Soulshine

"His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people--his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God... and he must be about His Father's business: beauty... and to this conception he was faithful to the end."                                                            F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby It makes no difference where we have come from, who are parents were or how our past has shaped us. We are not prisoners to any of it, or anything. As adults, we have stewardship-- ownership-- of our own lives. We are all sons and daughters of God an...

“No one knows you better than you know yourself, Do the thing you want, don't wait for someone else… Don't stand in the corner waitin' for the chance, Make your own music, start your own dance… (Spotlight) Everybody is a star, you know who you are (Shine bright) This is your chance to shine It's got to come from the heart, Do it right from the start and step into the light (Spotlight)” Madonna, Spotlight (1987) Spotlight has always been one of my favorite Madonna songs. I remember back in 1987, every time I heard this song my heart really resonated with the lyrics. And certainly now I know why: They were speaking directly to me, telling me it was time to get my act together, to get out of my corner, take ownership of my life and to step into the Spotlight as the star of my own life.   At the time, I was wasting my life standing on the sidelines, afraid to be me. I was mostly hiding from the world and yet I was also hoping and waitin...

I can look back over my life and see a pattern of my past becoming my present. I guess it’s not surprising since we humans like to stay in our comfort zones. We stick with what we know, and we rarely take the time to question whether or not what we know is good for us. If your past keeps catching up with you, it’s time to discover what it is trying to teach you. There’s a reason why it’s haunting you. Codependents are very good at playing the Blame Game, and I think this is a primary reason why we end up repeating our past. The Blame Game is a protection mechanism that allows us to deflect all of our faults onto others. By using the Blame Game, we focus solely on the bad behavior of others. It enables us to believe that the other person is 100 per cent to blame for all of the problems in a relationship because it enables us to turn a blind eye toward everything that we ourselves have done wrong. After all, to blame others is to pretend to be faultless. It’s easy to see wh...

I don’t know who I am. I’ve lived (existed) so many years, walked so many miles in my own shoes, and yet, I don’t really know who lives (hides) deep inside of my body, my heart, my brain. It scares me to realize and to admit this. Even worse is the fact that I don’t know how to really discover, connect with and begin to understand me. I’m 17 years into codependent recovery, and yes things are better. The real me has floated to the surface in magnificent ways. I speak-up more, say what I believe and feel, and allow myself to be goofy and humorous. I’ve even rediscovered the great singing voice I had as a child. And I give myself credit for all of this. I also understand that I was a people-pleaser, a caretaker and a fader (someone who constantly fades into another person to find a sense of value or purpose, or to simply escape from themselves.) I don’t people-please anymore. I don’t care-take anymore. But I do still have a tendency to want to fade into someone else. I stil...