Fatherless Sons and Daughters

In the 60′s almost 90% of families included a father in the home. Today, that number has decreased to closer to 40%. And of those families with no father in the home, at least 1/3 never have any contact with their father at all.

Studies have been done on the relationship between families with both parents in the home and life success as related to education, income, and need for social services.

But what is seldom addressed, mostly because it’s so hard to define, is differences between emotional well being in those raised with both parents versus those raised with an absent parent.

You Don’t Need a Study to Tell You

But you don’t need a study to tell you about yourself of your life. We all have a story about what life was like growing up. And we all have a story about what that has meant to us, how it has shaped who we are.

I lost my mother to cancer when I was 16. My children have not heard from their father for close to 7 years. Is this a good or a bad thing?

Giving Yourself Space For What Is

It’s not about good or bad. I think it’s about setting aside a space to allow what is, what feelings are there anyway, to rise and flow through.

This is a way we can truly honor the life our parents gave us and find some peace for ourselves, no matter if we’ve had a great family life growing up, a messed up family life growing up, or experienced a complete absence of our father or mother.

Yes, Get Support

You don’t have to do it alone, get some help. There are so many gifted healers, counselors, coaches, ministers, and energy workers who can help support you so you feel safe as you process any pain, shame, guilt, anger or mixed up feelings about a parent. Many are qualified to help you learn how to reparent yourself so that you may experience a loving, caring, accepting parental voice inside yourself.

Choose wisely, but get support on your journey.

A Few Ideas For This Weekend

Be gentle with yourself. What we experienced in childhood can feel like a giant basket of tangled yarns. It can take awhile to sort, detangle and reorganize.

Journaling, meditation, and sharing with a close and trustworthy friend are all good basics to help ease unresolved feelings that might arise this weekend.

Here are a few more ideas:

Take things slowly, feel your way through your activities and watch your expectations and self-talk. Events that involve family can ignite inner voices from the past. Holding your safety and comfort as #1 priority can really help.

Find an easy, artistic pursuit such as collage, or doodling that you might enjoy but not take too seriously. With the mind soft and the hands active, often something that is going on “underneath” can flow through and out more easily.

Get outdoors and breathe deeply. Enjoy nature, walk, stretch. Taking care of your body will help give you the foundation to process emotions.

Stay hydrated! As you process emotions, your entire body is changing. Giving it plenty of water to do it’s healing work, will make everything work more easily.

Finally, be nice to yourself. I don’t say this lightly. I honestly know how challenging this one can be. Just try. In this instance, trying does indeed count…for a lot.

Making Peace With Mother’s Day

For Some, Mother’s Day is Anything But Happy

I’ve seen a lot of Mother’s Day appreciation messages, which is delightful to see. But in contrast, I’ve been hearing sadness, frustration and uncertainty from clients in regard to their own feelings as a mother, a daughter, a son, or a husband in anticipation of a holiday that is by all rights, a set-up for misunderstanding, unfulfilled expectations, and the ghosts of unhappy childhoods past.

Mother’s Day’s dirty little secret is that it is seldom truly Happy Mother’s Day. Instead, it can be a wrestling match between what we don’t want to do, what we think we should do, and the discomfort we feel when our own “inner child” revolts against putting that smile on his or her face and honoring a parent who hasn’t honored our true needs.

How do you decide what to give, where to go, how to celebrate Mother’s Day? Do any of you agonize over what expression to choose, a card, flowers, breakfast, a gift? And how about those of you who had harsh or uncaring childhoods, do you fight an internal batte as whether you honor your mother and feel out of integrity or act the way you feel and suffer the judgement of your parents, siblings, friends, church or society?

We Need a Good Mother, It Just May Not Be The One We Were Born To

Before making any decisions about the actions or tokens of Mother’s Day, I suggest getting present to the deep need we have for the attributes of Mother that we truly do need, if we are to become mature and masterful people.

We need support. We need love, guidance, nurturing, confidence, encouragement, comfort.  As human beings, we need these qualities. I do, you do. Without them, we can’t provide them to our own children, partners, friends.

But the current situation may be that the parents of our family or birth may simply not be capable of providing us with these things. We can rail against what is, or we can detach and look to discovering how we can get our need for mothering met.

Discovering Our Inner Mother

The qualities of Mother, the nurturing, comforting, loving is not limited by any one person. Those qualities are available to us at any time. And through dedicated self-work, they can be expressed as our Inner Mother, caring and healing our Inner Child meeting our needs for love, acceptance, encouragment.

When we discover ways to get our own needs met, then making decisions about cards, breakfast, travel, or gifts becomes simple, clean, appropriate to the situation and aligned with what our soul wants; peace.

No, It’s Not Quite That Neat and Tidy, But It’s a Start

Making peace with Mother’s Day is an ongoing process but you can start this year by first being as caring to yourself as possible, then making any decisions that need to be made.

