Spring Blossoms in Tennessee

What to Live For

Live for yourself. Create your reality. Listen to your inner voice. Nurture your inner child and your emotional wounds.

Live for the connection of all living things and for the value of life and existence.

Live for loving others. Do random acts of kindness. Search out special people to share intimate relationships with.  Passion and sensuality are part of being human and part of spirituality.

Live to love animals and nature. Be kind and mindful. Treat living things with respect and care.

Live for your visions, hopes and dreams. Be creative, inventive and original.

Live to fight against evil and injustice. Be the advocate for those who have no voice.

Teach others to be sometimes still, and other times to roar like a lion.

 

gentlekindnesscoaching.com

 

Light in Darkness

Step lightly and tread a gentle path

You never know what you are walking on

Until you are mindful of it as you go

Listen and see with watchful eyes

Your heart will speak the truth

Be open to seeing more than others

Tell you is around you because

There is always much more than

Your eyes can see if you rush

Breath in your surroundings to perceive

Without biases , without assuming

Things are what you are expecting

If you assume what is there…then

That is what you will see….

Presupposition can murder the senses

And dull your ability to see truth

Sometimes more beautiful than

The others can perceive it to be

And other times darker and more sinister

But see what you are able to see

Never allow others to do your seeing for you

Or give meaning to things without your consent

Your perception becomes your reality for the time you are perceiving it to be

You must see what you need to

And not let others influence you in a way that distorts your truth

Or tarnishes your vision

Walk gently and look freely

Choose your own meaning and feel your emotions

Your spirit is resilient but the mind can be interfered with …

If you are not mindful

Walk gently for you know not where you are walking

Or what you are stepping on

Unless you are aware as you go

Create your own manifestations, and build your own bridges to walk over the water

Until you can walk upon the water with faith…

And without fear

Do not bury your feelings or let others minimize them

Do not allow others to discount what you feel and what you know

Walk softly but speak the truth loudly when it is necessary

And speak the truth gently if it is harsh o

Have compassion when no one around you does

Believe in what is right when others turn their back

Always believe in yourself especially when others shun you

Believe in your intentions when others try to shut you down

What you see and what you feel is yours …and yours to value

Stand up when others have fallen

Stand up when others try to make you stay down

Live with kindness and speak with truth and light

If you let the darkness make you hard to see

The ones who need your light cannot find you

Your light is very important to the ones lost in the dark

Let fear be comforted by truth …

Not the truth of darkness…

But the truth of the light that is within you..

The light that sometimes barely breathes and flickers in the dark

But cannot be extinguished

By anyone

Let your light comfort and inspire

Allow it to flicker like a flame…

Next to fear and sadness

To give them hope

Your light is always within you

Even in the darkest of times

When it is hard to see

No matter how small it may seem at times

Your light has great power and strength

Compassion will flame the fire

 

Dance Like No One’s Watching

Depression C-PTSD and PTSD – How to get Your energy Back

I just finished giving a guitar lesson to my teenage niece. It is nice to spend time with her. I have been giving her lessons for a few months now, about every other week.

Before her father had asked me if I was interested in doing guitar lessons with her, I had not been doing much with guitar at all. 

I used to play all the time. Depression has a way of making you lose interest in the things you once used to love to do. After back to back abusive situations with partners and family members, I lost my will to do anything that I liked to do. 

Since I have started my life coaching business I have been feeling that life force coming back. Once people suck your will out of you, it takes time to be able to self generate that energy again. 

It takes doing something that you are passionate about. Since I have been working with other abuse victim, I have felt a purpose in my life that means something special to me. So this is having the effect of generating some of that will power back again.

I still feel the weight of depression pressing down on me as I try to push it off. I am learning that you cannot push it off at all. It is more a matter of accepting without judgement of yourself. 

Then allowing the feelings to come and sitting with them in a way that is nurturing. Showing yourself compassion when the people closest to you cannot show you any compassion is not easy. But you can do it once you learn that the perceptions others have about you do not have to frame your reality. 

Anyway, I was thinking of putting new strings on my guitar so that it would sound better. The old strings have a very thumpy, dull sound. I know that I would be pleased to hear the sound of new strings and I would be more likely to play for enjoyment. 

I might learn a new song or write one of my own. Baby steps are sometimes the way to make great changes in your perceptions. It is the change in perception that will create change in your behavior. 

Perceptions control your emotions. Emotions are underneath of all behaviors. Once you can begin to change behaviors and have more control over getting some momentum, then you can begin to enjoy your path as you are creating it under your feet. 

