“Just keep swimming” – Reflections from Leah Creates

When I first met Leah through Twitter, I was pretty sure I was going to like her. She was genuine, funny, and engaging. Shortly thereafter, I visited her blog and confirmed my suspicions that she was “my kind of people”. Since then Leah has become a good friend, and she is the wonderful technical genius behind the workings of this website! I’m sure you’ll enjoy Leah’s story, and when you’re done, scroll down to the beautiful free desktop Leah has created as this week’s gift! (Just right click on it and save it as your background.)

On Wednesday, September 16th, it will be two months since the day I quit my job. 

Two months! 

In the grand scheme of things, two months is a very small amount of time. Right now, though, two months feels like a pretty big deal. 

When I quit my job, I had enough money in my savings account to last me one month. One. There was no back-up plan. No family or spouse to fall back on. No 401k to cash in when the going got tough. It was sink or swim. 

And I chose swim. 

Here I sit, just a few days before the two-month mark, and the money that would have only lasted one month is still tucked safely away in my savings account. It’s been a very, very difficult few weeks financially, but I have done everything in my power to keep from touching that money. It’s a badge of honor for me – a measure of my success. It’s also the closest thing I have to a safety net. I know that when I touch that money, it’s the beginning of the end. When the money runs out, time has run out for this little adventure as well. Sometimes, on the scariest days, I remind myself, “The money is still there. I have at least another month.” 

These past few weeks, my strength has come from Disney-movie wisdom, IE Dory-the-fish: Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why I made this decision, and then I came across this quote (which I have put on a desktop background for you – see below):

 ”The only way to get what you really want, is to know what you really want.
And the only way to know what you really want, is to know yourself.
And the only way to know yourself, is to be yourself.
And the only way to be yourself is to listen to your heart.”
- Mike Dooley

Two months ago, my heart was breaking every day. My heart yearned for something more than the 8-5 that I was doing day in and day out. I loved that job once, but it was time to face facts: It was no longer serving me.  Is that a reason enough to quit, though? It really isn’t. Let’s be realistic – we don’t have jobs for the hell of it. We have jobs to pay the bills, to put food on the table. Throwing caution to the wind is foolish.

It’s also very brave.

I sat at my desk for weeks before quitting my job KNOWING with every fiber of my being that I was meant for something bigger. That I could do something that matters. My heart would not be quiet about that, and it only got louder. Eventually, I did exactly what Mike Dooley suggests. I listened to my heart. And I became myself. And I got to know myself. And I figured out what I really want.

I am two months into this journey and my head is still above water. Am I sure that I will never sink, always swim? I am not.

But I trust my heart to tell me when it’s time to move on.

And you, my friend… I hope that you will heed this advice as well. I hope you will listen to your heart when it tells you that something is no longer serving you. I hope you let it guide you into the scary unknown and I hope that when it comes time to sink or swim, you believe your heart when it tells you that you have what it takes to just keep swimming.

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Giving the gift of connection – Donna Bruschi

Donna Bruschi

This week’s guest is Donna Bruschi, one of my newest Twitter friends. Donna is offering a special gift especially for parents. First read what she says about discovering her own giftedness, and then scroll down to the bottom of this post to find out what she is offering to give you.

By way of introduction, here’s something fun about myself:  I had severe Post-partum Depression for a year and my son lived to tell the tale.  Seriously, I am the person who says “Why not? Let’s do it!” If you have something bold, fun or terrifying you want to do and you don’t want to do it alone–just ask me. I’m easy that way!

I have a gift for empathy, compassion and taking people on journeys deep within themselves where we visit their anguished, hurt selves. We go there together, learn or heal something and come back relieved and happy. I discovered that I had this gift when people started telling me how much I had helped them. I was just being me and they would experience this deep shift in their life. I watched my friends and family transform through my relationship with them. And each time I help someone I learn something important which helps me to grow. I became a Resonance Repatterning practitioner, a La Leche League Leader and a Communication Skills Instructor to have some tools to help others.

I share my gift because it helps me be a better person. I feel good. Second, I see people experience transformation through our connection. They feel more confident. They let go of grief. They become hopeful and want to help others. I want to share this connection on a wider basis. Third, I feel this external push beyond myself that is urgent, insistent and constantly pushing me to share. I think of how priests and nuns talk about “being called” It’s like that.

My biggest stumbling block was my fear of being labeled weird or crazy. I was shy about connecting. I thought I was being too intimate with others. I would grant them so much privacy that our friendship would be superficial and I would feel lonely. Another obstacle was that I didn’t take responsibility for myself. I was critical and blamed others for my unhappiness or my misfortune. Now, each roadblock is a teaching moment. I find the place in myself that needs to grow. I use my friends and my gifts to heal the places that need to heal and parent the places that need to grow. As I learn, I pass on what I have learned. With 3 Teens, I have hourly teaching moments….hence the Parenting Teens class.

Here’s a story about my transformation. A few years ago, my first boyfriend and I reconnected. We had an intense extra-marital affair that was totally outrageous in both premise and how we carried it out. We have a deep psychic connection–we can feel and hear each other even though we live 2000 miles apart. Our connection is way more sensitive than that I have with my kids. I am connected with my kids, but I can read Scott’s mind. We were both “happily married” at the time. We started by emailing each other. Within a few weeks, we were talking on the phone more than an hour a day. Over the next 6 years we met dozens of time flying or driving across the country for brief intense visits. We wrote thousands of pages of poems, love letters and journals about our connection. I ended up divorcing my husband and am now in another deep healing soul relationship. He separated from his wife for a year and ended up returning to connect closely with his kids and try to have a deep relationship with his wife. Before the relationship, we were both living without hope. We both felt we were victims of our spouses. Now we try to be compassionate and help them grow. We are confident using sensitivity, intimacy and connecting deeply with others outside of our relationship. We help others feel safe. When someone feels safe, they start to dismantle the big fence they have protecting their soul.

