“The Word Wants To Be Written”

Lately I have been feeling a push from spirit to express more of myself, to quit holding back and open up my throat chakra. The card I repeatedly pick from my Oracle deck is: “The word wants to be written”… My interpretation of this is that I need to share my truth/authenticity/purpose, etc… with the world. To be honest, this freaks me out not just a little. But who ever said sharing “the word” was easy? Not anybody who was actually doing it, that’s for sure. I don’t care what anyone says, being completely raw, vulnerable and authentic is the hardest thing for anybody to do.

I NEVER share my truth and nothing but my truth on Facebook or anywhere, but apparently this is what spirit wants of me. And to be honest, I’m quivering a little with fear as I type this. I keep trying to talk myself out of actually posting it. I’ll tell you why: I’m terrified of what people think of me. My stomach literally hurts when someone judges or disapproves of me. It’s not like it used to be (thank God), if it were I would not be typing this right now. I like to tell myself I don’t care what people think, but I do. I don’t think that it is possible for people not to care what other people think. We all care to an extent, and I think it’s important that we do. To not care what other people think is to not care about other people. And not caring about other people is exactly what has caused a large amount of the suffering in the world today. 

There is a difference between caring about what someone thinks, and allowing what they think to influence your relationship with yourself. The goal isn’t to stop caring, the goal is to become whole enough inside of yourself that you are not blown away by another’s disapproval. It may still hurt, but knowing that it’s okay to hurt is part of embracing your own spirit.

Today I’m going to talk about something that is hard for me to talk about. And I’m going to because I’ve been struggling with it and I know it’s a source of shame for many people, especially women. This shame has to do with body image.

My relationship with my body has been a painful one for most of my life. I have experienced the deepest darkest depths of shame where my body is concerned. I know now that this shame is a mixture of suppressed emotional trauma, as well as the beliefs that have been passed on to us from family and through society about the way our bodies should look. The message we receive over and over, whether it is intentional or unintentional is that to be truly happy, loved and accepted we must look, act and behave in a certain way. Well, I am one person that took this to heart, and let me tell you, it is a life destroying belief to have. I have been working really hard for 8 years of my life trying to change this belief (among many others), while simultaneously resisting the current state of my body. Ever heard the saying “What you resist persists”? Well, it’s true.

I cannot learn to love my body or myself, for that matter, if I am in a state of resistance to my body or myself. This goes for everyone, whether your issue is about weight, pain or illness. Our bodies are AMAZING. They are a fountain of physical, spiritual, mental and emotional information. They hold ALL of the information we need to know about ourselves. This means that every emotional and physical trauma we experience in life can get stuck inside of the body and cause all kinds of issues, from physical to mental. When our bodies are not in physical alignment (weight, pain, illness, etc…), it is because we have unacknowledged/unhealed emotional trauma sitting inside of us. Some of these are fear, sadness, grief, shame, guilt, anxiety, anger, rage, etc… And most of them are from childhood, usually pre-birth – 8 years old. That age range is the origination of most, if not all of our trauma, because we are primarily emotional beings at that time.

Our bodies are not logical, they are emotional. Extra weight can be there because we unconsciously feel the need for protection. Or it can be self-hatred in the form of self-sabotage and self-punishment, (overeating would be a symptom of this, as well as feeling a lack of something and trying to fill the void with food)… For me, it is all of these things. Our bodies are extremely complex and vast, a universe unto themselves.

I have to give myself credit here, especially because I tend to focus on what I haven’t done, rather than what I have done. I really have come a long way in healing my relationship with my body/myself and with food. I really had to focus on becoming aware of and feeling all of the stuffed emotions in my body. As well as acknowledge and start to change the negative imprints/beliefs I’ve carried around about myself, my body, food and the world in general. I’m not going to sugar coat this, it is just as hard as it sounds! BUT I’ve done it. I AM doing it and will continue to do it for the rest of my life! It is a journey, after all. I know there are many of you out there doing it as well! If we can do it, anybody can do it. 

The only thing that has gotten me this far is commitment. Commitment to my spirit and my joy (which are really one and the same). I have found that committing to the self/spirit is a constant commitment to re-commit when you get out of alignment! And it takes a WHOLE LOT of courage, trust and prayer! I also know that if we REALLY want to, no matter how hard it is, we CAN do it with the help of spirit. This goes for ANYTHING!