When you take time to get in touch with what your own inner child does need, still needs, and look to Inspiration to find ways to meet those needs, Mother’s Day can become a day of peace.

 

The Easy Way to Confidence

You tired of all the “pump you up” approach to getting more confidence? But yet, if the truth be told, you still wish you had a bit more confidence in your back pocket to pull out when you need?

Well, I have something fun for you today and an announcement about a repeat of my Confidence When It Counts class, that people enjoyed so much. And this time, I’m partnering with my mentor, Carolyn Wilson-Elliott from Quantum Spirit International, who brings the body-wisdom piece to the table, deepening the ease with which you can instantly feel more confident.

We’re sure to have some fun, some ah-ha moments and a bonus of some real time, one-on-one face time, no obligation, with either Carolyn or myself for the first 20 who sign up for their own personal mini-session after the telecall.

If you want to go straight to signing up for Confidence When It Counts, pop open the registration window here.

Confidence The Easy Way

Most people think that confidence comes when you experience some level of success on the outside. And while that may be true, for building a competence in some aspect of ourselves or skillset we practice certainly can lead to confidence, the alternative can be true as well.

(Perceived) failure at any one skill can have you experiencing doubt and fear which undermines confidence.

But what few people realize is that confidence really has much less to do with what has happened or we have pproven in the past and what we think or remember in the present.

What do Gamblers Have to Do With Confidence?

I’ll be going into this in more depth on the telecall, but here’s the snapshot. It’s all about what we (think) we remember. A research project with gamblers found that when gamblers are on a winning streak, they are not thinking about losing (that seems kind of obvious, right).

Not so obvious is what they found out about gamblers on a losing streak; they can’t remember ever winning! For them in that losing streak, memories of winning just aren’t available at that time.

Remind You of Anyone? It Does Me!

Haven’t you ever experienced a time when you just felt lost, you couldn’t remember a single thing you’d done well or right? Maybe you couldn’t remember a time when you felt good about yourself or your abilities?

I know I’ve had this happen to me.

So How Can You Use This To Your Advantage?

Right now, you can find a quiet space, either on the outside, or create it for yourself on the inside and ask, “when was the last time I felt good about things”?

Remember that time. Begin to see and remember and feel the details. What was going on? Who was there? What were you doing? What was it like?

Take a breath and notice, did you just experience a little shift? You like it?

The Full Experience

Great! You just shifted your level of confidence and it was easy, with no need to “push” or “effort” involved. Now you can tackle what’s next on your plate from a new level of confidence and it all came from you! It can be that easy and that gentle.

Sometimes the shift can be greater when you are in the presence of others who hold that bigger space for you. I hope you’ll come join us, pen and paper in hand and let me guide you through the full experience. Carolyn will be on hand to offer even more help with the body wisdom components of this. You’re sure to have a good time and find yourself feeling lots more confident in an easy and gentle way, no “pump you up” involved!

Go here to register.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Are You Prepared For Love?

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
Plato

Love, the expression of love and the acceptance of love, doesn’t happen by accident.

The way we express love and accept love is often more a reflection of how we were raised than an indicator of our true, inner capabilities to give and receive love.

So if you want to change your experience of love, not only through that special someone, but through all your relationships, as well, you must prepare yourself for love.

Prepare Yourself to Be Loved

People, even that special someone, can attempt to share their love and esteem for you through words, deeds, and gestures all day. But unless you have prepared yourself to accept their gifts of love, you won’t recognize what they do, say, or give to you as love.

You must expand your capacity to recognize and accept love. So I ask you, what helps put you in a receptive space?

Do you need to reflect and possibly forgive yourself for something that can open a space for others to give to you? Do you need to make amends with another so you feel deserving of love from others? Do you need to care for yourself in some way so you will recognize caring gestures from another?

Prepare Yourself to Love

Loving others can be challenging. It’s easy to feel loving when the other person is behaving in a pleasing manner or is meeting expectations.

But people and situations are inherently imperfect. Can you express love to someone when they aren’t meeting your expectations; when they’re late, or make mistakes, or seem distracted?

I’m not advocating accepting inappropriate behavior. I’m talking about when someone is different; when they express different opinions, or make different life choices than you, or than you would want for them.

If you are not feeling like you’re getting the love you want in your life, it may be time to look at what is getting in the way.

When the process of loving and being loved seems to go awry, it could be seen as an invitation to consider Love more closely. We clear and set the table to enjoy dinner, why not prepare for loving events too?

If your day of love wasn’t everything you hoped it would be, and you would like a little one-on-one support to explore how to create and tend a deeper space to experience love contact me for a no-charge, introductory session designed to look at what gets in the way of experiencing the love you want, and how to remove any blocks to that love. Call me at 541-488-1678 and ask to schedule your own introductory session.

Confidence When It Counts, A Presentation

If you missed Confidence When It Counts, here’s a 5 minute presentation version I did recently. Enjoy!

Confidence When It Counts, Part 1

Confidence When It Counts, Part 2

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