 This was actually a post I wrote 3 years ago.
And yet, I was reminded about it today when I was talking about the resistance parents have sometimes to putting the tools in place to just... feel better. I do it myself sometimes. I see a program that would bring relief and probably create some amazing manifestations in my life, creating joy, laughter and flow through the process... but then I put my attention on the grind and daily chores, putting off what feels like relief for the struggle. But I have to ask... "how can I create relief, from struggle?" that makes no sense! Yes, as humans we all have patterns that need to be re-paved. So, it's time... Time to take your hand off of the hot stove. When I was starting my positive parenting path, it coincided with my discovery of the teachings of Abraham Hicks… and the the concept of taking your hand off the hot stove really transformed my way of thinking. When I first was introduced to the work of Abe and Esther, my husband and I ordered a CD of theirs (yeah… remember ordering CDs?). We listened to it so often that I can still hear some of it word for word in my head…. “We just want to encourage you to take your hand off the stove. But you say ‘ I can’t. My mother put her hand on the stove, her mother put her on the stove… it’s just what we do. The day I was born they told me to put my hand on the stove.” And we say, try it. And you sigh and say ‘it is sweet relief to take my hand off the stove. But who am I to take my hand off, when even my government and world has their hands on the stove?’ we say, put your hand back on the stove if you want to, but now you know that you have the choice.” What’s the stove? Pressure. Struggle. Stress. The perception that life has to be hard, that success has to be achieved, that we have to push to get what we want. That parenting has to be a painful journey with a lot of heartache… and our children will end up rebelling against us. That we have to control them, or cajole them to be the people we want them to be. (blech!) That we can't feel relief, or centre, or spiritual connection without long periods of time for healing and rehashing the past. We can take our hands off that stove of struggle, of pain. What I love about this image is the actual relief it sparks within me. I imagine having my hand in pain and then just lifting it off. I don’t need to pry it with all my might. I don’t need to push. I just need to remember that I have what it takes to just lift my hand out of the fire. I have what it takes to breathe deep and be. But I still forget. I still put it right back on there What Abraham forgets to mention (mainly because they are a spiritual consciousness being channeled through Esther Hicks) is that as physical people, we also have neural pathways that pull us back into our old patterns. Each morning, as if on cue, we will get out of bed and put our hands back on that stove, unless we put some tools in place to remind ourselves that each day can be different. We can make a different choice. I often talk about how complaining literally becomes part of us and how gratitude (appreciation) breaks the pathways of negative perspective. But it does take that choice of lifting our hands off of the high pressure world, in fact, making that choice each day, is really all it takes. I remember when I was in theatre school, I would sit listening to what the teacher would tell us our project was or what was expected from us. I remember thinking “nah… I can’t even imagine myself doing that.” And then within a few weeks I’d be doing stage-fighting, or climbing 20ft scaffolding, or reciting some long piece of Shakespeare prose. I soon learned that it was just about jumping in and not pushing against it, and taking the step by step path before me. I’d get there in the end. Sometimes it just takes focusing on the “headlights”… because just like when you drive at night you can only see a few feet in front of you with the help of your headlights, and yet you always end up at your destination. This is so true in life… Sometimes, the only step that’s clear is to take your hand off of the hot stove. It's time. It's really, really time. We have made things so complicated, but as a spiritual being having a physical experience you can STOP and CLAIM your inner, unique power simply by... Claiming it. Ease the pressure just a bit, but lifting your hand... up! When we can just find that relief, even if everything around us is busy. Focus on headlights, focus on love, light and relief. You’ll get there in the end.
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 With the last full moon and it's partial eclipse over I have had a lot of moms come to me and say...
“Christina, I released what's no longer serving me. I let it go. Why does it keep showing up?” I hear you. One of the energies I released was stress regarding a tooth that keeps playing me up and I found myself calling a new dentist. (releasing comes in various forms, I was hoping it would just go away.) When I sat to write this post I held the topic of Releasing and Healing to my heartspace and got back: “Releasing takes releasing, not revisiting to see if you've let it go yet.” And, like my tooth, sometimes the releasing takes the discomfort of having something showing up again and again so you can release it once and for all. So often we look at what doesn't serve us... beliefs, situations, habits... and tell ourselves that they truly must go. But what we forget is that in order to release them we have to create a new story where they don't exist at all. Spirit releases them the moment we decide they must be released. Our spiritual greater part moves quickly to the relief and newness of living without it. But then... our humanness gets in the way sometimes: We think about what we released, we remind ourselves on how it was, we talk about it, we consider it, we revisit and revisit... we can even be “glad it's gone.” But where attention goes, energy flows. So by putting the spotlight on what was released, you draw it back to you. Have you ever noticed that when you tell yourself you aren't going to do something, the opportunity to do it again shows up really quickly. (Like when you tell yourself you'll stop yelling or losing your temper, just before your children start to argue.) That's just how it works. So, how do you truly release things? How do you create that shift?  When 9/11 hit I was in Glastonbury, UK having been pulled to visit there on a spiritual quest.
