This One Is For My Diehard Fans 🥳

I write that in jest, but I do have a few incredibly supportive, loving, and loyal friends who read this blog every week. I appreciate you more than you know. 💖🫶🏼

Last week I wrote about my surgery. My recovery has been slow. In my typical fashion, I optimistically leapt back into my usual tasks and seem to have torn something. I’m currently experiencing a considerable amount of pain and bleeding, which has me back on bedrest.

Being on bedrest has put this already overthinking thinker into even more thinking. Ohhhh boy.

What have I been thinking about? Solving the world’s problems? No, no…I’m not quite there yet. But I did manage to solve one of my own, and it’s given me peace that I’ve been seeking for quite a while.

I’m of the opinion that there’s a reason for everything. Every injury, every interaction - it all has a purpose in the grand mapping of the energy in the Universe. Even the tiniest things have their influence…the chaos theory flap of a butterfly’s wings and whatnot.

I grew up Catholic and in my adult years experienced a couple other forms of Christianity. I’ve come to the conclusion that religion just isn’t for me. I like the community part of it; but the politics, the manipulation, the shuffling and reshuffling of predators, and the underlying greed that permeates so much of it? Yeah, no thanks.

Note: For simplicity I will refer to our Higher Power as God/He.  I also mean the Universe, Allah, Yahweh, She and/or whatever you prefer. 

I realized that my relationship with God has nothing to do with anyone else. It’s just Him and me. (Oh! Josh Turner has a song called Me and God. Highly recommend.) 

And that’s just fine. I’m an grown-ass adult; I only answer to myself and He who made me.

That’s why it baffles me when the morality police come running in, trying to control everyone’s choices by making laws about it. Your religious views have nothing to do with the choices of others, ESPECIALLY when it comes to writing policies. 

And the idea that Christianity should, in any way, have influence over our policies in America? Go back and read the notes written by the…who? Those who wrote the rules that some prefer to apply to everyone BUT themselves, the forefathers. Yes, white wigs, those guys. It says VERY plainly - Separation of church and state.

Whew. Okay, tangent over.

So I’m a very spiritual person. In my way of thinking, science and our Higher Power working in tandem just makes sense. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only exchanged. (Isn’t that fascinating?)

 Is this why one of my kids is obsessed with science? 

So all of the energy in the Universe is God. Basically, I believe that God is everywhere, everyone, and everything. And that it’s so hard for our brains to fully conceive of His greatness that we have to form it into a vision of an old white man with a white beard.

When I held my son Declan in my arms for the first time, it was in that moment that I understood how God feels about us. We are His children; and He wants the best for all of us.

But we are born with free will, and there is a small fraction of His children running around being greedy, warmongering mofos and ruining shit for the rest of us.

My preference is to focus my energy on things that are within my control, though. So that means I’ve become a weight loss coach and, through that route, a healer of emotions. 

Here’s where this comes in. There was a situation that I’d been dealing with for a little over a year, and I didn’t fully understand why it was happening. It had left me in an emotional tailspin, to be honest. 

The happiness I’d been experiencing was accompanied by equal (if not greater) heartache. Ordinarily I would’ve walked away by now, but I just couldn’t bring myself to give up on this friendship for some reason.

And I was drumming up a lot of drama about this in my head. Being a coach who teaches her clients how to better manage their emotions, then letting this set me spinning? Yeah, that wasn’t sitting well with me at all.

I wrote about the “knowing” that I experienced in Sedona, Arizona a couple of months ago. Here’s the post: This One Is About Sedona (Sort Of)

That sense of being drawn toward something, somewhere, or someone. I’ve always been one to follow that sense. It’s how I ended up in California; it’s the reason I coerced my husband to give it some more time when he tried to break it off with me very early on in our relationship. (That would’ve been the biggest mistake of his life; I couldn’t let him make it. 😉)

And this situation has been no different. It was that sense of knowing that kept me in it; I followed my instincts. I couldn’t understand, though, what the point was. Why did I keep returning to the scene of this emotional turmoil? What was this trying to teach me? 

My emotions have been more complex than I expected; the connection I feel to this friend is something that I couldn’t find words to explain. 

But I found the words yesterday. It occurred to me during all of that overthinking I’ve been doing that this situation had given me a greater connection to God. It opened me up to a higher level of understanding. It may have even increased my vibration, my connection to the divine.

It has certainly enabled me to raise my empathy and expand my perspective.

So even though I’ve been hurting, I’ve also gained greater insight into how to manage complex emotions. That’s why this situation continued. I hadn’t learned the lesson well enough yet. 

In order for me to teach my clients how to be kinder to yourself and eventually, gradually, be able to genuinely celebrate every last fucking cell of your being, I need to be even more compassionate to myself.  

So I’m forgiving myself for not letting go of something that had been screaming at me to do so.

This has also taught me that I really can love someone without condition. 

I know there’s this belief that it’s foolish or maybe even impossible to love a person unconditionally. Like it’s absolute fact that every single human being will do something SOOO terrible in their lifetime that it’ll make them instantly unworthy of being loved. (Oh, wait…THAT’s what Original Sin is supposedly about! SMH)

Well, it’s a choice to believe that. I choose to love this person at the level I want to. Society doesn’t get to determine that for me.

And hey…God made me this way. He created an empath times a million. So rather than fight against it, I’m leaning into it now.

I’ve also gotten a greater understanding of how to allow a friend to be in their own turmoil without trying to step in and fix it. Isn’t it better for that person to figure it out, anyway? Wouldn’t I just be interfering with the lesson he’s supposed to learn?

I’ve given it my best; I’ve thrown every ounce of energy I have to spare at it. And I REALLY AM seeing the lesson in it rather than judging myself with “doormat” or “desperate” or “dipshit” or whatever other D word I might’ve mentally smacked myself with.

Anyway, I feel relieved. And it’s made me even lighter to write about it.

This isn’t exactly a post filled with weight loss tips or motivational quotes, is it? Well, sometimes I just need to get a little personal. (Now that’s funny 😆)

But I hope you enjoyed reading it and that something resonated with you.

Thanks for hanging out with me.

Love & hugs,

Dana ✌🏼💙💜