Tag: Roberta Shepherd

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Love is Freedom

Me & David, circa 2002

I once loved a man differently than anyone else. This man was called David Brown. 6 years ago, David took his own life. Since then, he comes to me regularly, offering support, reassurance and guidance – through dreams, visuals, feelings, intuition, in my prayers and meditation, in my Reiki practice, and once through the gifts of a medium. Recently, he came into a guided process I pursued at Lifestyle Meditation (my workplace). This time was impactful in a different way. David was a disciple of Self-Realization Fellowship, of whom the founding guru was Paramahansa Yogananda. During the process, the teacher suggested that we flank ourselves with loving people from our lives, past or present. On my right was my lovely and loving son, Caleb, and on my left was David. I always wear an angel pendant around my neck that David gave me, which has taken on extra significance now that his spirit has departed this earth plane – he most certainly IS an angel that I call on frequently, consciously and otherwise. At the front of the meditation classroom on the shelves above the teacher’s head is a small, framed picture of Paramahansa Yogananda. In a moment, I felt a dynamism moving around and through me: David through Yogananda – David in spirit, beside me – David in me and as represented by the angel pendant – a triangular pattern of power and impact.

I remembered how angry I was at “Guru”, as David called him, for taking David away from me when we were 23 and he’d decided to follow a monastic life in California. I remember how angry I was at God back then. How could you take him from me? How could you rip this love from my grips – just pluck it from my life with such ease? Do you not care about ME oh God? I was heartbroken. It was my first conscious experience of deep heartache. I thought I would die from the gravity of the emotion and spent 2 days in bed, crying to the somber sounds of Pink Floyd and getting high in between in an attempt to subdue my despondency. As Gilmour & Waters crooned the words “comfortably numb” into my ears, I longed for just that state. I was sure the pain would last forever. I was sure I no longer had a reason to live, having lost what I thought was my grandest experience of love.

What I didn’t realize back then is that true love does not assume a holding pattern, isn’t exclusive, doesn’t hoard, or stow itself away in a preferential connection. True love is synonymous with freedom and with God – God is Universe and the Universe cannot be captured in a single embrace or arrested into a private moment. Rather, the Universe weaves its energy infinitely into the present, never living in the past or future. The Universe is present in each lesson that brings us closer to God – to love – to ourselves – and sometimes those lessons are painful because that particular pain is necessary for our highest soul evolution.

Trying to hold on to love is like trying to hold on to the ocean. An exercise in futility that leaves you a constant “failure”, even while the ocean itself beckons you at all times to come into it and be surrounded and supported by its majesty. The reason I experienced so much pain back when David left for a monastic life is because I thought I was entitled to hold on to the ocean, as though splendor can be possessed.

Today I flail around almost as equally as back then inside of lessons about romantic love. I am NOT actualized in this arena, but I know that love does not belong to me. Today I know that God didn’t “take” anything from me when David left. In fact, quite the contrary is true. There are 3 poignant, holy and auspicious occasions that really stand out to me with relation to how God GAVE to me in relationship with David:

First, God gave to me by David in the flesh, imparting for me lessons about the unconditional nature of love, for which David was a vessel of delivery unlike any other I’ve known. Then, God gave to me by David’s absence, imparting for me, once again, lessons about the unconditional and omnipresent nature of love – could I set David free, thereby expressing love in its truest form? Finally, God gave to me by David’s departure from this plane of existence, imparting for me lessons about the limitlessness of love. Love energy, much like energy itself and as we all learned in science class, can be neither created nor destroyed, only changed in form. Like the ocean, mine and David’s love never began or ended – it always was – our physical beings afforded the manifestation of this love that’s inherent in all of us. David’s departure from his body only served to expand our love because his expression is no longer contracted into physicality. I now connect with him on a wholly spiritual level, which, in itself, is completely limitless.

In consideration of these momentous lessons on love and freedom, I find myself perceiving once again a triangular dynamo of power and impact.

To say that I “loved a man differently than anyone else” at the outset of this piece is a bit of a fallacy because love is consistent and persistent, like the ocean. It’s only the form of love’s manifestation that changes. As humans, we tend to prefer one form over another – our attraction to a particular form is the recognition of our own selves – a mirror image of love made manifest – AND an opportunity to go deeper. Going deeper involves being triggered into all the places inside of us where we have blockages to love. These triggers show up as our struggles and challenges in relationships. So here we go peeps: EMBRACE THE STRUGGLE for it is an invitation to truer, deeper and freer love.

My invitation that came in the form of one David Brown was always an invitation to true love: the kind that assumes no holding pattern, but rather the kind that is interchangeable with freedom. Even while it’s taken me until far beyond the expiry of what I knew our love to  be here on earth, I am eternally grateful for that invitation that reverberates through time and space.

