Soulshine

It's so true: We only have one life to live-- OURS. And we have a choice everyday. We can choose to work our recovery programs, to consciously change our thinking and behaviors; or we can choose to stop working to improve our lives and regress into the old misery we have so desperately wanted to escape. So how do I want to spend the rest of my life? I want to love myself unconditionally and to stop hating myself. I know learning to love myself unconditionally will help me to accept and love others unconditionally. All of my relationships will improve. I will choose healthier people to engage with and our relationships will be between equals. I am tired of running after people who don't see me. I am always attracted to the most emotionally unavailable and neediest people. After 22 years of Recovery, this is an instinctual battle I have to face every single day. Only through working my CODA program can I consciously choose to no longer engage in relationships with e...

Disney’s Tangled places a new spin on the Grimm Fairytale Rapunzel . We meet Disney’s Rapunzel just before her 18th birthday. She has a spirit of adventure. Every year on her birthday, she has seen lanterns light-up the night sky, and her heart is telling her to follow the lanterns. She is anxious to do so. But Mother Gothel stands in Rapunzel’s way. Mother Gothel is vain, selfish and manipulative, and as a codependent I can unfortunately relate to her need to control someone to ensure her own happiness. Gothel kidnapped the infant Rapunzel because she (Gothel) is able to retain her youthful beauty by simply touching Rapunzel’s golden, radiant hair. So she is determined to keep Rapunzel a prisoner in the tower by infusing her with fear concerning the dangers of the outside world. Fear becomes the major obstacle that stands in the way of Rapunzel’s quest for adventure and freedom to live her own life. She has developed a comfort zone in the tower with Mother Gothel. Part of he...

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” Neale Donald Walsch I’m beginning to think that life has always been a problem for me because my comfort zone is so massive and impossible for anyone to penetrate—including me. It holds me safely inside of it and it definitely keeps everyone else out—even those people I don’t really want to keep out. Actually, I’m realizing that I have been a prisoner of my comfort zone most all of my life. It was useful at first. It kept me safe from further rejection and emotional pain. But it grew with every year of my life until it grew into something so massive that I no longer had any power over it. I have been trapped inside my comfort zone for many years and never understood that it was holding me hostage. It’s true that life begins at the end of our comfort zones. And because I’ve never been able to penetrate my comfort zone, life has never truly begun for me. In recent weeks I’ve been trying to get beyond playing it safe. ...

In many ways the human person is like a caterpillar. Throughout our lives we are faced with major changes that cause us great fear and emotional pain. Every day we are constantly being asked by God or the universe to change, grow and morph into being new creations; much like caterpillars change, grow and morph into being butterflies. This process is never pretty, however, because we are forced to leave our comfort zones and enter into dark, scary places inside ourselves. Deep within we realize that life—as we have known it—is changing in ways that make us fearful and resistant to these changes. Sometimes we may even feel like our world is coming to an end. And in reality, our world—as we have known it— may truly be coming to an end if we make the conscious choice to grow into the newness of life that God is calling us to enter. The choice is ours. We can freeze-up with fear and be overpowered by the need to stay in our comfort zone, or we can choose to move forward into an...