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What Takes Away Your Energy?

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“Change always comes bearing gifts.” - Price Pritchett Life can be so funny….when we are in the depths of winter, we crave warmth, and when it heats up, we crave cold. This June, as temperatures begin to soar and life begins to heat up we find ourselves out and about later in the evenings; my thoughts tend to go to how the grass is often greener on the other side. The more I am with this thought, the more I understand that it seems part of our nature is to want something we don’t have and to want to be someone we are not. If we spent as much attention to who we are instead of who we aren’t, we would be way ahead in the game of life. What does this have to do with our energy? Well, when we wish to be someone or something we are not, it takes our energy away. Much of my work involves helping others to know who they are and to allow themselves to be who they are in all their glory. Many of my patients come to me tired, fatigued and drained. It is like there is an undergrou

June Bugs: What Is Bugging Us?

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“If you are in a bad situation, don’t worry it’ll change. If you are in a good  situation, don’t worry it’ll change.” -John a. Simone, Jr. June is here. It is the end of spring and we begin to feel the heat of summer on its heels. I almost wrote heals instead of heels. It is also true that the sun’s warm rays do help to heal us. And yet, like most of us, there are things which just plain bother us, or bug us. This month of June, I will talk more about how things that bug us also keep us tied to things and events and memories from the past. As the summer steps in and heats up, I will move more into the present. I work with people in the here and now to help them address the present so they can absolutely affect their future in a new and positive way. Have you ever seen June bugs? They are crunchy, medium sized bugs that usually come out at night when we are sleeping. I once had the privilege of seeing an ocean of them on my living room floor when I was little. There wa

The Shadow of Being Victimized

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“Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.” -Theodore Rubin As the sun in May becomes felt in our eyes and on our skin it also casts shadows in front of us. Shadows teach us. We can tell time with the shadows. I think of the song here, Me and My Shadow. When events occur in our lives where we are victimized in some way, that experience casts a shadow on us in our lives and affects the lives also of everyone we come in contact with because we are still acting under the spell of it. When we are little, we don’t have much choice as to what happens to us and how we are treated. The problem is we keep that shadow with us throughout our lives. We don’t know how to turn the shadow effects around for us so we can move on. How we treat and react to others is influenced by the shadow. In our heads and minds, we feel innocent. It is not about us. It is about the

Who Are We, After All?

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“We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same." -Anne Frank Many of us spend much of our lives trying to figure out who we are. Does this sound familiar? It seems that every few years we figure out another piece, when we are ready to see. The truth is that who we are is usually very simple. And, it is the simple that often is the most illusive. I think of May as a month of coming out. It is coming out of the cold climate, into the outdoors and the sunlight. It is also the coming out of what has been incubating within us through the winter months.  So here we are with the age-old question, ‘who are we anyway’?  I remember when my son asked me that question; who am I? I began by answering a mom, a doctor, a person who loves the outdoors and the sun, and so on. I remember in his young wisdom, telling me that is not who I am. At that time I didn’t fully understand his question, nor did I really know the answer. Now, as I r

The Happiness Factor

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“Your happiness is a gift because it literally brings out the best  in you.” -Robert Holden When the sun shines we almost can’t stop from smiling. May is a month when the sun begins casting its warm rays throughout this part of the world. It just plain feels good and makes us happy. We look outside of us and see our world waking up out of its winter dormancy. We begin to see a riot of beautiful colors and life in front of us. As we work with both our life and our family’s influence on us, we unravel the threads holding us back, which propels us into this riot of happiness. I was using the Family Constellation work with a woman who was very aware of the dysfunction of her family.   She was also aware of the residual anger and loss she sometimes felt from old feelings and memories, which were evoked during an event or meeting with a family member. We had done work together before. This time it was necessary to go way back to the beginning of the thread of this dysfunction

I'm So Happy; Or Am I?

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How Do I Get There? “Happiness depends upon ourselves.”                                                                                   - Aristotle It is May. The sun is out more consistently, it is warming up, and the flowers are blooming. Are you excited to get outside and experience the beautiful Spring? I am! This is what happens to us inside as well. We can get so excited and can’t wait to spring out of our cocoons. What does spring out can be very surprising. As I have said, April, May, and June are months where I am combing out how we are stuck in our past. Through these months I will give you tools to help you move forward. During the month of May I will be talking about pathways to happiness. Just the other day I was working with a woman who both looked and acted like she felt well and happy. As I was sitting with her and asking her what she would like to work on, she mentioned she wanted to work on not passing her stuff on to her children and their child

Are You A Victim?

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Turn Rain Into Sun The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”                                                                                                 - Dolly Parton Happy Spring! Isn't it amazing how quickly we can forget our sunny days when we are in the depth of our rainy ones. I love watching the tulips and jonquils bloom this time of year. Their birth seems to bring a sense of life and anticipation of what is to come. It is the same in life. After we have gotten past the early years of our lives, the rest is really about us. We have to remember we are the ones who need to step up and out. There is no one else who can do that for us, it is our responsibility. I love the word responsibility. It is the ability to respond. We do get caught in an inability to respond. Especially when there has been a very hard life, a difficult fate, as in a parent dying very young, a stillborn or someone leaving us. When those types of th