May love always set us free.

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Lessons on Passion, Love & Romance

The past 2 weeks have been super intense for me. I think I kicked off the intensity by taking a Flower Essences blend I made for myself with – not 1, but 2 – flowers for femininity and passion as it flows through the sacral chakra. The revelation gifted to me by that blend is this: I’M REALLY FUCKING PASSIONATE. I knew I was passionate, to a degree, but didn’t realize I was THAT passionate! Surveying my behavior with acute awareness of my femininity and passion, I recognize that I express myself in big, animated ways, feel deeply, dance frequently, and, if my passion is not channeled through healthy habits, react vehemently. Passion is somewhat of a double edged sword – it moves and shakes and can get things done, but, like a fire, it can burn out of control, causing destruction in its path when not attended to.

I’m in a romantic relationship that’s only 4 months old. Despite all the inner work I’ve done, I still find myself somewhat jaded by a past of so called “failed” relationships that have lent themselves to the formulation and maintenance of deficient paradigms. Sometimes, my head tells me that I’m a dejected, rejected, 2nd rate woman – “the fuckable one”, not the long-term relationship one. Sometimes, these false paradigms cause me to flail around in desperation inside romantic connections. Whether I’m flailing inwardly or outwardly, it always leaves me lacking because I’m seeking on the outside of myself for fulfillment, and that’s a clear recipe for emptiness.

I recently started praying for “discernment” with relation to my current romantic connection – I put that in quotations because if you were sitting across from me while I told this story, I would be using air quotes for that word. The reason for the air quotes is because while I was consciously praying for “discernment”, what I was really wanting, in the recesses of my unconscious mind, was a “yes” or “no” answer from the God of my understanding. Because, you know, spirituality is black and white and God operates within duality. I’m being facetious – just in case that wasn’t obvious.

After one particular morning of “praying for discernment”, I got up off the meditation cushion and started my day with flair. On the way to work it hit me – “I feel shoved into a box by him! Whenever I’m around him, he always wants me to reel it in! I’m too passionate for him and he’s too conservative! Ra-ra-ra! Roar! That’s it!”, I thought, “that’s the answer I’ve been looking for. It’s no! It’s clearly no!” I barged to work with resolve. I’ll fix him for not having a container that I deem big enough for my passion! Who does he think he is being himself and trying to meet me where I’m at to the best of his ability with gentle presence?!

Um, yeah, so that’s not how my thought process ended, but with some gained perspective, I can definitely express it as such.

That afternoon, as I shared my fiery thought processes with my sponsor, I felt embarrassed just hearing them come out of my mouth. Undeniably, I heard the judgment and intolerance. It’s ME that’s reeling myself in, keeping my passion under a bushel for fear of further rejection. And then, angry at myself for not being authentic, I lash out, blaming him. Ugh. Later, my sponsor sent me this beautiful poem by Shel Silverstein that, when I read it, brought immediate tears of recognition:

That night, I had a lovely conversation with said lovely man. The next day at work, I meandered over to the retail section of our common space and picked up the book A Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson. Would you believe I opened it to these precise words?

“Pure love of another person is the restoration of our heartline. The ego, therefore, is marshaled against it. It will do everything it can to block the experience of love in any form. When two people come together in God, the walls that appear to separate us disappear. The beloved doesn’t seem to be a mere mortal. They seem for a while to be something else, something more. The truth is, they are something more. No one is anything less than the perfect Son [“child” is a more inclusive word for me] of God, and when we fall in love, we have an instant when we see the total truth about someone. They are perfect. That’s not just our imagination.

But the craziness sets in quickly. As soon as the light appears, the ego begins its powerful drive to shut it out. All of a sudden, the perfection we glanced on the spiritual planes becomes projected onto the physical. Instead of realizing that spiritual perfection and physical, material imperfection exist simultaneously, we start looking for material, physical perfection.
…And so no one gets to be a human being anymore. We idealize one another, and when someone doesn’t live up to the ideal, we’re disappointed.”

These words were a spiritual gut punch. The only kind of gut punch I like. I haven’t been able to stop reading Williamson’s section on “Romantic Love” in this book ever since! Here are some other segments that stand out to me:

“Rejecting another human being simply because they are human, has become a collective neurosis. People ask, “When will my soul mate get here?”