Spirit had called me and I had answered. No, really. I had been called. I had found myself in the UK quite suddenly having said I was going out of the blue. The plan was barely out of my mouth when the money showed up by chance. So, for September 2001, I was backpacking, writing a novel and researching a spiritual documentary program for youth I was developing for Channel 5 in the UK, it was called "Spirit in My Suitcase." I’d traveled down to Cornwall only to be spiritually "told" in the middle of the night, get to Glastonbury on the 7am bus. When your only focus is connection and spiritually aware living... things like that happen. I’d gotten in the habit of listening to that calling. So onto the bus I jumped.  I was visiting Brene Brown's site today and I found this image that was available as a download for your desktop. I quickly downloaded it and personalized my home screen with it... and I had to share it with you as well.
Because this... this is a powerful statement. This weekend was the start of JULY! How did that happen? And while we here in Nova Scotia celebrated Canada Day, and all of my friends and neighbors in the states are looking forward to July 4th... the truth is we all know that summer has officially arrived. And with that, we start making plans for beach days, holidays, playdays, sunbathing days, parkdates, picnics... We get our long sheets of paper out and start with the lists... the agendas out to figure out how to fit it all in, around our businesses, our work and our children's routine so they have stability. We feel the summer start to slip away and it's not even begun. And that very feeling, is what I want to discuss with you today. I read the other day a very poignant post that someone had written. It said "We have approximately 18 summers to enjoy with our children. Make this one count." Ouch. But as my children grow older, I happen to know this hits too close to home. So, today my quest, my Summer mission, is to offer you some tools and opportunities that will help you drop the To-Do list, Stop in your tracks... Rest your mind, Nurture your Spirit and Play... with your children and your own inner self.  Winnie the Pooh, on a hunt for huffalumps and woozles, walks around in a tree following tracks in the snow. The prints keep multiplying as he walks around, unable to catch up with the creature.
They multiply again when Piglet joins him. Pooh and Piglet get quite worried when they start to see the large amount of tracks that must be made by “ferocious” animals chasing them. Until Christopher Robin sets the story straight. The tracks were made by Pooh and Piglet themselves. We can all be pursuing something that’s within us all along. And we can all be scared of What’s Out there, so forget to recognize it in the first place, In other words. In every step of the journey, you have arrived. I was raised with the idea of a ladder. That life was about learning how to “be good” and that we often failed. I can’t believe that a year ago my daughter Gia was still struggling with schoolwork.
Oh my goodness, what a tangled mess we used to live in. She hated standard curriculum, would zone out if I suggested movies or educational videos like those her sister was using. She was staggering, literally staggering, through a few programs we’d found and she would often make herself sick by giving herself pressure to do things that felt so un-natural to her. Often I would suggest unschooling to her, but this worked against her desire for structure, for routine. We know we both work well with routine and rebel against it at the same time. I relate so much to my girl. We look a lot alike, but more we learn alike. I was home-schooled off and on when I was growing up, and the concept of sitting and memorizing what people told me to, without any explanation why, without any dramatic build so I could feel it in my soul… it was like pulling teeth! But last year we started the grade 7 Oak Meadow curriculum with my girl, and it all changed. This week we finally put our tree up and it was so exciting to see how our three children really dove into it this year.
At the same time, I had to do a little bit of inner work to really release the outcome and allow it to flow. You see, I have this box of Christmas decorations which we’ve been lumbering around with us for the past 15 years. They’ve been carefully gathered and collected over our family’s childhood. Many of them were bought in the UK from when we lived over there when our girls were small. There are the few things that were gifted to us during a particularly broke time. There’s even a small angel decoration that I made for my husband’s and my first Christmas together. (We were “in-between” countries, not knowing where to settle so not really wanting to buy a lot of things. We had a small apartment and at the last moment I decided we needed to decorate for Christmas after all. The little angel’s face was done with embroidery thread and her body was ribbon found in the bottom of a sewing basket. Her head was literally the blower of a bubble bottle, covered in material. Every year I hang her on the tree with fondness.) Over the years our box of decorations has been bashed around as it traveled from place to place with us. Not only that, many a time I’ve stressed about its wellbeing, begging my husband to do check ins on its care. There was the couple of Christmases it had been left in storage and I would mourn the little angel or special trinkets that wouldn’t be on the tree that year. There’s even been late night panic attacks where I’ve planned fire escapes and wondered how to get that box of decorations out from wherever it was stored. At a certain point I’ve had to ask the magic question of “why?” Why? Why was a box of decorations so important? |
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