surface where you can start your giant. life. reboot.

So quit looking. There is no bottom.

Yeah, we got all that from coffee and a donut (‘cause wisdom needs sugar and caffeine).
Good stuff, huh?

Carry, carry, carry on UP!
xox

Hi you guys,
Below is a recent blog post from Dr. Brene Brown who studies and writes about vulnerably, courage, worthiness and shame.
With the energy that’s been circulating around us lately, clutching at our hearts, bringing up past hurts to be healed, and in the process fucking with the stories we’ve made up about ourselves, our lives, who we’ve been, and who we’re becoming; well,this feels apropos.
Carry on,
xox

As we enter the Rising Strong launch countdown, I thought I’d share one of my favorite passages from the new book with you. Even though this is something I know in my head, it remains something I have to practice in my heart.

From Rising Strong:

The most dangerous stories we make up are the narratives that diminish our inherent worthiness. We must reclaim the truth about our lovability, divinity, and creativity

Lovability: Many of my research participants who had gone through a painful breakup or divorce, been betrayed by a partner, or experienced a distant or uncaring relationship with a parent or family member spoke about responding to their pain with a story about being unlovable—a narrative questioning if they were worthy of being loved.

This may be the most dangerous conspiracy theory of all. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past thirteen years, it’s this:

Divinity: Research participants who shared stories of shame around religion had less in common than most people guess. No specific denomination has emerged as more shaming in my work; however, there is a strong pattern worth noting. Over half of the participants who talked about experiencing shame in their faith histories also found resilience and healing through spirituality.

The majority of them changed their churches or their beliefs, but spirituality and faith remain important parts of their lives. They believed that the sources of shame arose from the earthly, man-made, human-interpreted rules or regulations and the social/community expectations of religion rather than their personal relationships with God or the divine.

Our faith narratives must be protected, and we must remember that no person is ordained to judge our divinity or to write the story of our spiritual worthiness.

Creativity and Ability: In Daring Greatly, I write, “One reason that I’m confident that shame exists in schools is simply because 85 percent of the men and women we interviewed for the shame research could recall a school incident from their childhood that was so shaming that it changed how they thought of themselves as learners. What makes this even more haunting is that approximately half of those recollections were what I refer to as creativity scars. The research participants could point to a specific incident where they were told or shown that they weren’t good writers, artists, musicians, dancers, or something creative. This helps explain why the gremlins are so powerful when it comes to creativity and innovation.”

Like our lovability and divinity, we must care for and nurture the stories we tell ourselves about our creativity and ability. Just because we didn’t measure up to some standard of achievement doesn’t mean that we don’t possess gifts and talents that only we can bring to the world.

Just because someone failed to see the value in what we can create or achieve doesn’t change its worth or ours.

~Brene Brown
http://brenebrown.com/about/

The other night, as we were getting ready for bed, my husband informed me that he was going to start his own blog.

“I’m going to call it The Mute Observer” he said, barely able to keep a straight face.
This made me laugh so hard I may have pee’d a little—and I just had to share it with you guys! (I even found a graphic online.)

He is an extremely private person. A man of few words. He holds things close to the chest, but that in no way means he isn’t noticing or feeling his way through his environment.

I can safely say that he feels things in a much deeper way than I do.

I’m guessing that he’s very much like a lot of you.

The fact that I tell our stories or mention him at all on these pages is a constant source of feigned exasperation characterized by a lot of head shaking and arm waving.

He has a hard time wrapping his brain around the fact that I share my/our life in such public way. You know what they say: Opposites Attract.

Sometimes, early in the morning I can hear him in his office laughing and I smile, knowing in that moment he’s getting a kick out of one of my many mis-adventures.

Other times he just stands silently in the doorway of the den, staring at me until I notice him there.
“Today’s made me cry” he’ll say with tears in his eyes. That’s it. Then he just walks away.
I love him for that.

He may not understand my need to use my voice—it’s not his thing—although at times I think he admires it. Thankfully,(for his own safety and the longevity of our marriage) he has NEVER tried to silence it.

He is my Mute Observer.

I don’t think for one minute he’s oblivious. That would be a huge mistake.

How many of you are Mute Observers, silently taking it all in? (oh wait—how funny! I’m asking anyway even thought I know you won’t write in the comments. Jeez, what part of mute do I NOT understand?)

Quietly Carry on,
xox

Recently, I’ve been finding feathers all over the place, so in my search for meaning I came across this handy, dandy feather interpreter. Keep your eyes open for feathers (if you pay attention, they are everywhere.) Collect them, and then consult this chart.

Carry on,
xox

*This is where I keep most of the feathers I’ve found.