…Our soul mates are human beings, just like we are, going through the normal processes of growth. No one is ever “finished”. The top of one mountain is always the bottom of another…

…The idea that there is a perfect person who just hasn’t arrived yet is a major block…

…Thinking that there is some special person out there who is going to save us is a barrier to pure love. It is a large gun in the ego’s arsenal. It is a way the ego tries to keep us away from love, although it doesn’t want us to see that. We seek desperately for love, but it is that same desperation that leads us to destroy it once it gets here. Thinking that one special person is going to save us tempts us to load an awful lot of emotional pressure on whoever comes along that we think might fit the bill…

…Looking for Mr. Right leads to desperation because there is no Mr. Right. There is no Mr. Right because there is no Mr. Wrong. There is whoever is in front of us, and the perfect lessons to be learned from that person…

…We sometimes fail to work on ourselves in the relationships that are right in front of us, thinking that “real life” begins when they get here. This is just a ploy of the ego once again, making sure that we’ll seek but not find.”

Seriously – Marrianne Williamson: are you walking around in my head and now you’ve written a book that is the anodyne to all my insanity in the arena of love and intimacy?

These passages speak right to the core of my mental commotion upon the landscape of love. Especially that last part about “…thinking that “real life” begins when they get here.” I’ve done this in such a protracted way ever since my first heartbreak when I was 23. This thought process dooms whoever I’m dating to a fixed audition for the position of “the Right One” in my life. This also keeps me in constant withdrawal – withdrawing my love, my presence, my full attention, my vulnerability, my closeness. Withdrawing it from everyone and anyone I’m dating until they become worthy of the position, which, they never do because this is an obvious projection of my own insecurities – I’ll never be “the Right One”, so nor can you – or you – or you… and it ceaselessly rolls out as such. Or at least it has…

After reading and re-reading Williamson’s inspired words, I decided to show up to the relationship instead of putting a kibosh on it. I channelled my passion into verbal sharing with others and physical movement. I decided that pigeonholing him into the position of “the Wrong One” is unfair. That withholding love – from anyone – is unfair. Such withholding is conditional love. I decided that maybe, he’s JUST the human I’m intended to be in relationship with right now, or I wouldn’t be in relationship with him. I decided that clearly, our connection is bringing the right lessons at the right time and is actually quite “right” – for both of us. That maybe, the pressure of searching for the “Right One” causes inevitable emotional crumbling and sabotage. I deserve to be loved, and so does he. We all do. I’m an equal contributor to the loving atmosphere of any relationship. And maybe – but more than likely quite certainly – redirecting my newly acknowledged passion into loving my own damn Self is the ultimate remedy to my attempts to overthrow romantic love in my life.

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5-Flower-Formula

5-Flower-Formula is a blend of 5 Flower Essences specific for acute instances of trauma, stress or overwhelm. Also marketed as ‘Rescue Remedy’, 5-Flower-Formula is a composite of 5 of Dr. Edward Bach’s* original essences: Clematis, Star of Bethlehem, Impatiens, Cherry Plum and Rock Rose. These essences combine to create a very grounding and embodying effect during times where we may otherwise fly away from ourselves due to intensity. Examples of when 5-Flower-Formula could be used are: after an accident, before and/or after surgery, leading up to, during and after stressful situations such as break-ups, death and loss, exams, moving, starting a new job, overwhelm due to parenting or other circumstances or any other acute instance of fear, anger, or sadness. As human beings, we tend to want to escape intensity, which causes more difficulty in processing such events moving forward. It’s better to actually be grounded IN the body, as that helps us to move through difficult scenarios effectively – its within the body, after all, that we find our courage and strength, discernment and clarity, capacity, hope, faith and connection to a power greater than ourselves.

5-Flower-Formula can be taken as often as needed. It’s totally safe and reasonable to take 4-6 drops under the tongue every 20-minutes until symptoms of intensity and fear subside depending on the situation. 5-Flower-Formula can also be pursued as a full cycle of Flower Essences if and when appropriate. For example, some people may find it appropriate to take a full cycle (approximately 28-days) of 5-Flower-Formula if they’ve had an extremely stressful and life-altering experience that will take time to recover from.
Click here to learn about how to pursue a full cycle of Flower Essences.

*Dr. Edward Bach is the founder of Flower Essences. Click to learn more about him and his legacy, as presented at the outset of my piece, What are Flower Essences?

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Rawberta’s Diaries: Sticking it to Shitty Paradigms

Having been subject to societal paradigms around what it means to be professionally successful my entire adult life, I’m deeply pressed when I don’t meet those standards. You know the ones: your bank account should be bulgy, you should be busy, productive, effective without mistakes, and your work schedule should be replete with long hours that propagate a quiet martyrdom. I, for one, am ashamed of the current state of my bank accounts – desperately, I try to keep my financials a despicable secret, agreeing to coffee meetings where I buy coffee I can’t afford to shield the truth. God forbid anyone know how broke I am since that means I meet one of the top criteria of professional failure. My daytime hours are spent building my new expression of business, but without consistent bookings to fill those hours, I’m bombarded by my slanderous mind, long inundated by said societal paradigms. The slander infiltrates my physicality and, on days that I don’t have clients, I get to feeling like an awkward hindrance wherever I go –  “useless” in a world where generating lots of money in ways that deplete my spirit has come to define my worthiness, or at least that’s how the story goes. In direct conflict to that story is another paradigm that I also happen to be deeply entrenched in. The one that tells me that money is “bad – the root of all evil”. What a shit show!