Nurturing Emotional Wounds

Emotions should be treated with kindness and a gentle spirit. When an emotions feels like it is too overwhelming you can console that feeling and care for it. 

Think of your emotions and feelings as children who need to be taken care of and nurtured. If you abandon your feelings they will only grow more. You have to walk with them and hold their hand. 

Emotional wounds

When you feel sadness, grief or anger there is always a reason for it. Sometimes the reason is obvious and other times the emotion is coming from an old emotional wound. 

Emotions are always trying to tell you something. They are trying to protect you from something. 

It can feel like we cannot handle feeling the emotions and so we try to bury and repress them. But this is a way of abandoning ourselves. 

Abandonment

You have already been abandoned by other people in your life. You have been rejected by people and hurt by people. Your emotions are telling you that you need to be cared for.

Self Love

Self love is a powerful thing. It is not selfish , even though you may have been taught that way. Often the people that discourage us from caring about our own feelings, do so for their own agenda. 

In another words, they try to get you to forget about your needs and feelings, because they are protecting their own needs and feelings. This is kind of hypocritical …isn’t it?

Emotional fractures.

Refusal to listen to your emotions will cause you to break down and become fractured. Emotional wounds are often fractures parts of you that were hurt and abandoned at an early age. 

These fractured child parts are trying to get your attention. They want to know that you have not abandoned them. Your inner child needs to know that it has not been abandoned by you too.

Nurture your pain.  

When emotional pain comes up please nurture it as you would a sick child. Care for your feelings and console those wounded parts of yourself. Ask them what they need and have not been getting.

You can find ways to heal the emotions if you listen to them first. It is not selfish to care about your own feelings and the needs of your emotional body. Your emotional health is connected to all of you.

Separation from the emotional body

In order to give of yourself, you have to have something left to give. When we neglect emotional wounds, part of ourselves becomes separated from the whole. 

You need to be whole and your emotions need to be integrated with all of you. Your spiritual health and emotional health are connected. Your physical health is also connected to your emotions. 

Inner Child 

Listen to your inner child and all of your emotions and feelings. Nothing comes up for no reason. There is always a reason if you are feeling something. 

You have much to offer the world. You are a unique person with very special gifts to offer and to explore. 

Acceptance of self

Everything about you will flow better when you nurture your feelings. Do not abandon yourselves by stuffing down your emotions. Allow your feelings to be accepted without judgement. 

You can survive the feelings as you experience them as a caretaker. You may fear that you will be overwhelmed by your emotions but you cannot push them away from you. 

Old emotional wounds

When you nurture and care for your feelings, the pain will release from you. You may find that the root causes are from long ago and the wounds have been re-opened by some person or situation. 

If this happens then the old emotional wounds were never healed from the past. They are coming up in order to ask you to care for them. 

Blessings, 

Annie ❤

 

Benefits of Play and Imagination

Being a serious, mature adult who works all the time  is over-rated.  

While you have to maintain responsibility for your survival by paying the bills, the perception that you have to “act like a grown up” all the time is simply that…a perception. 

Who made the rule that adults cannot have fun?

You can buy some balloons and pat them up into the air . You can watch a goofy movie and roll on the floor laughing in your room. You can buy toys that you like and have them for your own amusement and comfort. 

If the people in your life would ridicule you for acting like a kid, then maybe you need to meet some new people….ones that think kids are great. The old adage that children should be seen and not heard is ridiculous. 

Who decides what an adult is? Other than keeping up with your responsibilities and not hurting anyone , what are the rules and who wrote them? 

What things did you enjoy doing as a child? Are there really any rules against doing some of them…just for fun?  

Is it childish or irresponsible to enjoy an activity …just because you want to?  Why can’t you allow some time just to be silly or to use your imagination?

When did the word ” childish” come to have negative connotations?

Why is IMAGINATION considered a “childish thing? 

Some of the most brilliant contributors to our world have been people will a great ability to IMAGINE. The imagination and playfulness of a child are valuable skills that are under-estimated by most adults. 

Explore new possibilities and play them out in your imagination.

Using imagination and vision can be the way you will come up with very creative solutions to problems that are in your life. Thinking outside the box and being able to imagine possibilities will create new options for  you. 

Taking time to play, in some way which activates your imagination, can benefit you in ways you cannot perceive right now. There are possibilities all around you and new ways to do things that you have not tried because you are not used to them. 

