Spring Blossoms

Feeling the sunshine on our faces as we gaze out our windows, or sit in our gardens, or eat outside in a café, or walk around our neighborhoods is a glorious feeling. What springs forth in the springtime is often a manifestation of our winter dreams. What dreams did you have that you might experience springing out about now?

I work with patients all the time who share with me their hopes and dreams. It is so lovely to see their dreams coming out of them to be expressed in their lives and in the world. We can't express our hopes and dreams if we first don't give us permission to speak them to ourselves. Many of us have been squashed in our lives and haven't felt we had the permission to be who we are much less express our inner thoughts and feelings even to ourselves.

There is a gentleman who is engaged in an active process of rebuilding his life based on awareness and possibility instead of blindness and getting by. It is not an easy process in any way. The rewards, however, are immense. It is often such a difficult process that many people choose not to do the work. They tell themselves things like, my life is ok, or, it is too scary to change, or everything is alright, and so on.

This man, after many years of quietly working on himself in an internal way, has been able to break out of old, barely tolerable patterns and step out in an external way into a new way of life. Is he scared? Yes, he is. Is he uncomfortable? Yes, and no. The new way in which he is beginning to live his hopes and dreams is certainly scary for him, but in such a different way that the uncomfortableness of it is much preferable to the uncomfortableness of his old way of living and being. He is allowing himself to move from a very young and innocent place inside of him into a more mature and wise place. He is actively looking at the places in him that were squashed and were stifled and giving voice to his feelings as a child as well as to his older, more knowing and able self. He is speaking the unspeakable to himself. He is seeing his dark places and seeing the truth of his caretakers he had as a child and speaking the truth of his existence. He is risking losing his old sense of belonging and beginning to replace it with a new belonging in him. We are our own caretakers of our souls. No one else can do that for us. Our young wounded selves love to look for someone to save us. We step into our truth and power when we walk into being our own caretakers.

He is doing just that; stepping into letting go that his father or mother would be able to take care of him and save him from a place of knowing that only he can now do that. And, he is quite capable, now, of doing that. He couldn’t as a child. He is letting go of that part of his child so that he can grow up. He used to unconsciously look for others, especially women, to care for him. It is scary to give that up, but so rewarding. He now knows that this too shall pass, when he gets too anxious. So his inner spring is springing into bloom. 

What inner spring is waiting for you to help to blossom?

My soothing words of wisdom for the week is about selfishness and taking care of yourself: