GRATITUDE AND FORGIVENESS

I am in Colorado with my entire family, minus my husband. This year is the 2nd  Thanksgiving in a row, that I have been sober. Alcohol certainly was a crutch that I no longer choose to use. 

The clarity I have gained recently certainly is a beautiful gift. So much is coming up for me, and sometimes it's overwhelming.  

Gratitude is the mindset I choose to live by daily, and it's no coincidence that's when miracles appear in my life. Life is funny, though; I have had a mixture of the most personal and professional growth while simultaneously having some of the most significant challenges and struggles.   

True forgiveness means saying, "Thank you for that experience." It genuinely means you know how all experiences help you grow, and you do not wallow in the hurt. 

I have learned to indeed be in gratitude, and you must be able to forgive.  

Now, forgiveness can sometimes feel like this deep dark abyss. So many times, I thought I had forgiven and let go of past hurts and discovered I was only wading in the shallow waters.  

My entire life, I have been treating forgiveness as if it has a beginning, middle, and end. However, I now realize that I have been in survival mode, opening my heart when I feel safe and then closing my heart in reaction to fear, hurt, and anxiety.  

The cycle: I forgive. My heart opens. Then that person does or says something to hurt or disappoint me, or a memory ignites the hurt and pain, and I close my heart again.  

In doing all this life force work in the past few years, I realize that this energy only flows when my heart is open, and the only way I can live a life with that beautiful soul force energy flowing is to practice not closing at all. 

Then shit gets tricky. So, when the urge to close my heart creeps in, I must remember that feeling of the beautiful life or soul force energy flowing freely through me and how the joy, ease, knowing, and liberation live in that space.  

When you train yourself to not close, the pain, the hurt, and the disappointment will not sting so much because your heart is still open, and in openness is love. So, you can choose to either close because you do not like what happened or the memory you are experiencing, or you can continue the flow of love and the life force energy and know this too shall pass.  

It is not unlike working out; if you do it daily, it is easy! But, when you try only to work out a few days a week, eventually, it tapers off, and the next thing you know, you stop. You get out of shape, and then starting again is so painful.   

One of my favorite quotes "99% is a bitch, 100% is a breeze" I am not even sure who said that. When you make a 100% commitment, know it's easier than 90 or 99%. The voice in our head is usually the one who brakes for less and talks us out of total commitments. When we go all-in with something, there isn't room to think about what could happen if things went wrong, so this way, they don't get any say!  

To practice staying open, you must pay attention to how love, joy, ease, liberation, and knowledge flow when you are present and available. Then remember that this is how you want to feel all the time, and yes, that is possible!  

I close my heart as if that somehow will protect me and even teach the person a lesson. I realize that I am only hurting myself. And by closing, I am only hurting myself.  

Practicing meditation, yoga, and breathwork raise my awareness, and I learn to relax and release. I remind myself there is nothing worth closing my heart over as this truly is the key to a magical life full of awe and awareness. Nothing is ever worth giving that gift away for.