On some occasions there were dinners in restaurants where people wanted me to stay, dinners where I wanted to be, but being there was more than I had to give because I couldn’t relax and so I ate too much … Continue reading
I moved back to California from Maine. I moved to California to escape.
Moving to Los Angeles by myself was something that seemed bold to others. It was actually just another great extension of avoidance. In fact, the only reason I didn’t marry and stay in my hometown is because, well, I had hardly even been on a date. The idea of being open and comfortable with another person was completely inconceivable to me. And the only reason I didn’t go to college was because I didn’t get into the one school I applied to.
I had secret interest in acting even though I had never acted before, even though the words ‘you could be a star’, I’d never heard. Choosing one of the most improbable careers in the world is quite practical for someone who had lost touch with herself. I wasn’t committing to a difficult profession, I was answering an internal call to go out alone and understand the war that had waged inside of me. And I was only able to because I was used to feeling unworthy, denying pleasure, and pretending that everything was fine. I didn’t realize it at the time, but these past years were actually guided by what was a buried intuition.
Underneath the delusion that I was fully applying myself to a career path were two voices:
One voice said – Dana you are not one of those girls. You are not talented enough, pretty enough, hip enough, your wrists are too big, your teeth are too straight, and your body is the same as your dad’s. You are not even on the same planet as real actresses, your chances are none. You are a lie.
And, still beneath, another that said – But this is where I’m supposed to be.
It was the second voice that scared me the most.
I dedicated my time to acting class, where I could practice and find joy in something I had never done freely before – expression. Finding safety in the fiction, knowing the scenes had their endings. I connected with playwrights who wrote the anger and sensitivity, the longing and injustices I had yet to find a name for in myself. And I avoided anything on the business side of show business. Not for political reason, but simply because I didn’t feel like I belonged. Whenever I was in a room with someone in the industry, my brain would overload with predictions of how they could be judging me. I was unable to be anyone resembling who I am. If I had a meeting with an agent, in that moment I only associated myself with all the reasons why he shouldn’t sign me which of course I masked falsely.
The result was a girl sitting before a talent agent desperately trying not to let him see how vulnerable she is. A girl in denial of her pain. A girl allowing another person to inform who she was, because the truth is, I didn’t know. A girl asking someone to believe in her before she believed in herself. Day after day, in every aspect of my life either directly or indirectly, I handed my power over to Hollywood thinking it was in charge of my happiness and worth. I disregarded what, somewhere deep down, I knew I was capable of. I let it tell me I was ill-equipped for achievement. And in command of the internal rebellion that underlies every person whose happiness is reliant upon approval, I turned against myself and subconsciously resented show business, the good of it and the bad of it, for making me feel terrible.
Another ugly cycle that only ends with figuring out how to accept and love your Self, and with figuring out how to take responsibility for your Self.
There are people who have nothing to do with show business who can recognize themselves in this. It’s just one person’s story of a (with exception) universal need for approval. Whether it be from the opposite sex, family, friends, or any other career that exists.
Any endeavor that is your dream, for the most part, is not easy. There are many factors you will have no control over. If you make the choice to commit anyway, all you can do is work from your heart and appreciate the process of a creative life. Release yourself from the exhausting weight of possible failure, in fact, release the weight from failure itself. Humility is the inescapable price of being free. And if rejection comes, pass through the disappointment and remember who you are. Embrace it as an opportunity for growth, and remind yourself how absolutely big and filled with beauty the world is. If you continue forth on the challenging path with love, in time rejection and hardship will reveal itself as what it rightfully was, a gift.
There is not one event, one person who can determine the beginning of your happiness. And there is not one event, one person who determines the end either. Thinking there is will only distract you from the potential of the present moment, and maintain the same pattern of relinquishing your power. A pattern that leads to a life of resentment. And if we are unable to accept the present and reside in our own worth, none of those accomplishments we wish for will ever truly be enough anyway. We will always find a way of sabotaging what we don’t think we’re deserving of.
I had to reexamine what my dream is as to put it into my own hands, and stop letting an industry tell me if I was valuable or not. Only I get to decide that. At the end of the day, an industry does not have control over our ability to create. To create for the sake of our own expression and fulfillment; with the acceptance, with the risk, that it may never be recognized by commercial success.
