This week I have been listening to one of my favorite speakers and there was a bit of her speech that really struck me. She was talking about parents and how they relate to their children, but really what she said is profound for all relationships. What she said was:
"Since you're going to be in my life I will be looking at you often. And, when I look at you I want to feel good. Which means, you need to perform or behave in ways that make me, your selfless mother, feel good. And, if I see any of those things that make me feel bad you will be in such trouble."

This brings me to one of the most profound ideas I have come to understand recently. It is this: we have collectively decided that our parents/caregivers are/were in charge of or responsible for loving and nurturing us. Ironically, most, if not all of us, had not so wonderful experiences with said parents/caregivers. And, after all the work that I have done on myself one of the things that I know for sure is that the one who is responsible for loving and nurturing me is me. Making parents responsible for loving and nurturing us when they are not or have not healed from their experiences only perpetuates the cycle of all the things: addiction, abuse, trauma, neglect, depression, anxiety, etc. As children we do and are meant to look to the adults in our lives to model what is possible in this world, how to be kind and loving and provide safety in the form of basic needs being met (some of us even struggled with these things), but how can they do this when they likely learned from their parents who also were not healed.

So, what's my point? My point is twofold: 1) each of us is responsible for and in charge of the experience we are having emotionally (not sexy and maybe a little harsh) and 2) if we don't learn to heal from our not so good experiences then we hand this down generationally. As in the passage above, that is an example of a mother asking her children to behave in a way that makes her feel better, when what I know is that she is in charge of how she feels. No one or no thing can make you feel any way. You decide how to feel through the thoughts that you have and the emotions that you have learned and practiced, likely your whole life.

This is why I teach what I call "Impenetrable Joy", which is the ability to no longer be at the mercy of people or circumstances needing to be how we want, in order to feel good. This is true freedom, when you learn how to heal from your past so that you are no longer relying on others to determine how you feel, you get to decide! I teach a process to healing and growth so that you can experience this freedom from stress, anxiety, overwhelm and worry and find purpose and meaning in your life. Does that sound like something you would like to learn? I'd love to connect and get you started on your path to joy, you deserve it. What works for you next week?
Peace,
Erin "let freedom ring" Mac