There was a time in my life that I worked 3 jobs, 7 days a week. And for what? Surely not for personal joy or fulfillment. Hell no. I did it for money because society tells me that the more of it I have, the more valuable I am. Concurrently, my familial paradigms told me that having lots of money meant that I would be arrogant. And so, equipped with a stifling work schedule, my hard-earned and learned martyr syndrome and addictions, I drank and smoked all the money away, on a miserable hamster wheel for years, slowly killing myself as I tried to align to polar paradigms.

Fast forward to about 6 months ago, when I thought I was having a nervous breakdown. Accustomed to working 5 days one week and 6 days the next, this schedule was normalized, and a noble expression of popular culture’s standards – having 2 consecutive days off felt superfluous. I had myself on Olive Flower Essence for burnout – nervous exhaustion from excessive slogging. I didn’t feel burnt out as of yet, but was getting there and figured that taking Olive would help me achieve deeper rest. As it turns out, Olive FORCED me to slow down by near burnout, which came to a head in a precise moment. There I was, sitting across from my fourth client of the day, distinctly aware of something rising inside of me – like a tidal wave coming up to drown me with its pleading swell. Something was screaming inside – it’s miraculous that I heard each word my client shared as this scream intensified. What was the scream saying? And then I heard it: “I’M GONNA LOSE MY SHIT!” Shortly thereafter, I wound up in my doctor’s office asking about a stress leave, to which she said no, it would cause me more stress than good and I should reduce my working hours instead. Since then, I no longer work Thursdays. Permanently. And I refuse to bend on that even while my paradigms flare up telling me that I don’t do enough – that I’m lazily hanging out at the pit stops of the rat race, a joker of a participant who walks while everyone else runs.

It’s time to make my life look how I actually want it to look, not how I think it should fit with the expectations of our society. If slogging doesn’t equate financial freedom in my case, then why slog? Life is fleeting and full of beautiful moments that are worth being shared, not missed because I have too much to do.

And so here I am, working on these deeply rooted, insidious paradigms around joy and money.

A couple weeks ago I had no clients, which means I didn’t get paid. Previously, I would have slunk away home, isolating myself to bathe in this idea that I must not be good enough or have any value to offer this world. But instead, I decided to function within the law of opposites. Feeling like a blight on the fabricated prototype of professional success, I took a pile of posters I’d had printed with a Reflexology offer for Edmonton service professionals and I stomped around downtown, stopping in at umpteen businesses to ask if they’d put my poster up in their staff area. And do you want to know how that felt? Terrible. It felt terrible because I felt terrible. I was sure I’d show up and express my request only to be laughed out the door because obviously, I’m a pointless contributor to this unremitting urban sprawl – do my insecurities not precede me? Apparently they don’t, because 23 of my posters got hung up that day. And you know what happened the following week? I was almost fully booked. Why? Because success actually has nothing to do with how busy I am, how much money I make or how much I sacrifice myself – success is a mindset. If I continue reacting in the face of perceived failure the way that I always have, then I can expect more of the same results. So I took those feelings of failure related to old, shitty paradigms and I stuck it to them! I let them know, by my action, that I heard them, but that they are not allowed to direct the show of my life! “Move aside false failure”, I said, in an unpretentious inner voice, “we’re doing this anyway!” And I did it anyway even though I didn’t want to.

Here’s a video I shot on that day in the midst of my discomfort:

Here’s the thing – something that I am FAR from integrating, but which I know damn well to be true: financial abundance AND enjoyment of life can coexist. In other words, no one need work – even at a job they love – 6-7 days a week at the expense of the finer things in life, like relationships, connection, travel and rest. The only way I’ll ever be able to achieve this reality is by changing my mind. And that’s what I plan to do. One of the ways I plan to do this is by the law of opposites – whenever my mind tells me to do what I’ve always done – to slink away from the limelight of my life – from my wildest dreams and aspirations including the potential for a luscious professional practice, I’m going to act in opposition to that. In so doing, I change the energy and challenge my inherited belief construct. Money, contrary to what I learned in my life (“must be nice”, “money doesn’t grow on trees”, “the meek shall inherit the earth”) is NOT “bad”. Nor is downtime and enjoyment. So move aside shitty paradigms because you’re being re-written. Right now.