My success is my freedom. Success is to face my life and not feel shame. It is my ability to be available and loving as a daughter, sister and aunt, and a supportive friend. It allows me to be present and engaged with the two children I began nannying for last summer, who I adore. And to have an appreciative relationship with their parents because they are not two people who employ me with a job that is the substitution of my dream, they are a family who is part of a life that I am able to fill with color and light. My success is feeling fortunate in an environment of possibility, not knowing what is to come. And whoever it is I sit across from, success is knowing who I am. No matter what, I know my truth. And that is priceless.
To address the pun in my somewhat poorly titled blog, I planned on writing this post about how I reestablished a healthy connection with eating. Although that’s included, I realized that what I’m really writing about is the root that eating disorders grow from. Without over statement, it is a root that controls almost the entire population of this country, regardless of what an individuals relationship with food is. Obsession over food just happens to be some people’s, including my, symptom. And using it as a starting point allowed me, through the understanding of my own experience, to trace back its epidemic seed.
This post is about what we give our power to, and why.
The seed I found is anger and resentment that has been left unreconciled since the evolution of mankind. In times of past, societies have revolved around the belief in their god. Recently, in the wake of the incomplete extent of our awareness, some of us have loosened from, or abandoned completely the tie to religion; in a loss of tradition as well as a rebellion of oppressed generations preceding us. Others, who continue to reside under a power they recognize as outside of themselves, remain oppressed.
Both paths are without peace, and will remain without peace until we find the empowerment and connection within our self that was once in designation to religion. Fighting for someone else’s truth, intrinsically lacks a moral compass. It is evident within the small personal degree, as well as the disturbingly vast. Countries, masses of people born pure, exist and fight not as individuals, not as themselves, but in the uniform of their god. Under beliefs not founded from inherence of their own truth and entirely disconnected from liability. Defending misled honor under its poisonous control of an inherited, delusional reality. Stemming from disjointed love for their parents, all in the uniform of fear.
In our own country, Blacks remain oppressed, limiting themselves or acting out with violence in order of how they recognize their identity. In the order of unjustified abuse endured by their forefathers; subconscious cognition telling them they are not equal. Still bearing the heavy load, crafted from deceit. And Whites disconnect ourselves with learned, dividing feelings of both shame, and fear. Excusing ourselves from the truth through the acceptance of their music, of their athleticism. Alienating judgements made by everyone, composed entirely of preconceptions. Conducted by a lack of individual thought process. Becoming how others have identified ourselves.
The outcome of this pattern is everywhere. It appears in almost every society; societies of millions, the personal society of one. Until we approach the complete awareness of ourselves, until we discard learned ignorance, until we discard unwarranted defense of our vulnerabilities, we will not be able to reclaim the peace, the purity, the beauty that is our truth. We are unable to claim the possibility of our strength.
As a country we’ve lost our sense of value. And in the other half of what is now a fatal and destructive cycle, as individuals we have lost our value as well. In place of religion, for much of the new generation who thought they had emancipated themselves, reigns a new god: Media. The bastardization of technology, and the perversion of evolution. And it has happened because we have yet to identify our self as a worthy enough power to obey.
We give out our power everywhere else. Everywhere. Through every expression, through the apologetic or spiteful language we use, our bodies, through what we apply ourselves and give our energy to, what we buy, read, watch, who are friends are. It’s in everything we do, all a reactive to a subconscious need for approval. We immerse ourself in need by letting; swimsuit models tell us we’re not thin enough, celebrities tell us we’re not funny or enjoying life, sports teams tell us if we’re losing, success says no one loves us if we we’re not successful, our children tell us we’re failing, romantic interests determine if we’re valuable or not, schools dictate if you have the right answers, facebook posts say we’re not accomplishing enough, magazines inform us we don’t look good because we’re not wearing the clothing they recommend, news coverage announces that we should be scared at night, books let us know what products our babies need for survival, the government tells us we have one vote for one of two candidates, and the winner will or won’t save our humanity.
It is all an illusion. It all takes advantage of our vulnerability. And it all tells us what we’re worth, is nothing.
These things inevitably take part in our lives, it is up to each of us to be in charge of letting us feel like we’ve fallen short or not. Each individual is responsible for drawing that boundary. And if we don’t, we’re left victims. Powerless over the enormous anxiety our nation provides. And we abandon ourself again, over and over. Avoiding our shame and repressed anger by drinking. By eating. And dieting, and purchasing merchandise, by depressing, by revaluing our sex. By the vicious search for something we’re in control of. Including our own children, our husbands and wives, our families, and employees, and our dearest friends.
The last place we look is ourselves. The last place we look for strength is within our own integrity, our honesty, and patience. Our kindness. The last thing we value in each other, is character. And the last place we search is within our own vulnerability and capacity to truly connect, and find joy in what we have.
