December 2024

Transform Your Love Life: Healing from Trauma Inside Out

I loved meeting with my friend and colleague, Jeanne Byrd, to discuss how food, movement, and mindset can help heal the wounds of early trauma and create a foundation for authentic, lasting love. Jeanne is an Integrative Nutritionist making a connection between caring for your body and cultivating healthy, loving relationships.

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3 tips for surviving the holidays after divorce

Divorce is challenging no matter when you leave your marriage. Making the decision to divorce during the holidays can be particularly challenging. It’s not uncommon to put off the decision for a better time, like at the end of a year or when the kids go off to college. Unfortunately for many, the better time turns into years of indecision, deeper despair, and increased unhappiness. It’s a given that your family will be challenged regardless of when you decide to break up, however, there are things you can do to ease the burden and move forward with confidence that you’re going to be okay. My marriage ended just before Thanksgiving nine years ago, and it was a very sad and confusing time for everyone. Through my own experience and working with hundreds of people leaving a marriage, I’ve learned some tips to help you, not only survive the holidays but believe that you will at some point be able to thrive in your new life. Statistics have shown that it takes on average 4 to 8 years to completely move on from a divorce. Anything you can do to shorten your healing process will benefit you, and everyone affected by your breakup. Whether this approaching holiday season will be your first experience post-divorce, you’re in the middle of a breakup, or if you’re several years post-divorce and still haven’t been able to get through the holidays, these 3 tips will help! Surviving the holidays: Tip #1 – Connect! The most important thing you can do to survive the holidays is to create connections. Most people tell me that they feel out of place and that they feel they don’t belong anywhere. This is a normal experience that you absolutely must not give into. Connect, no matter what. Isolating yourself will breed feelings of victimization, loneliness, and sadness. You may still have these feelings, but you won’t be alone – and it’s much harder to dig yourself into despair when you are with people. Who you spend time with during the holidays may change, and this can be sad. Don’t let it stop you. If you always attend your in-laws’ holiday gatherings and this year you are not participating, find somewhere else to share the day with. You might want to attend a singles (or single parent) meetup for the holidays. There are a lot of them, but if there isn’t one in your area, then consider going out of town for the day. Call a friend and invite yourself to dinner. Some people tell me, “Inviting myself to someone’s holiday gathering means I’m pathetic. I won’t do it!” To this I say, “Do it!” Pathetic is an interpretation you’ve made. This brings me to Tip #2… Surviving the holidays: Tip #2 – Choose your interpretations! If you’re like me, and most of the clients I’ve worked with, you have special needs during the holidays: needs for compassion and care; needs for inclusion and kindness; needs for non-judgment and most of all a need to feel hopeful about your future. Making negative interpretations is common, so don’t feel bad if you’re looking at everything that is wrong with your situation. Just don’t stop there… Make a list of what you’re making your divorce, or the experiences you’re having, mean about you. Your kids may be angry at you. You might feel guilty that you’ve caused your loved ones to feel pain. You might feel you don’t deserve to be happy or you’re unworthy of love. Look at your interpretations and determine which ones make you feel bad and which ones make you feel good. Statistically, your interpretations will probably be negative. Knowing this will give you the awareness to consciously choose how you’re going to view your circumstances. Once you have your list of interpretations, see if you can create positive interpretations about your experience. For example, you get to create a new life for yourself, you deserve to be happy, the universe is conspiring on your behalf to give you everything your heart desires. If this feels too simplistic, schedule a session with me and we can come up with some powerful interpretations that you can hang your hat on! Surviving the holidays: Tip #3 – Create something new! Divorce = a lot of letting go! Use tip #2 to create an empowering interpretation about what you’re letting go of. Choose to see this as an opportunity to breathe something new into your life. Let yourself get creative and do something out of the ordinary, or something you’ve always wanted to do but couldn’t because of the relationship you were in. Try something new! What new tradition will you start this year? You might be overcome with grief, sadness, and guilt this year, but don’t let that stop you from moving forward. If you want some support in surviving the holidays and creating something new, then join me for a special call on Wednesday, November 13th at 6 pm pacific (9 pm eastern) and we’ll share more tips for surviving the holidays. We’ll brainstorm in this interactive community call to help you with new ideas and you’ll have an opportunity to join a small online group to help you survive the holidays and celebrate your successes – together… in community with people who care, so you don’t feel alone as you move through the next couple months. Join our call: Surviving the holidays: Taking a BREAK from divorce drama
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Divorce Care: 3 Steps to Protecting Your Heart

