Michele Barnes
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"Good Grief - The Benefits of Release"

11/14/2011

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Here I go again.  My gut is telling me that I'm being asked to dip down into my seemingly bottomless well of grief for more processing and release.  Intellectually, I'm not surprised.  I only started taking tiny dips into that well a few years ago and we're talking about a lifetime of grief that hasn't been acknowledged, let alone experienced.  But I guess I was kidding myself into thinking that the work I've done thus far has been enough for a few years...apparently that's not the case.
My adult self keeps trying to tell my child self that we don't have to grieve over a broken heart any more...that we dodged a bullet back when we were 15 years old and planning a lifetime with my significant other at that time and that the lovely man that we're sharing our life with now was so totally worth all of the challenging experiences that led up to now.  But that child doesn't believe the adult.  And I'm thinking the child knows better, at some level...that there's still alot of exploration left to do and the time is ripe for the next journey into that underworld. 

I'm planning to marry my current partner and soul mate.  In preparation for that commitment, a few transitions need to take place...like the sale of my country sanctuary and letting go of my previous role as a yoga teacher.  When I started to deliberate how yoga, which has been a central and pivotal part of my healing journey, is about to take a back seat in my life, I started to experience arm pain.  When I put my house of the market, the pain continued and has quite a grip on my upper back and neck.  In a recent spiritual counselling session, I was guided to let go of the past and the need to be loved as a 'yoga teacher' and to embrace my new role as an empowerment coach and public speaker and eco-activist.  I guess that's three roles in one.  Anyhow, in the last week, I've also heard about two different people suffering from heart failure...one of which has ended in an untimely death.  Today, I met with a soul sister to catch up on our lives and we ended up talking about how we are both feeling the grief of the good Mother Earth and her inhabitants...all living things, not just people.  That might sound far-fetched to you but it is how I've felt over the past couple of years.  We talked about how up until now I've felt a fair amount of resentment about feeling the unresolved grief of my mother whose mother died when she was 1 and her father when she was 5 years old.  I had an 'ah-ha' moment when I realized that my capacity to feel her grief has prepared me for being able to empathize with the global populace and the planet itself.

One might suggest that this ability is debilitating; however, I think that more and more people need to arrive at a similar place and capacity because it our collective inability and/or unwillingness to acknowledge and feel our own grief stops us from being able to recognize it in others....and this has us denying that anything is amiss in the world or prevents us from acknowledging the horrors of the world and, instead, turning a blind eye to them.  It takes a lot of courage to be able to pull the curtain back and see the man hiding behind it.  Once we are no longer blind to the things that are going down in the world...that we really should be outraged about, we stand the risk of being lost in that darkness.  However, I also recognize that the years of self-healing and awareness work that I've undergone (and continue to explore) and that many others are also engaging in has created someone in me who is willing to take that dip in the well, fully knowing that there's a rope being held by a steady hand to pull me back out again.

So, here I go...wish me luck!  And don't worry, I'm taking a super-duper light with me so I can see where I'm going.
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    Michele is passionate about supporting women in their journey to self-empowerment

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