Left behind in the distance, is our personal constitution. Our imagination. Lost in sight is our presence, and the innocence of our youth. In its place is the devaluation of simplicity and the miracles of our natural given gifts. Every move we make is just another weighted source of disappointment. And good dissolves in the hands of resentment, in the subjection of fear. We continue the path of oppression.
Everything you do, practice awareness of why, trace your behavior to its root. Uncover whether your intentions are born from the purity of your truth. Let helping others comes out of honesty within yourself; if not it is yet another bitter fruit. And when you feel anxiety, dig deep, and acknowledge where you put it. That anxiety, that is your talent, that is your energy, it represents the possibility of how much love you are capable of expressing. But if it goes to the search of another’s approval, and not from the trust in our own fulfillment; it will never meet the expectations you so desperately reach. It will only amount to a pit in your stomach, and a hold around your neck. It will never release as its divine intention; as positivity. As your purpose in life. Listen to yourself and know that purpose is there. By living with truth, it will never empty. We grow through calmness and presence to what surrounds us, we discover meaning.
Behaving for others is counterproductive and unnecessary. Our best comes when we do it for ourselves and it informs the limitlessness of our whole life.
Since realizing for myself this one truth from which everything grows, I can’t help but think our innumerable ailments are mostly, simply, symptoms of pent-up stress. Symptoms of our unified discouragement. And again, we give our power away to an institution, to monstrous pharmaceutical corporations that medicate us. And they numb a much deeper pain.
Loss of power is the direct and indirect cause of high blood pressure, acne, obesity, indigestion, irritable bowel syndrome, back pain, headaches, depression, it is why children have attention deficit disorder. It is the displacement of anger, stress, and anxiety.
There is no such thing as disease of addiction. Take the authority back from that word. There is only individual void in self as a result of not feeling like we’ve met others’ standard. There is doubt in oneself, there is traumatizing damage, there is learned behavior for coping. Addiction is simply oppressed, cyclical thought pattern. And some cases are seated in such darkness, they appear hopeless. I refuse to take that power away from anyone.
How did I reestablish a very broken relationship with food? I started by setting reasonable boundaries for myself that I can follow, such as no eating past 8 at night, I stopped eating gluten, when I ate a big meal I refused the guilt I had grown accustomed to and reassured myself I would use it as energy and then replenish once I was in need. I began to forgive, trust my judgment again and recognize myself with positivity. I started breathing, taking deeper breaths, and checking in with what my body was telling me. I began to remember the feelings of hunger and satiation, both signals received through the connection to my body.
I slowly removed shame from eating and found a loving relationship with foods that made me feel fulfilled, not because someone told me they would make me lose weight or that they are irresistible or guilty pleasures, those attachments are based in dependence. It’s because they make me feel good and they’re what I like. I like kale, I like eggs with yolks, kombucha, and soup, and potatoes. I eat, and let food fulfill me, and I move onto something else that I feel connected to and fulfilled by. And it’s all out of love for our bodies, patience and forgiveness of ourselves. The same fundamental principles for everything else.
Love your body, it will love you back because it is now seen through the rightful eyes of appreciation. Respect your food and it will respect you back as the nourishment it is intended to be. Trust me, if I can do this, anyone can. Food was nearly my sole reward and punishment system. And it sucked the life out of me for 12 years, because I let it. I thought it was a life I didn’t want. I thought it was a life I had disqualified from possibility. The energy you give to obsessing over food, alcohol, unhealthy relationships, money is the same abundant energy that converts into efforts that connect you with the world. This change is not something to be scared of. With practice, and stemming your decisions in awareness, you will find your peace within.
In the shadow of societal corruption, and the misinformed guidelines of achievement that are taught to us, we depend on approval. We’ve forgotten how to listen to the only accurate compass of worth there is, which is ourselves.
My Mom, born Kathleen Combatti, is from Long Island. She dropped out of college without telling her father and used the rest of her fund to drive across country in jean shorts, with the tentative pursuit of becoming an actress. She met my father as a cocktail waitress in Los Angeles while he was bartending. He himself had taken a bus across the country from Maine after fighting in Viet Nam, with tentative hopes of becoming a singer.
Four months later, when she was 23, he was 32, she asked him to marry her. It went something like this while she exhaled her cigarette out of a my dad’s car window, ‘Niel, you have the weekend off. Let’s get married.’
