It’s been a long road back to this place of where joy exists in my heart.

Joy doesn’t naturally stay with me everyday, and I am not good at pretending, so I know that it takes a commitment to not allow the old thought patterns in. I am in no way dark, but life has a way of sucking the joy out and casting a filter over your light to turn the world dark until you start to believe maybe this is just who I am.

Pain can take its toll, and yes physical pain became my obvious, but the deep seeded hurts and pains that I had hidden behind a lifetime of repeated words such as, “It’s okay” to the often passive-aggressive behaviors that were meant to be like razor blades to the heart hurt the most. All from people who could not see beyond the shadow and masks being passed off as their light. All to often we become the reflection of what others are unable to see in themselves.

I guess my back surgery was like the straw that broke the camel’s back. What has been the most freeing was the time capsule that broke wide open when my spine was taken apart to be reconstructed. Out came the pain metaphorically.  In a spiritual, energetic healing kind of way, all of life came seeping out, including the treasures of the pieces of myself I had long tucked away, hoping someday it would be safe enough to come out.

In this process of healing there was no escaping and saying it was too hard to do became a bullshit story. Why? Because living in the lifetime of pain was hard, but I had found a way to do that. Which would mean I also had the strength and the power to return to living well. But living well would require a whole new mindset! It to would take work but the difference was it would mean walking a new way leaving behind all that would have once motivated me.

No longer motivated by fear or pain, I had to stay motivated by faith and the joy of the life that is in waiting. The version of myself that’s been patiently waiting.

The higher self asks you to believe in something that goes against the obvious and asks you to not look back. Just keep moving forward! That’s not always easy when the old, familiar friends of the ego and shadow are screaming out for you to come back. Often with a story of how much you miss something or someone, or how life was easier. But the proof is in the truths that when you are willing to see clearly you realize how many lies you can tell yourself to go back.

The moment I went to look at these pictures the chatter began with the ability to be a reverse narcissist (beating your own self down), an internal bully and listening to the enemy of the mind. The judgement and criticism began creeping in. Memories started to create images of the best pieces of my previous self, then as quickly as it appeared, my higher self provided an image and a voice of grace. It was the voice of a future 83-year-old version of myself that started to speak with compassion to the 53-year-old woman I am today. Through her eyes I could hear grace say, “I could only wish to be as beautiful, young, and healthy as her.” In that moment my perspective shifted, and I said to myself, “This picture, this woman I am today, is the one that at the end of my life she will be so proud of this woman who chose to live in her own gifts.”

In the gathering of the proof to validate being sad and disappointed with myself for not looking like I once did, the old friend the ego omitted that the skinnier, younger version of myself may have been smiling, but she was living in unbearable pain and was still lost in some painful stories, so why would I want to be her? Because it’s easy to attach to something that will give the validation to be hard on ourselves.

How could I be hard on her, when it was the hard choices to do what others with many opinions tried to tell her not to do. But she knew what was right for her. This woman standing here today has had a wish and a dream come true, a life freed of the old pain! How did she get there? By staying with the commitment to do the hard stuff and the hardest of all was releasing the control of how I thought life should look, how I should look, and most of all surrendering to walking the path of the unknown. She is no longer looking back or living in the should’a, could’a, would’a place of the mind with myself or others.

The world has a way of sucking the joy out of the moments that are designed to inspire. It’s the most conditioned habit that’s hardest to break. Like a new mother in the moments she is holding her new baby and nothing else matters but that moment. Then thoughts that becomes words spoken over the lips of another steals the moment and steals the joy by telling a new mom that the life she once had is over. Filling the space with stories, and there goes the joy instead of embracing the silence that’s cultivating joy from the miracle that has just transpired.

A lifetime of conditioning may not be easy to break but it is not impossible for we are always at the crossroads of our choices. Here is what I have learned:

• Today start by not being, and doing to yourself, the things you don’t like being done to you or said to you. Make it a mission to try not to steal the joy from the moments that lift you up and make you smile.

• When creating a reason to judge yourself take an honest look.

• When you say it’s too hard, ask yourself what’s harder? This or that! Be honest with yourself.  I am continually choosing and then questioning why!

• Most of all stop stealing your own moments of joy or opportunities to celebrate you.

• Stop stealing those moments of joy from another by feeling a need to plant a seed of doubt.

• Remember, misery loves company, and happiness is a wide open welcoming space.

• There is a higher degree of your consciousness waiting for you to access a higher degree of wisdom.

Your soul purpose is to collect the treasures and moments of joy so that you no longer trade off your todays for the possibilities of tomorrow.

Much love,

Corrie