What is fierce grace?

 

 

Grace doesn't always come in ways we would expect. When we experience an act of kindness from someone right at the moment we are in need of it, we know it's grace. But there is also the kind of grace that comes from being broken open. This could mean illness, loss, confusion, despair... Sometimes we aren't willing to change until we've been brought to our knees. When grace is fierce, it smashes through our denial. Before grace, we are captive to fear. We mask it with behaviors like pride, arrogance, rigidness... After grace, we soften, become more open-minded and relinquish defeating behaviors.

Feeling connected

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When we allow ourselves to judge, blame, or practice a belief system that subscribes to guilt and punishment, our hearts are forced to live on a battleground. In taking responsibility for our part in things and no longer seeing ourselves as victims, in forgiving ourselves and others and by practicing compassion, our hearts will flourish and we will have put an end to the idea of separation...

Home is where we plant our heart

 

Many of us hide the parts of ourselves that we're ashamed of. We diminish who we are by becoming someone we're not. The persona I adopted at a young age was Ms. Nice Girl. I mastered my disguise so well that even I believed it. I put a smile on my pain and swallowed my feelings until my gut ached. But there came a day when I could no longer live a lie. The pain and emptiness I felt inside myself brought me to my knees. In surrendering myself to truth and the healing process, I began the journey home...

Our life lessons

 

We all get life lessons, whether we choose to acknowledge them or not. If we ignore them, they will reappear. Some people think they have bad luck. Not true! What they see as bad luck is actually the lesson they've been ignoring, popping up again. Reminder: lessons are gifts meant to enrich our lives by teaching us things such as forgiveness (especially for ourselves), making better choices, learning to love ourselves and sometimes our lessons force us into dealing with the emotional baggage we have cleverly buried from sight.

The best is yet to come

 

As women, we tend to put more focus on others than taking care of ourselves. We do it for various reasons: our upbringing, what society expects of us and because we're nurturers. We also do it for other reasons (whether we are aware of it or not): issues with unworthiness, a deterrent from looking at things we don't want to deal with, and an attempt to feel secure by being needed. In other words, we hustle for love and approval. To turn things around, we first learn to love ourselves (at least a little bit).

Making new dreams

 For a woman to claim her power, she makes peace with sorrow, broken dreams, dashed hopes and what she thought her life would be. Her aches and bruises heal, she creates new dreams, and other than her most cherished memories, she no longer holds unto the past.

A new rule book

 

I spent a lot of my life...

trying to color inside the lines,

ignoring the God-given gift called "intuition",

playing by rules that make no sense to my soul,

pleasing others rather than taking care of myself,

making myself small so others won't feel threatened.

And in the process, I lost myself...

But when I got sick and tired of the old rule book,

I threw it out and wrote a new one that goes like this...

I am kind to myself,

I don't care to be perfect,

I trust what my gut tells me,

and I let myself shine...

Things I've Learned

 

My daughter, Jody

I've learned that life is fragile, often messy, unpredictable, and gut-wrenchingly hard at times... 

I've also learned that no matter what life brings, it's up to me what I do with pain, hurt, loss...

I can choose to see the glass as half-empty or half-full...

I can feel victimized by my circumstances or find the gifts...

I can find the courage to look pain in the face or run from it...

I can look for something to fill in the missing pieces of my heart so that I won't have to feel the emotional insecurity that comes from losing so much family, especially a child... or build a strong foundation within myself so that I feel at peace with the emptiness...

This month marks 17 years since my daughter Jody, died...

I'm always reminded, especially around the holidays, that my parents, my brother, and my grandparents are gone too...

What I know to be true about loss is that pain heals, life goes on, and in-between the sorrow, joy continues to be woven into the threads of life...