They got pregnant with twins, bought a house in the suburbs, and had two more kids. She became a stay at home mom, and we were everything to her. During the day she made wooden heart-shaped nic-nacs, she cooked meatballs at night, and picked out our outfits for school in the morning after tying bows on the ends of our braided hair. She was her son’s devoted cheerleader at baseball games, and made us award-winning costumes every halloween, she brought me home from school when I peed my pants in kindergarten, and when her oldest daughter stuffed her training bra with toilet paper she reached in, pulled it out, looked at her eyes and said ‘Amanda, you are absolutely perfect the way you are’. And she did it all with style, a Long Island accent, the occasional vodka martini and infectious, uncompromising charm.
When she was 32 she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and after making the decision to have radiation and a lumpectomy, she beat it. Three years later it returned. And after chemotherapy, a single mastectomy, and radiation failed, she sat down alone in an office and heard a doctor say, ‘Kathy, your cancer has metastasized, you have six months to live.’ She came home and watched her children roller skate, and sing songs, and fight for more ice cream, and run with our dogs on the front lawn. And six months later her 3 daughters put on the dresses she bought for us to wear that day, her son clipped on his tie. We kneeled beside her casket and said goodbye in the way we didn’t know how to. I was 6, Krista was 9, Anthony and Amanda were 11.
You have six months to live. I can’t imagine what she thought about in those months. In fact, I can’t imagine what she thought about almost anything. But I can tell you the story I just told you. I can tell you the whole story beginning to end, and it’s every scrap I’ve gathered of her. A composition of other people’s memories and whatever vague sense I’ve held on to. And it has all the stuff, all the facts. It has everything you need to know, everything except her humanity. Her horror and fear and her faith. Her tenderness and her peace. It has everything except who she was. I don’t know that part.
My family didn’t really mention her again until we were in our twenties. And we were left in the hands of Nielsen, Shotgun Niely. My dad. Who is a truly remarkable person, one of a kind, but oftentimes he was at a loss while raising us. And he stayed anyway. After hearing the four of us fighting one afternoon, when we were still young, he went to the kitchen, got four knives from drawer, laid them in the center of the room and before turning around to leave he said, ‘go ahead, kill each other.’ A year after my mom passed, my dad quit his bartending job downtown at The Pacific Dining Car, sold our house, put all our furniture on the front lawn after a failed family U-haul trip across country, and the five of us boarded an airplane and flew back to where my dad had come from. After buying two apartment buildings at auctions and moving around the state a couple times, devising a plan, he bid the rest of his money on a run down bed and breakfast in Sanford, Maine. We lived in the main house and he spent the next several years devoting every effort to fixing it up, making sure it would provide for his family.
I grew up living and dying by my dad’s word. I needed love. I was desperate, and he was the only one I thought could provide it. If I saw my sister get in trouble for going out with a guy I thought, If I don’t date, dad will love me more. I would sit with him in the tv room for hours and he would furiously spout every point of view he had on the world, mostly concerning national and world politics but sometimes also nature and celebrities. ‘He’s nothing but a communist.’ ‘He’s nothin’ but a yellow-bellied draft dodger!’ ‘Lions aren’t the king of the jungle ..more like the assholes of the jungle.’ Kids these days.. feeling sorry for themselves.. you were born in America for crying out loud!’ ‘Jane Fonda ..nothing but a floozy.’
I nodded my head, listened, and silently asked him to accept me. Externally complying and internally, beneath the conscious level – rebelling, building resentment. The comprehension of my authentic self was at war.
There were contributing factors that caused me to disconnect so extremely. I developed somewhat severe scoliosis when I was 11 (I had corrective surgery at 19) which took a great hold on me.
My dad was so rigid, terrified that his children would be or do something that was not acceptable to him. He didn’t trust us – a reflection of the doubt he had in himself. ‘What if I can’t do this? What if I’m trying to raise these kids and I just can’t do it. What if I fail’. He couldn’t trust that we could make our own decisions, and survive if we failed. From fear, from his refusal to show vulnerability, grew his excruciating need to control. And because he didn’t allow himself vulnerability, naturally, neither did we allow it for us.
Consequently, I never developed a genuine, expressive self. A self that felt safe to want, to try, to fail, form my own opinions, or to speak my mind. I subconsciously avoided life. I was not in touch with myself. ‘In touch with myself’, this is the cheesiest most instrumental concept of life that exists, and I only truly understood what it means for the first time in my life this past November. It is knowing your power, knowing what you want and that you can ask for it, knowing how to respect your body, it’s what holds you accountable for yourself, it is what informs how you allow yourself to be treated by others, and it is the single necessary thing for connection and fulfillment.