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Freedom!

I recently had a really cool experience whereby I recognized that I’m an adult and have the luxury of particular freedoms that I sometimes don’t even exercise! So I made this video to express my excitement about one of these particular freedoms, and to point at how living in freedom is often ONLY stopped up by the stories in our heads, which we habitually adhere too.

Also, my boobs look super big in this video! It’s an optical illusion!

Giddy up folks! Do what you want! You have the right to choose, so exercise it, and tell your meddling mind to move on over!
FREEDOM!

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Smashy Cars & Seedy Bars

I really appreciate my 1998 Toyota Camry with tape deck, dirty interior, yucky exterior color and a smashy body. I affectionately call it “my smashy car”. It warrants that name due to the front driver’s side being all smashed in in front of the door. This happened because a concrete pillar was in my blind spot as I pulled out of my stall in a parkade about 3 years ago. I smashed the rear-view mirror pretty good that day too. Said smash-in with a concrete pillar causes the door to creak when I open it and rust now creeps around parts of the smash where the paint came off. My steering wheel and brakes creak and squeak too. I clean smashed off the passenger-side rear-view mirror while pulling out of my narrow garage door during winter months a while back too. It wasn’t anything good ol’ crazy glue couldn’t fix (crazy glue has kept it adhered now for multiple years – oh yes), but you can see the crack where the mirror is being held on and a shallow, hollow hole on the upper side. The other thing about my smashy car is that it attracts bird poop. It’s like a giant bulls-eye for birds, pooping from the air.  I don’t know why. Everytime I clean the bird poop off, more appears. I don’t fuss to clean it off – it lends character to an already repute chariot.

Me with friends at the Strathcona Hotel, one of my favorite seedy bars, circa 1996

My smashy car kind of reminds me of seedy bars, which I also have noted appreciation for. When I was a drunk, I enjoyed the seedy bars way more than the classy ones. You know, the bars that stink of sour, skunky beer from years of spillage and that have your token wallflower patrons whose best friend is the bartender. I never much appreciated clubs that dripped with pretentious hook-up vibes, where stiletto shoes and bulging biceps were like the unspoken entry code. I liked rubbing shoulders and sharing drinks with folk whose clothes and skin were a little dirty, hair unkempt and beards too long.
There was this seedy bar I used to attend regularly back in the day called Mona Lisa, right by my apartment on 118th avenue. The bartender was a woman who looked like she washed her hair in olive oil, her smile comparable to an old picket fence. My buddy Dan and I would go, drown in Pilsner and sing karaoke, much to the enchantment of the handful of patrons, who were otherwise gathering dust. I would sing Daniel by Elton John as a lyrical memento to my friend and my favorite karaoke song of all time, White Room by Cream.

Here’s the parallel: character. My smashy car and seedy bars are both brimming with character. But more than just character – REAL character. Raw character. Rough around the edges character. To me, these are the celebrations of life. The stinks, smashes, dirt and grime are indicative of wear and tear, and wear and tear is indicative of living. A type of living that doesn’t always go well, is unpolished and messy, ugly, but serving a valuable purpose and getting from point A to point B anyway, despite appearances. Smashy cars and seedy bars are symbolic of vulnerability and the coarseness of humanity. They don’t fit into any conspicuous or grandiloquent mould and sometimes, they are unabashed in their crudity, which is my favorite expression of all. Because that expression of unabashedness, is an expression of humility. And humility, a spiritual principle, is what keeps us on an equal playing field with one another. Humility is the glue of connectivity.

Seedy bars are not my scene anymore – I’ve found healthier ways of celebrating mine and others’ authenticity. One of these ways is to unabashedly ride around in my smashy car. Doing so is one ordinary attempt to stay mobile in that which is real and raw.

 

 

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Introductory Special at Lifestyle Meditation

I just had a conversation with my colleague Jackie here at Lifestyle Meditation. It went something like this:

Jackie: “Have I told you how much I love my job?”
Me: “No, tell me.”
Jackie: “I love my job.”
Me: “Me too. I love what I do.”

I really do. And I love that I get to share what I do with Edmonton via the Lifestyle Meditation community.

In celebration of this new venture, I am offering an Introductory Special:

Receive 15% OFF your first treatment with me at Lifestyle Meditation through the month of July. This is applicable to all Flower Essences Initial & Follow-Up Appointments, Reflexology & Reiki. Please quote my “Introductory Offer” in order to receive your special, reduced rate.
Click for more information about my services and pricing

Please contact Lifestyle Meditation to book your appointment on 780.761.3620 or you can contact me directly via email at info@rawberta.com

I look forward to serving you.

