(Is there) PEACE in the struggle to find peace?
Mindful Mondays.
My apologies to Sarah McLachlan for the plagiarism.
(And my apologies to the readers for all of the type-o’s in this graphic quote that I found. 😬)
It’s a question I’ve been asking myself & the world for 30 years, since I first heard her hit song from the eponymous album Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. The line, “Peace in the struggle to find peace; comfort on the way to comfort,” has always felt … well, peacefully comforting to me. The idea that there can be some soothing even as we strive has become a lived experience in my own life … even as it initially set off an atom bomb of yearning in the heart of this little-grunge-pixie I was in the early-to-mid-90s, á la Sarah, herself. (I couldn’t find a pic of myself back then with my pixie-do for a Sarah-side-by, but I am sharing a pic below of Shy Little Kealah* from 1990 as a 17-year-old senior in high school.)
*That’s / KEE - la /. Just do what I’ve been telling people for years & picture a singing key. 🗝🎼🎶
Unlike the struggles I’ve been unabashedly sharing the last couple of weeks: This week, I am writing from a place of peace.
Has my life found footing? Are the tears from grieving dried? No & no. However, there are answered prayers in the form of earth angels all around us. And I decided to say yes to their gifts.
Yesterday, I had a healing session with medical intuitive Shelly Fox.
Shelly & I have been recently introduced by our mutual coach-friend Chelsea Fournier, a.k.a. The Intuitive Business Mentor. And we keep finding ways to re-introduce & reacquaint ourselves. On our last virtual call a couple of weeks back, she felt a hit of empathy & intuition. And she emailed me afterward & offered me a little healing.
OF COURSE I SAID, “YES.”
But here’s the thing: I didn’t say yes right away. In my gut, heart, body, soul, I was so immediately grateful & also instantly accepting. And then life showed up, & the next thing I knew, the invitation to reconnect in this new way was lost in my inbox. Thank goodness for that ubiquitous & universal search bar, because I found it with ease when I made the effort.
The reality is that I have had no less than 5 different service providers offer me sessions of various kinds over the last 6 or so weeks. And I have said, “Yes, please!” to each of them. AND I HAVE FAILED TO BOOK MY SESSIONS.
I haven’t felt guilty. After all, when the loss of a loved one is looming, a lot can fall by the wayside. And when you, yourself, are reeling——literally, physically experiencing dizziness & migrating pain——there is no stable ground. So, I did not add guilt to my plate. (And I can honestly say that is major progress for me!) … But I did feel ungrateful. And that motivated me to take action. THE FIRST THING I DID WAS THE FIRST THING I COULD DO: TAKE ONLY THE FIRST STEP.
I emailed Shelly, we set a time, & I put it right in my calendar——sandwiched between a committee meeting & a park play date. AND I DID NOT STRESS ABOUT IT.
A lot of Shelly’s work felt familiar to me as I received her words, wisdom &, yes, energy, sitting in my minivan in the playground parking lot. It opened my own personal energy portals, or chakras, in a more joyful form of dizzying bliss. I have a pet theory about energy signatures (think fingerprints, epithelial DNA or third-hand smoke), that some are easily recognizable to us even if they are technically new. Move over comfy clothes & comfort food; hello, comforting presence.
Think of it this way: Have you ever been around someone who just made you feel great for reasons you couldn’t understand or explain, but also couldn’t deny?
It’s that. It is absolutely that.
Although I am just getting to know Shelly & vice versa, she knew exactly what I needed. I felt a heady bliss that faded to peace that, so far, has not left me.
I actually have that familiarity with products, too. There are so many similar-seeming resources in the world now to help us feel our feelings——& then do whatever it is we wish to do with them, whether that’s to name them & release them, “manage” them (which often equates to masking them, I find), or talk them through for as long as it takes. (Many early gentle parenting tools use this approach, as does traditional talk therapy.)
I am a talker. (Just check out my podcast!) But talking about feelings without a purpose, plan or goal has rarely helped me. That’s why my longest-lasting therapy relationships have involved some form of proactive work: One with a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist who also integrated Mindfulness-Based Therapy, & one with a therapist who added what she termed “energy therapy” into her traditional practice: reiki, EMDR & other somatic practices, Bach Flower Essences, even soul retrievals. As overtly weirded out as I was by a lot of the concepts at the outset, I was also completely all-in during each & every session: arms wide to embrace whatever we were doing; fully trusting her & the modality in body & soul; always ready for the next session even as I chose not to share about it beyond my inner circle of friends & family.
Imagine my deep, inner smile when I realized in the moment yesterday that Shelly’s practices are so similar to the ones I used to unashamedly receive.
As I have aged & both the world & I have learned to bridge the esoteric with the professional realms, there are certain companies, brand reps & product offerings that just gel with me. Maybe you have that, too.
Three that I have tried, loved, referred & recommended so much that I finally reached out to each of them to ask if I could officially represent them are SensaCalm, Big Life Journal & Generation Mindful. Maybe that’s partly due to my natural love of books, blankets & all things SEL? Call me emo-curious. I love my mood tools!
Rest assured that this isn’t a commercial. I don’t get paid to tell you about these companies; I just get a little reward if you buy something from them through my links. (And I’m very often sharing their also-amazing free tools.)
⬆️⬆️ Scroll up for the links & down for the images. ⬇️⬇️
I used an actual search bar to find these tools on the internet. As in: They showed up either in tailored ads or as direct results to online queries I was making to help solve problems in my life. The universe is a lot like that, too.
When it comes down to it, there’s a big world, ready to meet our needs. All we have to do is hone our search. And the resources we are seeking show up with results.
It’s no surprise that Sarah’s song spoke so softly & closely to me when she sang of refusing to resist her feelings. There’s that familiar energy signature again, straining to be heard, seen & felt throughout the ethers ….
Here’s how I know things are going to get easier:
Yesterday morning, as I readied for the day, I shrugged off a fave pair of animal print pajama bottoms with a drawstring ribbon that has been tangled for more than a decade. Somewhere, I have a pic of myself with my firstborn——who is now just shy of his 11th birthday——sleeping mother & infant child, both dozing in drool as I manually hold his pacifier in his mouth. I am in the same pajama bottoms. It was somewhere in that era that the ribbon became so tangled (& I, so energy-sapped) that I opted to let it be, leave it for another day. Then I washed it, dried it, wore it … on repeat. The bottoms managed to fit, just not as comfortably as before.
My body has grown uncomfortable, as well, as I have also ignored her tangled cries & knotted needs, day by day.
But yesterday, something clicked as I held that ribbon in my hand. I saw that 10-year—old knot from a different angle perhaps. Saw where the too-tight center came together in a tied fold. Recognized how I could insert just the right tool in its center & prize it apart.
I reached for the pointy-metal-doohicky piece in my nail trimmers. And after just over 5 minutes, I had calmly & effectively undone the knot. I slid those cozy PJs back on & wore them around for awhile more, ribbon tied comfortably & appropriately across my mid-section.
I smiled as I thought to myself in an internal banner headline,
“Things are going to get a little easier from now on.”
And, of course, they are. Would you believe I got yet another gifted service offer in the form of multiple student practitioner opportunities from an international colleague email as I wrote this? Downloading search results now!