Protecting your heart is a normal & natural thing to do! But it won’t get you what you want. One of the first things to happen when you go through a breakup or divorce is: you hurt like a #($*%. The pain can cut through you like a hot knife leaving you gasping for air. The normal human reaction to pain is to protect yourself. But unconscious protecting of your heart will leave you feeling alone and miserable and at it’s worse, it will deaden your spirit and leave you disconnected from the very things you most want: love, partnership, connection, to not be alone. It’s very common to commit to never loving again because of how deeply you’ve been hurt. Here are 3 steps you can take to protect your heart and keep it open. Step 1 -Stop Pointing your Finger! Protections like anger, blame, and resentment, are a few of the walls we erect to protect our hearts. We think these protections keep us safe, but they don’t really work. We mistakingly think that someone has to be responsible for what went wrong and we either blame the other person or we beat ourselves up without mercy. What’s really happening if you’re blaming your ex for the pain you’re in is that you’re unconsciously directing responsibility for the breakup away from yourself. If he or she did something that was really awful, then it’s easy to point your finger and say, “It’s all your fault!” It’s no different than self-blame, except that you’re unconsciously taking all the responsibility. If you’re a self-blamer, then you’re saying things like, “If only I did _____ differently,” or “If only I was better at______.” Either way, the first step is to cease and desist all blame – inbound or outbound. What if it didn’t really matter whose fault it was? What if you could take responsibility for your part without blame? What if you didn’t take responsibility for the parts that aren’t yours-without pointing your finger? The result will be a conscious awareness of what you and your ex co-created – together! Your breakup wouldn’t be happening if only one of you was in the relationship. While it may still be painful to look at your breakup in this way, if you want to protect your heart and keep it open for future love, then you must take responsibility without blame. Learn more about Spiritual Divorce ™ and the Law of Responsibility. Step 2 – Be Ruthlessly Compassionate! You can’t keep your heart open and protect it without a huge dose of compassion as you look at yourself and your part of the breakup. You may be tempted to circle back to the blame. Instead, take a breath and tell yourself that you’re okay and you did the best you could at the time. Be firm with yourself and don’t go into beating yourself up. If you do have an over-powering inner-critic, send him or her away for a vacation – they need a break! You will need to be able to be gentle with yourself as you notice your relationship patterns. Step 3 – Identify Your Red Flags! The information you discover from taking responsibility without blame will likely illuminate the choices you made that led to your breakup. If you’re completely honest with yourself, you will likely notice that you avoided something that you shouldn’t have avoided by sweeping it under the carpet. Maybe you didn’t speak up or you ignored signs of cheating, maybe you weren’t really happy but stayed for the kids. Give yourself permission to find your red flags, because they are your gold mine. Your red flags are what you will use to keep your heart open and safe at the same time. By addressing red flags as they come up, you will build a trusting relationship with yourself that you can count on to make conscious relationship choices. Need Support and divorce care? Learn the 7 Spiritual Laws in an 8-week Study & Support Group If you just haven’t been able to get through your pain, then I’d like to invite you to join me in a study of Debbie Ford’s Spiritual Divorce and get divorce care and support in our interactive online group. Use the above link to get more information or email me to sign up for the 8-week support group starting soon. You’re going to be okay!
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How Divorce and Global Warming are Connected

