Honoring YOUR Journey

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to the latest edition of Stream of Consciousness!

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Hey 👋

I've been struggling a lot lately with fear.

It's warranted and makes sense.

It is deeply tied to a lot of hell I have lived through.

My brain and body are connected to the past and want to connect any small sensations and experiences from now to what happened then.

I had some inner resources then that kept me alive. Now in hindsight, I am SO grateful for those!

But now they are firing on all cylinders frequently and keeping me trapped.

It's like I am a car and I gave myself instructions for operation and now I am a different model and on a completely different part of the map and those instructions need to be updated.

Today, my resources and circumstances are different. Re-writing the old pattern and replacing it with a new one has been the hardest and most confusing thing I have ever had to do.

One of the things I am finding really challenging is when I am feeling like I am currently - in the middle of a flare up that brings back all of the old feelings of survival, being trapped and alone with no way out, and other not so fun things to think about - and I see things going on around me and I think about how I used to feel and what my life used to look like.

I open my Instagram and see people at the gym, hiking in beautiful places, going out with friends and enjoying themselves, and doing things I want to be doing.

I look out my window and see people doing things that look fun and enjoyable.

I have people in my own life contacting me and asking me if I can get together to do X or Y.

Right now in the season of life I am in, I don't always have the capacity to do them even if I want to and it's been really challenging.

It's been difficult to maintain relationships, a career, hobbies, or feel like my life is moving forward in the ways I want it to be.

I have felt very, very stuck.

At first it would make me so mad and frustrated and I would face my pain and fear and this feeling of being trapped with anger and resentment.

A “Why are you here? Go away!” type of attitude.

A chronic pain psychologist I used to work with would describe this as suffering - I am adding to the pain I am already feeling by attacking myself.

But these things that are holding me are the very things that literally saved my life.

They needed to. It took everything my little kid Lisa inside me was made of and more.

And I am so glad that they did.

One of the main post-hoc repercussions of that resourcing - reaching beyond the tools I was equipped with to keep myself alive - was that my body lost trust in my ability to protect it.

It makes sense.

Now, I am walking the path of gently holding it by its hand and regaining that trust.

I can't change it, pretend it's not happening, or carry on business as usual and ignore it completely. I can't distract myself out of it. I can't throw a hail mary pass to magically make everything better. I can't force things to be different. I can't muscle my way out of this in the ways I used to.

Life has shown me, without a doubt, that this is the work I need to do.

I need to reset my expectations and decouple the past inputs from past outputs to current inputs and new outputs.

It's the hardest thing I've ever been faced with.

But…

This is my way.

This is my assignment.

This is my journey.

Today I accept my path and am walking it as well and as deeply as I possibly can.

I know it's not easy.

And I know I can't do this (or anything else for that matter) alone.

My hope is that one day I look back at the season I am in right now and say, “Damn. That really made me become a strong ass motherf*cker!”

What's your journey?

What is life shining a light on that you've been trying to distract yourself from or ignore?

In what places are you being called to step up?

I'm sending you good vibes, energy and strength to accept your challenge and your journey today, whatever it may be.

Thanks for Reading!

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

If this edition resonates, please reply to this email and drop me a note and let me know! I love hearing from you and it makes me feel less like a robot typing away behind a glass wall.

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Here’s to navigating life off of autopilot together.

Lisa ✌️