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The Road Less Travelled

Last week I had a client who compared her experiences to this famous portion of the poem The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – 
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

A week ago, my sister Maureen posted the same portion of poem on social media, and I thoughtfully “Liked” it. It makes me think of my life’s roads.

I regularly struggle to reconcile within myself one of the roads that I chose. I was barrelling down this road at high speeds long before I became conscious of it.

I’m a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. Today, I haven’t had to use mind-altering substances for almost 4 years. Nearing the end of my attempted self-annihilation, I was deeply enmeshed in dark, destructive behaviors, many of which I was carrying out in secret. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t stop doing what I was doing.

Picture by Linda Patterson

I remember my last rock bottom like it was yesterday: I’d driven to Grande Prairie, where I’m from, for a friend’s wedding. My son was 4 at the time. On the road there, I repeated a mantra that went like this: “I’m just gonna take it easy this weekend.” I’d really had enough of my own demise and was in profound pain from being so entirely spent but compulsively and uncontrollably using drugs and alcohol anyways. But an addict, disordered by their addiction, thrives at deceiving themselves.

At that stage of my addiction, I had thrown out all of my drug paraphernalia because in the depth of my self-deception, I thought that would deter me from using drugs. And so I would constantly seek out pop or beer cans and make pipes out of them. I was grossly ashamed and would stash my home-made pipes until I’d inevitably end up angrily putting them in one or two plastic bags and tying them off to conceal the smell, then trashing them. This was followed by my robotically seeking out another can and repeating the same thing.

Arriving in Grande Prairie for the weekend that I had tried to convince myself would be one of ease and manageability, I immediately found a can in my parent’s basement. I secretly used it beneath my old bedroom window, around the corner of the house at the back, like an outcast – having outcasted myself into a pit of disdain long before that moment. Being under that window reminded me of all the times I’d snuck out of the house at night when I was a teenager – back then, this behavior wasn’t as much of a dirty secret. It was deceptively exhilarating, “cool” and fun. This time, the fun had long ended and I felt like a louse, creeping around corners, hiding what I’d become. A slave to my own decay. I stashed the can pipe around that secret corner and snuck there every 2-3 hours. This continued until the wedding ceremony. By the time I got to the dinner portion of the celebration, I thought I’d “take the edge off” with a drink. Such is the hamster wheel of addiction: not liking how I felt, I would seek to change those feelings with something that repressed them, only for the feelings to pop up later, and so I’d have to chase the repressing agents all over again. Repress, repeat, repress, repeat. A tiring and cumbersome existence. Soon I was double fisting and “taking it easy” became, yet again, a mantra of wishful thinking.

My parents arrived to pick up my son so I could continue with the debauchery. The pain that I feel even now as I recount that part of the story churns in my belly – putting the debauchery before my son. So desperately wanting my love for him to translate into action, but being a captive of my dependency instead. My enslavement had been in the driver’s seat for a long time.

I had bought a white and blue dress for that wedding, strapless and thin, the wispy fabric flowing down my legs, concealing their wobbliness – or at least that’s what I had convinced myself of. I loved that dress from the moment I saw it through a shop window on Whyte Avenue. It was elegant – like a fluent doily. The contrast was striking to me as this elegant sheath contained the epitome of crudeness. I made my rounds from one social scenario to the next, deeply insecure about my unmanageability and never quite making any sense. Soon I was spilled out onto a dirty bathroom floor. Again. I felt worried about my white dress getting dirty, but was completely unable to lift my poisoned body. The toilet seat was a cold, hard pillow. Again. I hated this existence more deeply than ever before. Maureen was also at this wedding. Having discovered me, some common friends summoned her to my rescue. Again.  (Bless you Maureen. It was never your responsibility to collect the debris of my self-absorbed downward spiral.) She made her way into the bathroom stall and repeated the tiresome routine of holding my hair back, forcing me to drink water, and soldiering me onto my feet while I cursed her ungraciously. She helped me to a camper somewhere close by and arranged me on a bed. Inside that camper, I was unable to move or speak. My head was spinning. Again. I felt ashamed – unable to do anything for myself. Again. People came in and out of the camper regularly, some partaking in drugs that were on the table, drinking, being rambunctious and crass. There was another guy passed out in the camper too, and every time the camper emptied of everyone but us, he’d try to make small talk, but I couldn’t talk. He was the owner of the camper and Maureen had earlier told me that he and his partner had a young son – somewhere in the avenue of 8 to 10 years old. Someone made mention of the boy, wondering where he was. His dad called out his name and, to my horror, a vulnerable, shaky voice answered from the bunks above. That moment shook me in a way that is hard to put into words. All the while, this young boy was being exposed to this chaotic, confusing, irresponsible debauchery – quietly hiding in the bunk in the middle of the night amidst circumstances that made it impossible to sleep, rest or feel safe. The potential of that being my son was a blessed and harrowing admonition that cut right through my inebriation. In that moment, my spirit broke in a way that I never knew before and I haven’t had to know since.

Eventually, even though there was a shuttle service for drunks like me, my other sister Katherine was called to come collect me. This intensified my shame because now Katherine was being inconvenienced and made to pick up my broken pieces too. Again. (Thank you Katherine. Nor was it ever your responsibility to gather my wreckage.) When she arrived and began helping me walk out of the camper to the vehicle, I managed to ask “Where’s Katherine?” I had no idea that she was right beside me, carrying me.

That night was gross. My unrestful sleep was no comfort to the shaken state of my spirit and the riddled state of my body and mind. The drive back to Edmonton the next day was painful. The emotional turmoil that followed is unforgettable. That wedding was on June 8th, 2013. The last time I used a mind-altering substance was June 22nd, 2013.

The way I see it, I took 2 roads less travelled.

1. The road of addiction. It seemed to me that most of my peers – especially those who had kids – were slowing down over the years. I kept thinking that something – anything – and most especially becoming a mother – would slow me down too. It didn’t. Nothing did. In fact, motherhood had sped me up and caused me to start acting out in secret. The fun had become bondage and I didn’t know how slowing down was even an option. The majority of people who try alcohol or drugs don’t turn into addicts.

2. The road of recovery. The meeting rooms of addiction recovery are relatively low in numbers considering how many millions of people struggle with addiction. Many die of or in the throes of their addictions. Working a program of recovery that keeps one away from their addictive behaviors is not only a success, it’s a fucking miracle. The majority of those that suffer from addiction don’t make it into recovery.

Photo by Linda Patterson

It’s easy to say that road #2 has “made all the difference” for me and in my life. That’s undeniable. But I’ve always had difficulty believing that road #1 “made all the difference”. I’ve often rolled my eyes at such commentary as “if you didn’t do all that, you wouldn’t be who you are today”, but that periodically irritating commentary is true. Suffering particular types of pain makes us more able to offer empathy and compassion to others who suffer similar types of pain. I had to learn empathy a really hard way, but I had to learn empathy. And I’m so glad I did. I wouldn’t take it back for a second. And had I not struggled in the grip of addiction and then struggled so much and for so long to get into recovery, I wouldn’t have learned about surrender, faith, humility, perseverance, commitment, discipline and integrity. Listing all those auspicious lessons makes me certain that road #1 made all the difference.

And so…

Three roads converged in the woods of my life, and I –
I took the ones less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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On Willingness

Willingness has been a thematic undertone lately. Yesterday I spoke with 3 clients about willingness. Willingness is a spiritual principle defined as “the quality or state of being prepared to do something”, and I love it. I love willingness because it’s such simple action that I can take in the face of immobilization.

We often become immobilized upon our paths due to fear. My latest example is about online dating, which I have often had a bad attitude about, but things are changing in that realm due to willingness. About a week ago, feeling fettered by the land of online dating, I consciously bumped up against an unwelcome pattern. It seems I’ve historically radiated towards 2 different types of men in the last several years. The first is a man who looks good but is incapable of celebrating humanity and imminently rejects me. Man #1 checks his hair in the mirror more than I do. I attract the second type of man when I take my appreciation of humanity too far. Man #2 is on an entirely different playing field than me, playing an entirely different game and doesn’t even wash his hair. It’s ok to be on different fields than others, but while primary partnership shopping, I hope to find someone who shares my fundamental values.

For me, dating and intimate relationships with men has been a painful and arduous journey of trying to force square pegs into round holes – always beating the paths of most resistance. After recognizing this pattern, a visual appeared before my mind’s eye: the middle path. The middle ground. The ground of relatability, true humanity and “normalcy”. The path I have never trodden. The path that meets the other 2 relentlessly beaten paths in the middle. The path of least resistance. As I tried to visualize myself stepping onto this path, a fiery anger rose up in me and, like a child in the throes of a temper tantrum, my bad attitude swept in, spouting things like “I HATE online dating!”, “This sucks!”, “Ugh!!” (with accompanying eye-rolls and exasperated sighs). In my meditation, I could not bring myself to set feet upon this path, which felt shameful, ironic and self-deprecating. Why, upon finally seeing the path of least resistance, would I vehemently reject it, insisting instead on trodding through the stenchy muck of most resistance? It didn’t seem to make sense. I’ve been keeping myself, most forcefully, from that which I desire the most. Ouch.