Babies are born in touch with themselves. Through life, that is lost. We should make it our individual, moral obligation to reclaim it. In my opinion, It is what will change the world.
In the last post I wrote about identifications. Growing up I unknowingly identified myself with the assumption that life is where you get in trouble, and life is what you go through alone without expressing yourself. Life is where I don’t succeed. Now is the time to untie these perceptions from who we are, through awareness and practice, through being present and knowing we have the courage and capability it takes to challenge ourselves.
This is not about blame. I am certain my father poured all of himself into raising us with very limited resources. There are aspects of my childhood I am, to no small degree, grateful for. In fact now that I have found appreciation for myself, I am grateful for all of it. And I love him incredibly. It’s about recognizing resentment I had subconsciously placed towards us both for not living a life I felt he would approve of, for not living up to what I found acceptable for myself, and for feeling like I needed to comply to his beliefs that were essentially, led by fear.
Through our innate need for connection, naturally, we think we need our parents’ approval to get it. And in a displaced need for control, many parents agree. Then when the child tries to attain it, he/she resents that they’re living (or not living) someone else’s reality. And other times, when the child outwardly rebels, he/she resents the parent for not feeling accepted. And when the parent, driven by that same force of fear, overly coddles – even with that, comes a resentment. These are all ways of practicing dependency, and instilling a sense of dependency; in place of a sense of self.
The truth is, we are not meant to be dependent on others. We share ourselves with others, we become fulfilled by offering our love, we grow, we learn, we practice and provide boundaries, we build a sense of trust and connection by allowing others to love us in return.
This post is about realizing the mysterious and dangerous ways we recreate the past. I needed to reclaim my true self by forgiving both of us for being simply human, for doing things the only way we knew how. And to remember that my dad lost his own father at 19, and his only brother before they had the chance to repair their severed relationship. And he lost his wife. His irreplaceable partner in this world.
Just as my brother, my sisters and I lost our mother. A loss I honored for many years in the reflection of an underlying victimhood. In the quiet, fruitless pursuit of what I felt like I was owed. The pursuit of comfort, safety and approval – the opposition of connection and self, and the perpetuation of familiar pain. It was an intuitive survival skill woven into my being. Some people actualize their anger outwardly, mine was inward, but it is the same. I did it because I didn’t trust myself. I didn’t believe I was strong enough to grieve her and let go of that hurt I counted on. As it turns out, I made an underestimation. Now I see, I can love her because I love who I am. I have the mother I wished for because I am a mother to myself. And I remember her care by caring for others, accepting their care in return. By being present in life the way she is unable to be. And turning struggle into a gift, this is how she lives. We let her shine through us. We honor her with peace and light in our heart in the place of our wound.
Now, the only responsibility I have with my dad is to trust that he loves me for who I am. Because I trust that I am good. And because living life for others’ approval is a disservice to everyone. It robs others of knowing who you are, it robs you of yourself.
In 2010 I started seeing a therapist. I lasted for about 6 months because 1.) My therapy fund ran dry and 2.) The only reason I went was because my friends told me I needed it.
After the third week of sitting across from my therapist’s dead pan face in his harshly lit office in Encino, I began the habit of starting the session without saying anything. He’d look at me and I’d look around the room and neither of us would talk for the first 15 minutes. I’d learned by that point that this man was very good at what he does, and I just did not want to go there. I was a steel trap, unable to open up in the way he wanted me to. My sessions heavily revolved around me simply trying not to pass out from being asked questions, from being asked to face myself. I could not take the discomfort. I was doing the one thing he told me was basically the key to mental health – to not avoid. As much as I hated going to him, as much as I didn’t really understand him at the time, he was the beginning of my awareness.
The day I left for the last time he said, ‘I’m worried, I’m not sure you can do this on your own.’
At that point in my life I was so entirely detached and disconnected. Aside from working as a nanny, I was living in almost complete isolation. Every week I’d cut off all my hair in my bathroom down to what was at times, essentially, a haircut fit for the army. I couldn’t stop cutting my hair and picking my face. I developed a very unhealthy relationship with food as a teenager that, surprise, had yet to fix itself. I didn’t pay bills I needed to pay, didn’t apply myself the way I should have been applying myself. It all amounted as a gaping debt inside of me, which I avoided by cutting my hair, picking my face, secluding myself, and obsessing over food. And that debt left me, of course, feeling worthless, void of self, and incapable of expression. Especially to my family because at all costs, I wanted them to accept and love me. Whenever I felt in a position where I could possibly be judged by another, which was anywhere outside of my house, I became extremely guarded. ‘Guarded’ came in many guises including shy, feigning idiocy, clownish, someone who others don’t understand or relate to – all distractions and not me. Please, anyone but me. Who was I to have an opinion, or stand up for myself, or just simply be still, present and responsive.
