Soulshine

Sometimes the aching inside is so intense that it feels like I’m drowning in sadness and despair. In that moment, I realize there’s a dagger inside that has been shredding my heart and bleeding my soul for countless years. And that dagger is a childhood experience of having my self-worth destroyed by an adult. The dagger twists relentlessly inside of me. It feels like there’s no hope. There’s nothing left to cling to, not even God. Everything has failed me. I’m gasping for inner-air, but there is none. I cry to God one more time, but I’m getting tired of this. “What is this feeling tied to?” I scream. “What happened that so destroyed my soul? I don’t remember. Help me to know what it is and to heal it!!!” Silence. I feel some relief from having expressed my feelings out-loud. But the overwhelming sadness is still haunting me. The past fades to black and I’m ready to give up on tomorrow. Still, I go about preparing for my day, knowing that if I allow these horrible feelings to...

“The circus elephant doesn’t run away because he’s been chained to a stake like that since he was very, very little.” Dr. Jorge Bucay , Let Me Tell You a Story Before recovery, many of us had a favorite motto: “I can’t do it.” People would lovingly tell us we needed to start helping ourselves, and we would say “I can’t do it. I need you to do it for me!” Or others might suggest that we seek help from a therapist or a support group and we’d quickly blurt out “I can’t do it” as we adamantly listed every reason why we couldn’t possibly help ourselves. Recovery has taught us that we alone are responsible for ourselves—and that no one else is. As a result, most recovering people learn to trade-in their “I can’t do it” motto for an “I can do it” motto. We have learned to be responsible for our own self-care by partnering with a Higher Power, and by setting the proper boundaries that allow us to take care of ourselves. And we’ve learned that we must care for ourselves first ...

A major problem for most codependents is where they place their focus. Unfortunately, most of us were taught as children to place our focus outside of ourselves. And as a result, we developed a stifling emptiness inside of our souls. The day we began to look outside of ourselves for fulfillment was the day that a hole ate through our hearts. It was the day we chose to abandon ourselves. And so we began the quest of finding someone, anyone, to fill up the emptiness we anxiously felt. Day after day we took up the quest to find love and approval outside of ourselves. We looked to mom and dad, siblings, grandparents, friends and teachers to give us the validation that we no longer knew how to give to ourselves. Sometimes we received the approval we sought, but if never managed to fill-up the emptiness of the hole that was rapidly expanding inside of us. As we grew into being teenagers and young adults, we began to feel overwhelmed with the landfill that was expanding insi...

“So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we’ll never know most of them. But even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there.” Stephen Chbosky , The Perks of Being a Wallflower Friday I attended a talk by author Stephen Chbosky. At one point in his talk, he focused on Charlie, the protagonist of his book and film The Perks of Being a Wallflower . He said that he wanted to portray Charlie as the nicest person in the world. Charlie is someone that everyone should love. He’s kind, generous and loving. He accepts people as they are and consciously works at refraining from judging people. He’s open-minded and honest and trustworthy. His life should be perfect. And yet that is far from the truth. Charlie has suffered greatly at the hands of his family. As a small child, he was sexually abused by his Aunt Helen. Somehow, the rest of the family was totally oblivious to this big white elephant disruptin...

“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...

As I’ve said before, life is about choices. Every second of every day we have choices to make. Most of these choices revolve around retaining our personal power or giving it away. When we choose to fight realities that we cannot change, we are actually choosing to give our personal power away. We are choosing to be life’s big fat victim. In doing so, we sit and whine like four year olds, spouting out deeply ingrained mantras like “But it’s not supposed to be this way!” Whine, whine… whine, whine, whine… and whine some more. Poor me. Poor me. Life is soooooo unfair to me! Reality Slap! No life is not unfair to me. I am unfair to me. I am the one who is refusing to accept the reality that I cannot change. I am the one who is freely GIVING AWAY MY OWN POWER, my own key to happiness, by insisting that life be the way that I WANT, instead of being the way that it IS. I am the one who has created my own problem and I am the only one who can choose to solve that problem and thus ma...

Sometimes we allow ourselves to get trapped in an ever-shrinking inner-world. We close in on ourselves as we pull away from others and outside activities. Suddenly even the big outside world seems small. It happens subtly and often doesn’t come to our attention until we start to crumble inside. We feel lethargic, despondent and hopeless. Then we realize that we’ve reduced the real world down to the size of our brains—a very dangerous placed to be trapped in. No wonder we don’t feel alive. If you’re suffering from Brain Trap, if the walls are closing-in on you, it’s time to get out and do something. If you can make arrangements with a friend to go walking in the park, or go to a concert, or golfing, etc., then do it. Just make sure that you choose to do something that makes you feel somewhat alive and not something that simply medicates you more (like shopping). Last Sunday night I got out of my brain-trap by going to a Duran Duran concert with a friend. As the big event dre...

“Wait 30 seconds. You’ll gain clarity. And then you’ll know what to do.” Bradley Cooper, Limitless We are used to reacting to life. Life happens and we each have our own little reactions that require no thought and no effort—and that more often than not result in negative consequences. Then recovery supplies the new-found treasure of awareness. We realize that we don’t have to react to life anymore. We actually have a choice. We can default into reacting, or we can choose a different path. We can stop, breathe, relax for a moment and allow healthier alternatives to flash through our minds. Suddenly life has new possibilities. Life gets a little better. I was staying with some friends recently and forgot to bring their house key with me. One morning I left their apartment to go to Panera Bread. Once the door closed and locked behind me, I realized I needed the house key to get through the gate to the lot where my car was parked. My natural reaction was to panic and ring ...

“Happiness lies in your own hand.” Madonna, Secret Back in 1994, Madonna passed on some great wisdom in her mega-hit single “Secret.” Unfortunately, as much as I liked the song at the time, I didn’t get the message. Or I didn’t want to get it. I find most people don’t like the idea that happiness is in their own hands. They prefer to think that happiness lies outside of themselves; that it can only be found in the hands of someone else; and that they have to struggle to find that someone who has the power to make them happy. There’s a romanticism to this idea that a perfect person is going to come along and sweep you away to mythical happiness. Or that some great spiritual guru is going to provide you with the long lost “secret” to possessing authentic lifelong happiness. But there’s no reality to either concept. No one can give you what you already have within your own grasp—within your very hands. Accepting the fact that happiness lies within our own hands seems too challenging ...

Sometimes it’s difficult learning to stand up for ourselves. We are so used to backing-off because we feel like we don’t really count in this world. Everyone else has a right to their beliefs, opinions and needs—but not us. So we stand silently by and give our power away. We stuff our feelings and lay down like doormats for others. Then, once we’re alone, we allow our feelings to explode all over us. We replay the situation through our heads over and over, we get angry, mad as hell and revengeful. As we replay the scene again and again, we punish ourselves. We may be angry with the other person(s), but we’re mostly angry with ourselves. Well, it’s time to stop laying down and rolling over before others. It’s time to start owning our power by believing that we are good enough, equal with everyone and that our wants and needs DO COUNT. I belong to an MP3 service that charges my account every month for $20. I found out the hard way that if I don’t buy $20 worth of MP3s in a give...