I was talking with one of my clients in an off-scheduled call during my morning yoga routine. She was distraught with emotion and we started making the analogy of how divorce can be described through weather patterns. We have EARTHQUAKES! This is the initial shock that rocks our foundation, destroying what we’ve grown and built over the years. We don’t know how much damage there is until we get underneath the structure. Sometimes the structure can be rebuilt, and others it needs to be completely torn down or abandoned. What do we learn from the earthquake? The importance of a strong foundation that is built on honest and open communication, and true intimacy and vulnerability. We learn the importance of creating a partnership from a foundation of shared values, hopes, and dreams. We learn the importance of knowing ourselves deeply before getting into a relationship in the first place. We learn the dangers of building our foundation on denial, resentments, and withheld communications. We have TORNADOS! These are the emotions that rip through us leaving us in a pile of rubble and not knowing how to clean up the mess. Sometimes, we don’t even know where to start. This is when we need to call in Red Cross! Get help from people who know the terrain and has access to the federal emergency fund. This is where you employ the support of friends to hold you when you cry and therapists, and coaches who have your back and help you navigate the emotional waters of divorce so you come out the other side empowered and ready to move on with confidence. While grief is anything but linear, we’re highly trained and have experience and expertise in helping you reinvent your life after divorce or breakup. We have FLOODS and Wild Winter Storms! These are the endless tears of grief that envelop us as we begin the process of letting to and accepting our loss. It can be very difficult to let go, even if we know it’s the right thing for us. We grieve the loss of an intact family, we grieve the loss of companionship, we grieve the loss of friends and family, and we grieve the loss of our hopes and dreams for a happy family. “You cannot heal what you cannot feel,” is a motto I live by. While denial is an active component of the 5 stages of grief that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross identified, sweeping your feelings under the rug or pretending you’re okay will only prolong the grieving process. Your birthright is to feel! While it may seem you will go out of control or that you will go so deep you won’t come back, if you give yourself permission to feel fully, then you will come out the other side feeling cleansed and renewed – just like the day after a huge thunderstorm. If you’ve ever been in one, you know the quality of freshness and aliveness is tangible – and delicious! We have GLOBAL WARMING! – more commonly known as Hot Flashes! Yes, divorce is compounded when you’re in your forties and fifties because many of us question our attractiveness and F*#%ability. We question our value and ability to attract a partner. Our bodies are changing! Our emotions and even our sleep patterns are affected by menopause. A friend of mine said that menopause means, MEN – o – PAUSE – and while she claims it’s a time to take a pause from men, I say it’s a time to Reclaim Yourself! Pay attention to the interconnectedness of your inner and outer experiences. Take the time to delve deeply into your belief system and become internally referenced. Let go of patterns of self-sabotage, limiting beliefs, and ways of thinking, and embrace your authentic core essence of who you are! We have the RAINBOW! Divorce is the perfect catastrophic life event to give birth to yourself! It’s a golden opportunity to learn who you are and to commit to a consciously created life of your choosing. There is life beyond divorce, and more often than not the struggles immediately following a divorce can bring you a better life. Imagine the rainbow and remember the promise of hope and renewal of life after the destruction! You can do it! You will get through it! And you don’t have to do it alone! This is where Spiritual Divorce and my Reclaim Yourself After Divorce process help. First Spiritual Divorce helps remove the layers of shame and guilt as you learn and integrate universal spiritual laws that heal your heart and empower you to move on with confidence. After you complete the one-on-one intensive Spiritual Divorce process or an online Study of Spiritual Divorce, then you can being the Reclaim Yourself Process and fall in love with yourself, regain your confidence, grow your self-esteem, and become the beloved you want to partner with. Take your Reclaim Yourself After Divorce Assessment and schedule and take your first steps toward the pot of gold!
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The Law of Divine Guidance

The Law of Divine Guidance says that you can trust the flow of your life. Whatever religion you practice will be honored and respected. I’ll support you in using whatever Divine Guidance you choose to help you find your own answers. Learning how to access your own inner wisdom will be key to integrating The Law of Divine Guidance. Your internal world is a safe place for your Divine Guidance to make itself known to you. In this process of healing your heart, I will guide you weekly into your internal world to access this wisdom. RESOURCE – Eckhart Tolle — A New Earth Maybe you watched the Oprah webcasts. I found the series very powerful and resonating. Give it a try. Meditation is a powerful tool to use to connect with your inner wisdom. Share with me how you connect with your inner wisdom. In this short video, Deepak Chopra talks about how to meditate. This is a tool I like to use to connect with my Divine Guidance. via My Heart Heals With The Law of Divine Guidance | My Heart Heals.
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The Law of Surrender

This Spiritual Law requires that you surrender to the circumstances of your life as they are. Ultimately, this is the “telling myself the truth” law. This is the way it is, now what? When you are able to surrender to what is, then you open yourself up to tons of possibilities that will change the experience you are having with your life. Surrendering is very different than giving up. When you “give up,” you feel victimized, but when you surrender you become empowered to take different actions than you have in the past. When you “give up,” you feel drained and empty, but when you surrender you are filled with inspiration and become open to a wider view of yourself and the world around you. When you resist what is, whatever you’re resisting consumes your attention and it becomes very difficult to be in the flow of your life. Surrendering opens us up to a greater reality than what we previously thought possible. Dan Millman talks about The Law of Surrender In the first half of this video, Millman teaches this law using some common circumstances we might find ourselves in. The Law of Surrender gives us new ways to be in the world. Millman also teaches an important concept that I work with in my coaching work: “Emotions are the weather patterns of the body.” During the second half of the video, Millman shares a simple way to stay in the present moment. via My Heart Heals With The Law of Surrender | My Heart Heals.
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