I’ve since learned that this feeling is quite universal, some cases more severe than others. Everyone has a feeling they run from. The result is leading a split life; having a split self. One self where you feel safe and in control. For me it was being secluded, for others it is when they’ve had enough to drink, and others it is when they can use their sex as power, etc. And the other self, when you feel unsafe or out of control. On a date, on a job interview, with your family, at a party, etc. The farther apart these two sides are from each other, the harder it is to make connections with other people – the single most important thing in the world.
How do you bring them closer? By trusting yourself. By forgiving yourself. By bringing light to the things inside us we’ve labeled as shameful, instead, recognize them as human. I assure you, you are a unique, capable person of value. I will be more specific about this in future posts through my own experience, and other people who have shared their experiences with me. I’ll be talking about how it all relates every day in our lives.
We have a way of losing perspective and internally focusing on what we see as negative qualities about ourselves that others are probably not paying any mind to because they’re busy doing the same thing. That zeroing in, it has a magical way of compounding and perpetuating those negative feelings. Why? Simply because not believing in yourself, not loving yourself is what allows you to give your power away – to drugs, alcohol, food, to people we think can save us, etc. – all escapes, all ways of avoiding ourselves. All because we can’t trust that we are good enough. And then the world becomes how we see ourselves, because we are projecting negativity on it.
That inability to trust yourself, the assumption that we are bad, that we will not be understood and accepted by others, the need to predict and control because we don’t think we handle rejection, or pain when it comes – these are the makings of anxiety and depression. Next time you’re in a situation when you think you’re not good enough, take a moment, be present, stop judging yourself, and focus on who or what you’re with. Practice taking the focus off yourself and putting it outward.
When you start being kind to yourself slowly you see, your outer circumstances change as a reflection of what you begin to think your worth is. And it all starts with facing who you are, forgiving yourself and then, forgiving others. Little by little, positivity starts taking place of negativity. And good compounds just as well as bad does. I’m not saying life is perfect after this. There is no perfection. All we can do is have courage, and trust the innermost parts of ourselves we operate from that we can breath through the depths, participate in the climb, and rejoice when there’s light. Trust is peace.
I think about these teenagers, the precious sons and daughters who are lost, in pain, the ones who are succumbing to their only known environment of violence, and even committing suicide. Consumed by the feeling that their circumstances, even with an entire lifetime in front of them, are completely hopeless. They are unable to grasp the irrelevance of high school, unable to believe they have the capability of deciding their own path, unable to grasp that there is not a person on earth with the authority to determine how valuable someone is. They’ve grown up in an atmosphere of recycled and inherited fear, and it repeats.
We do the same as adults. We lose perspective and we build ourselves a jail of self-identifications and associations over the years, just beneath our conscious. ‘I will fail, I’m not smart enough, I’m not attractive enough, I’m meant to be alone, I’m only loved for my money, I’m only happy when I’m in a relationship, I’m unlovable, I am only worth my sex, my sex is shameful, I will never be successful, life is too hard and I am not strong enough’. We filter every thought through these learned belief systems and then make limitations our reality. We were told or shown these things and we have practiced these things and assume it is a definite part of our identity. Then we stay that way because change is uncomfortable. We let our subconscious rule our life.
Those are heavy attachments to carry around, they extend themselves through every scope, large and small, of our being. And they’re hiding who you are.
I am writing about health. Healing. Awareness. About everyone’s ability to create a purposeful and connected place in this world, our one indisputable birthright.
Like so many, I grew up with a skewed, restricted sense of reality and myself. I carried an incredible amount of pain and fear, kept many secrets, and I continued to let these these things rule my life into adulthood without really understanding how or why. I searched. Inward, outward, looked at my family, my friends, Jungian analyst publications, bowls of fruit, etc.
This blog is for the pursuit of wholeness. A rendering of what it took to start uncurling myself from all the dark things, and the daily opportunities we are given to continue the path toward our truth. It’s about discovering the fine power within all of us. A power rooted in grace, understanding, and love.
find more blogs by me at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-clark
Kale for Your Soul 