We still talk regularly and deeply. It is the easiest thing in the world to talk for hours. We are still intimate if not lovers. We are now empowered and open about our experience and our connection.

For others who are learning about their own gifts, it is important to connect with others. Help comes from others who cross your path. Make some new friends and spend some time with them. I have had really intense friendships with people that lasted briefly and then ended. We needed each other for a specialized piece of growth. Other friendships are more general. Volunteer work is a great vehicle for connection.

It can be helpful to keep a journal or send letters or document your growth in some way. This is nice because you change so much–you won’t believe it. Use the past tense as in ” I used to be afraid or I used to be critical” instead of putting yourself down. Listen to the voices in your head, (remembering that jumping off the Mid-Hudson bridge isn’t a good idea and putting your baby in the oven is a really bad idea. Don’t go there!). Your unconscious mind knows where you want to go and it knows how to get there and is constantly advising you. Messages come through in dreaming both awake and asleep.  Realize that those who criticize you are only afraid of something in themselves, not you, and be compassionate and gentle with them. Be kind with others and with yourself.

The biggest lesson I have learned is to ask for help. I encourage everyone to do this and I try to be as accessible as possible and model this both in the giving and in the asking.

Here’s Donna’s gift…

Parenting Teens

3 Free Facilitated Classes with Donna Bruschi

In each dynamic FREE Parenting Class with Legendary Mom and energy healer, Donna Bruschi, the unconscious blocks and energy patterns from your childhood that have held you back are allowed to shift using specific positive actions which virtually guarantee you’ll follow through and have success parenting your Teen …and you can do it in a group or by proxy at home, with privacy.

Here’s What’s in the Free Class:

• The 9 Part System for creating harmonious families
• The #1 thing that’s holding you back …and how you can banish it from your life forever.
• The subtle mental shift that successful parents use to get cooperation and respect.
• A short exercise that destroys your nagging skepticism and builds your momentum.

These classes are for parents who want to resolve a physical, emotional or mental problem, or who want their family to experience more security, love, ease, communication and joy. Whatever your need, the FREE Parenting Teens Repatterning Classes makes it possible to efficiently zero in on the unconscious patterns and energy blocks that keep You and your Teen stuck in repetitive problems.

More important than efficiency, is the heart connection we bring to each session. You are shifting with love, support and guidance.

Call Donna Bruschi at (845) 750-4402 to R.S.V.P.

or visit www.donnabruschi.com to sign up

A parent who was receiving her first Resonance Repatterning session looked at me and said, “I’ve had two years of therapy with my son. Only today, do I understand and feel ready to forgive him.”

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What this Chick Gives Away – A gift and reflection from Blisschick, Christine C. Reed

One of my newest blog & twitter friends is Christine C. Reed, otherwise known as @TheBlissChick. Christine blogs about creativity, yoga, dance, community, and furry animal friends at www.blisschick.net. She’s given some thought to the tension between what we give and what we sell, and in the end, SHE’S GIVING AWAY OUR FIRST GIFT here at whatareyougivingaway.com! 

Christine and Lilly

What This Chick Gives Away

A few years ago, I was having some difficulty with the concept of money.  To tell the truth, there was (and still is sometimes) a tiny AsceticChick who lived inside me who thought that commerce and money were Evil.

I think a lot of creative types are mistaken in this same way.  They think that the selling of their work is somehow a sullying of the work.  And yet, the selling of that work may free them from the bondage of a job that they hate, a job that takes them from their true calling.  The selling of their work gives them freedom.  This creates happier people — people who do what they love rather than what they Have To or Should — and the end result of that is a much happier Planet.

Two conversations happened that have forever changed my mind about commerce and money.

The first took place in an organic grocery store as I stood picking out some produce.  I was voicing my concerns over the money issue when a man I barely knew said to me:

“Money is just energy.  We exchange energy all the time.  Money is just an accepted form that we put our energy into so that we can exchange it for other people’s energy.”

Okay.  What?!  I had never thought of that.

The second conversation took place in my writing group.  One of the members said, out of the blue:

“It’s not having money that is bad.  It’s what people are willing to do for money that can be bad.”

This has all come up for me again, as I have recently decided to take my blogging work more seriously.

What does this mean?  I’m not completely sure yet, but I know it has something to do with valuing my work enough that I don’t always give it away for free.  There needs to be an energy exchange, as my acquaintance pointed out.

Doing what we love — giving away the gifts we’ve been born with — is all good, but we also need to be sure to respect ourselves enough that we are open to receiving as easily as we give away.

I think there has to be a balance.

For right now, a new part of my balance is introducing a workshop model for which I will be paid.

Creative Dig: Excavating Self Identify & Story through Paint, Clay, & Word is the baby of three women (ha!), including myself, Connie from Dirty Footprints, and Andrea, a clay artist from Cleveland.  You can find out more and sign up here.

Yet, another part of that balance is also continuing to put work out that for free — as in costs nothing — and knowing that the energy I get from that is of a different sort.

For example, a couple of months ago on Blisschick, I wrote a post about normal being boring, and I called forth an Eccentricity Revolution for Wild Women.  Readers really responded to the text of the Manifesto I had written, and I realized there was an opportunity to create a piece of art that could be hung in work, yoga, and creativity spaces to remind us of our essential natures.

Heidi of Daisybones did the graphic design for this piece that you can download for free:

You can also get a high resolution version for your desktop wallpaper here.

I’m wondering: What have you learned about balancing what you give away to the world?

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