After some shock and brief petulance, here’s the solution I came up with: I visually gathered my fuzzy blanket and slippers and I laid down at the outset of the path. Willingness. In the past, I would have tried to berate myself onto the path, shaming myself for what seems like avoidance of the obvious. In this shaming, I’ve propagated my own resistance to the path because I’m sure it comes as a surprise to no one that reproach and degradation have never proved progressive. And so today I’ve decided to relinquish those old, ineffective ways. Gently, I allow myself to get comfortable at the mouth of the middle ground. I give myself permission to be where I’m at – to not resist resistance. And lo and behold, a day or so after simply allowing myself to lie down and rest at the start of the path, my visual allows me to set foot on the path. Just one foot. Willingness.

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What are Flower Essences?

Flower Essences are, by far, one of my favorite things.

Let’s clear up some misconceptions right away: Flower Essences are NON-aromatic and are remedies that are ingestible by mouth. In other words, Flower Essences are NOT aromatherapy and each remedy smells exactly the same.

Flower Essences are plant spirit medicine – the spirit energy of flowers captured in solution.

Flower Essences are the brain and heart child of Dr. Edward Bach, a medical doctor, homeopath and bacteriologist whose career spanned from 1906 to 1936, when he died in his sleep at the tender age of 50. Known for his creation of 7 bacterial nosodes used in the practice of homeopathy, in 1930, Bach became assured that there was a more subtle way to treat his patient’s ailments over and above the modern medical model, which he found to be crude and invasive. The premise of his outlook on treating individuals more subtly, is that illness is the result of discord between the purpose of the soul and the actions and mental paradigms of the person.

In 1930, Bach abandoned his lucrative medical practice for the countryside and fields of England, where he intuitively discovered his remedies over a dedicated 4 year period. Bach’s discovery started with his personal experimentation of holding his hands over the flowers he was studying while in the throes of difficult emotions. In this way, he would connect to the energy of the flowers until he found the one that alleviated his emotional discord. In spring and summer, Bach psychically connected to plant spirit, and in winter, he treated patients for free. Bach discovered that the dawn’s sunlight could infuse dew drops on flower petals with the healing energy of that flower, so he began testing the remedies by gathering those potent dew drops and preserving them for ingestion. As this practice progressed, the amount of dew collected was not enough, so he suspended flowers in spring water and used a sun-infusion method that is still employed today.

Water has memory and the ability to hold energetic charge. This is the basis for the way by which Flower Essences work. Since our bodies and cells are made up of more than 75% water, when we ingest plant spirit medicine, the energy of the medicine resonates throughout the water of our cells. Resonance is when vibrational frequency matches an endogenous state of being, therefore enhancing the charge of that state and allowing it to be brought to the forefront. For example, there is vibrational frequency associated with the quality of confidence – think about it: how does it feel to be in the presence of a confident person versus a person with low self-esteem? Feels different doesn’t it? Well, there is also a flower essence that holds within its water the resonant quality of confidence (there are a few actually). When you ingest that flower essence, the energy of confidence resonates throughout your cells, awakening your innate human capacity to be confident and amplifying that capacity, thereby drawing it to the conscious forefront of living. As these innate qualities get drawn forward with the use of Flower Essences, they also move through all the limiting beliefs that are keeping those innate qualities repressed. This facilitates profound awareness around the precise nature of such limiting paradigms and how they have been keeping us stuck.

What do I do with Flower Essences?

I am like a “flower interpreter”. I work with about 155 Flower Essences and have spent the past 11 years learning about the qualities of each one, both intellectually and experientially. When I meet with someone for the 1st time, I conduct an interview process that takes about 75 minutes. Within this interview process, I gather information about you and your life. We talk about values, goals for change, core wounds and paradigms: what is important to you and how would you like to see your life and your inner landscape change? What is your story? I love holding space for the stories of others and I do so with utmost respect and reverence. What are the core wounds that were created within that story that you hold to so firmly that they’re getting in the way? This does not mean that pain, anger or loss are not relevant or legitimate, nor is there ever any attempt to diminish your experiences. How have your core wounds and experiences shaped the paradigms you currently have? For example, the most common paradigm set that gets in the way of our living a joyful and fulfilled life is the “not enough” paradigm set: not good enough, smart enough, attractive enough, successful enough, etc.
Once I gather all relevant information about you and your life, I match flowers – anywhere from 1 – 5, just for you, and make them into a custom blend. I then send you off to ingest this blend for about 30 days, which is considered one cycle. I will ask you to come back in 6-weeks for a follow-up, where we will discuss your experiences, the state of your goals and how to move forward.

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