We tend to see what is familiar and what our subconscious brain has been conditioned to see. 

There is a part of your brain called the Reticular Activating System.

It is the part of your brain that filters information from your environment. There is far more information around you at any given time than your conscious brain can process. 

What you tend to think about and believe is what your reticular activating system scans for in the environment. Then what you see becomes proof of what you believe. 

Your brain looks for proof of what you already think is true.

So basically even if you believe something negative about yourself, your brain will scan for proof in the environment that it is true.

If you believe that you are bad in social situations, then your brain looks for proof that people are not responding to you in the way you want them to. You may completely miss the parts of interactions where someone really likes you. 

Take a break to do something fun.

Take some time to play and it will allow your brain and emotions to relax for a little while. When you get back to dealing with life problems again, you will be able to see things with some of your negative filters turned off. 

Play is not just for kids.

Think of what you used to like to do as a kid. There is some activity that you loved then that you can still do now. Use your imagination and let go of preconceptions. 

Imagination and creative thought will allow you to see new possibilities.  Try something different like re-inventing yourself in a way that you picture you would feel more powerful. 

Re-invent yourself. 

What would you be like of you could start all over again as a child? How would you behave and how much confidence would you have? Go to a place where no one knows you and pretend you are that version of yourself. 

You have nothing to lose. The more you can use your imagination, the more you can become more authentic to who you really are.

Let go of the negative labels that other people have put upon you.

Most of the negative beliefs you have about yourself were something that another person told you. If you have ever been exposed to emotionally abusive people then there were some viruses put into your system. 

These viruses tell you that you are not going to be able to achieve great things. These viruses are controlling your feelings about yourself and your potential. 

Start small and see what you can do. The future is written by you …and you control your own story. You can question any beliefs that are keeping you down. 

You can change your mind about what you think is true. 

Taking time to play can bring you back to that magic that children have to be able to explore new ideas. If your old beliefs and behaviors are not getting you where you want to be, then what will it hurt to try something new?

More

Humanity needed in the world of humans

Soft sweet touches

An understanding ear to hear

Laughter bursting from the small bodies of children

Old hands carefully baking bread for a neighbor in need

Or crafting a blanket with yarn for a stranger in the hospital

A nurse’s reassurance to a frightened patient

Looking at them with the self confidence of the profession; but adding something personal in their glance

A worker willing to go outside the usual procedures  and protocol…in the name of  helping someone who is in danger of foreclosure on their family home

Too many medical bills and not enough time…

Time spent working to take care of loved ones has to be balanced against the need to just be with them

Sitting next to a stranger and matching their body language… their hopeless slouch on the bench…

just to let them know someone sees them…and they are not forgotten

…they are not invisible

Humanity enough to pay the extra 2 dollars for the pizza at the Mom and Pop shop; to drive the extra mile to get there

Rather than paying the “fast-food- dictators” their tithe;  the Mama Rosina Pizza places need to be there…on the Main Streets

What happens when no one cares anymore about the “little” people; will they truly become little people after all?

And the smallest gestures of holding doors for a mother carrying a child and helping the elderly woman cross the street safely…

What will becomevof these small acts of random kindness ? What shall we say to those …who call us foolish for wasting our time…

On people of no consequence?

Who has the right to determine who is more or less significant?

And what does this say about mankind…

If we are just too busy spending time making money…and nothing more?

Isn’t there something further? Isn’t there something more?

 

 

Healing Poem

Healing requires feeling

It is nature’s only  way

Of disinfecting

the mental wounds

And closing them to stay

It seems too much to bear at first

Sometimes we want to quit

We regress to places past

And fear the future trauma

But healing always means feeling

There is no other path

That leads to  growth of hearts

And makes us strong at last

Thanksgiving Meet-up on Gentlekindness Blog

On Thursday  you are invited to connect with all of us here. Thanksgiving is the first of the holiday season and can trigger depression and anxiety in many people. Others are feeling lonely during the holidays.

If you are feeling alone or just want to connect, you can come here on Thanksgiving. I will create posts during the day that you can leave comments and also leave links to your own posts.

If you want to contribute a Guest Post , A Poem, or a Letter , feel free to do so. If you want me to post something for you, you can contact me at michelemimimish@gmail.com

If you have posts that you want to post the links to, you will see posts you can put them in the comments section of.

Artwork, poetry , details of what you are doing or how you are feeling are all welcome. Everyone is encouraged  to leave kind, thoughtful comments on anything that others leave.